B. F. Skinner Quotes

The behaviorist advances the view that what the psychologists have hitherto called thought is in short nothing but talking to ourselves.

When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself.

Language comes first. It's not that language grows out of consciousness, if you haven't got language, you can't be conscious.

Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.

For me, language is something that I've always loved. When I read, that's what I look for. When I write, that's what I strive for.

We must plow through the whole of language.

...language is not the frosting, it's the cake.

Language. I loved it. And for a long time I would think of myself, of my whole body, as an ear.

Language is, without a doubt, the most momentous and at the same time the most mysterious product of the human mind.

What we do in life is determined by how we communicate to ourselves. In the modern world, the quality of life is the quality of communication.

LANGUAGE, n. The music with which we charm the serpents guarding another's treasure.

Always remember that no matter what anyone is saying to you from the outside, the most important conversation is the one you are having with yourself on the inside.

We have only the language for fun and miserable, and maybe we need language for deep and shallow, meaningful and meaningless.

I do not pretend that language is science. It isan instrument for the attainment of science.

We speak not only to tell other people what we think, but to tell ourselves what we think. Speech is a part of thought.

Language exists only when it is listened to as well as spoken. The hearer is an indispensable partner.

For one thing, studying language is by itself a part of a study of human intelligence that is, perhaps, the central aspect of human nature. And second, I think, it is a good model for studying other human properties, which ought to be studied by psychologists in the same way.

Ordinary people who know nothing of phonetics or elocution have difficulties in understanding slow speech composed of perfect sounds, while they have no difficulty in comprehending an imperfect gabble if only the accent and rhythm are natural.

He told me that one of the reasons people are so unhappy is they don't talk to themselves. He said you have to keep a conversation going with yourself throughout your life to see how you're doing, to keep your focus, to remain your own friend. He told me that he talked to himself all the time, and that it helped him to grow stronger and better everyday.

Prowling the meanings of a word, prowling the history of a person, no use expecting a flood of light. Human words have no main switch. But all those little kidnaps in the dark. And then the luminous, big, shivering, discandied, unrepentant, barking web of them that hangs in your mind when you turn back to the page you were trying to translate.

Vocabularies are crossing circles and loops. We are defined by the lines we choose to cross or to be confined by.

Why, the little Voice inside my head, of course. You mean you don't have one? I did.

[Having monologue] are talking to somebody even if it's just to yourself, convince yourself if that's what you're trying to do.

Only one thing remained reachable, close and secure amid all losses: language. Yes, language. In spite of everything, it remained secure against loss.