B. F. Skinner Quotes

Learning is defined as a change in behavior. You haven't learned a thing until you take action and use it.

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.

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

Properly used, positive reinforcement is extremely powerful.

To acquire behavior, the student must engage in behavior

The carefully fostered theory that schoolwork can be made easy and enjoyable breaks down as soon as anything, however trivial, has to be learned.

Behavior is shaped and maintained by its consequences

In all the works on pedagogy that ever I read — and they have been many, big, and heavy — I don't remember that any one has advocated a system of teaching by practical jokes, mostly cruel. That, however, describes the method of our great teacher, Experience.

The nature of human beings is such that we tend not to drift into better behaviors. We usually have to be asked by someone to consider taking it up a level.

Habits are formed by the repetition of particular acts. They are strengthened by an increase in the number of repeated acts. Habits are also weakened or broken, and contrary habits are formed by the repetition of contrary acts.

Healthy habits are learned in the same way as unhealthy ones - through practice.

In teaching it is the method and not the content that is the message.

Training- training is everything; training is all there is to a person. We speak of nature; it is folly; there is no such thing as nature; what we call by that misleading name is merely heredity and training. We have no thoughts of our own, no opinions of our own; they are transmitted to us, trained into us.

You can develop any habit or thought or behavior that you consider desirable or necessary.

Discipline is not punishment. Discipline is changing someone’s behavior.

All true education is the drawing out from the student what is already there. Teaching is never about helping others to learn but about helping them to remember. All learning is remembering. All teaching is reminding. All lessons are memories, recaptured.

Whatever you would make habitual, practice it; and if you would not make a thing habitual, do not practice it, but accustom yourself to something else.

The power of habit is very strong.

You cannot shame or belittle people into changing their behaviors.

Psychologically, the teaching of abstractions first is wrong. Indeed, a thorough understanding of the concrete must precede the abstract.

Changing people's habits is very expensive

Repeating a new behavior is what makes change stick.

Instructors should not only be skilful in those sciences which they teach, but have skill in the method of teaching, and patience in the practice.

The most dramatic instances of directed behavior change and "mind control" are not the consequence of exotic forms of influence, such as hypnosis, psychotropic drugs, or "brainwashing," but rather the systematic manipulation of the most mundane aspects of human nature over time in confining settings.