B. F. Skinner Quotes

In some extremely important ways, people are what you expect them to be, or at least they behave as you expect them to behave.

One will seldom go wrong if one attributes extreme actions to vanity, average ones to habit, and pretty ones to fear.

People had an illogical, self-serving rationale when it came to interpreting the behavior of others.

Other psychological theories say a good deal about compensation.

Just as our brains fill in the details of an image our eyes record only roughly, so, too, do our brains employ tricks we are unaware of to fill in details about people we don't know intimately.

We are all disposed to attribute to other's motives and views that we have entertained ourselves.

Men are driven by two principal impulses, either by love or by fear.

Human behavior is timeless.

You think we shouldn't anthropomorphize people?

The rewards system is a powerful driver of behavior and therefore culture.

I don't always understand other people's motives. I will repeat that for my own benefit, if you don't mind. I don't always understand other people's motives.

To get a person's real opinion, ask what she thinks everyone else believes... If people truly hold a particular belief, they are more likely to think that others agree or have had similar experiences. [People] tend to assume that other people have had life histories at least somewhat similar to their own. When we talk about other people, we are often talking about ourselves, whether we know it ourselves.

We have only two sources of information about the character of the people around us: we judge them by what they do and by what they say (particularly the first).

A man's behavior is the index of the man, and his discourse is the index of his understanding.

We love our habits more than our income, often more than our life.

One of the most interesting things in the world to me is the vast difference between what people say they are going to do, and what they actually do.

People say life ain't fairlife is very fair. People aren't fairpeople are terrible.

The thing that I really like is psychology. I love the human mind. I love the choices you make based on your experiences and instincts and your development based on such experiences and so I guess that's why I love acting so much.

People are not their behaviors.

Policymakers think that if they get the abstractions right, that will drive behavior in the desired direction. But the world happens in real time.

I am often surprised by the cleverness, and now and again by the stupidity, of my dog; and I have similar experiences with mankind.

With people too, you constantly think, "If I'm nice to people and treat them well, they'll appreciate it and behave better." They won't, but it's still not a bad way to live.

You cannot shame or belittle people into changing their behaviors.

It would be really worrying if, as a Darwinian, it was impossible to think of ways in which our behavior could be explained.

The time has come, I think, when we must recognize bisexuality as a normal form of human behavior.