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Man's power appears to have increased out of all proportion to his wisdom. He has never been in a better position to build a healthy, happy, and productive world; yet things have perhaps never seemed so black.

— B. F. Skinner Science and Human Behavior (1953)

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Wisdom

More quotes by B. F. Skinner

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

Meditations for Parents Who Do Too Much (1993)

Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.

It is the teacher's function to contrive conditions under which students learn. Their relevance to a future usefulness need not be obvious.

The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.

Contingencies of Reinforcement: A Theoretical Analysis (1969)

Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.

All B. F. Skinner quotes →

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If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.

William Blake The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790)

'The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.'

William Shakespeare As You Like It (1599)

It takes extraordinary wisdom and self-control to accept that many things have a logic we do not understand that is smarter than our own.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)

Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools.

George Chapman All Fools (1605)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: B. F. Skinner (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.