B. F. Skinner Quotes

Rewards and punishments are the lowest form of education.

Behavior is shaped and maintained by its consequences

Consequences give us the pain that motivates us to change.

I think the negative reinforcement really helped me in my very beginnings.

Typically, if you reward something, you get more of it. You punish something, you get less of it. And our businesses have been built for the last 150 years very much on that kind of motivational scheme.

The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.

There are no rewards or punishments - only consequences.

Properly used, positive reinforcement is extremely powerful.

We are human beings. We operate from wanting to be rewarded.

Every action needs to be prompted by a motive.

Thought is the parent of the deed.

Everything we do, I'd imagine, influences everything we will do.

Ideas lead to actions.

To acquire behavior, the student must engage in behavior

We have seen that in certain respects operant reinforcement resembles the natural selection of evolutionary theory. Just as genetic characteristics which arise as mutations are selected or discarded by their consequences, so novel forms of behavior are selected or discarded through reinforcement.

But thought is one thing, the deed is another, and the image of the deed still another: the wheel of causality does not roll between them.

What you do and what you say has consequence and impact. Impact is determined by the intention behind your words and the intention behind your deeds.

The strengthening of behavior which results from reinforcement is appropriately called 'conditioning'. In operant conditioning we 'strengthen' an operant in the sense of making a response more probable or, in actual fact, more frequent.

Everything you do has some effect, some impact.

Reinforce what you want to see repeated.What gets rewarded gets done.

Every why has a wherefore.

Every why hath a wherefore.

We don't just get our choice; we get the consequence that choice creates.

I have come to the conclusion that there is nothing good that doesn't have bad consequences and nothing bad that doesn't have good consequences.

Thought is the seed of action.