We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.
B. F. SkinnerRead
If freedom is a requisite for human happiness, then all that’s necessary is to provide the illusion of freedom.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that true happiness may be tied to the perception of freedom rather than actual freedom itself.
B. F. Skinner's quote proposes a provocative idea that the illusion of freedom, rather than the reality of it, can be sufficient for human happiness. This challenges the notion that genuine freedom is essential for contentment and suggests that if people believe they are free, they may experience happiness, regardless of the truth of their circumstances.
In practice
In a discussion about personal liberties during a debate.
We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.
Each of us has interests which conflict the interests of everybody else... 'everybody else' we call 'society'. It's a powerful opponent and it always wins. Oh, here and there an individual prevails for a while and gets what he wants. Sometimes he storms the culture of a society and changes it to his own advantage. But society wins in the long run, for it has the advantage of numbers and of age.
No theory changes what it is a theory about; man remains what he has always been.
I am opposed to the military use of animals. I am also opposed to the military use of men.
The ideal of behaviorism is to eliminate coercion: to apply controls by changing the environment in such a way as to reinforce the kind of behavior that benefits everyone.
Unable to understand how or why the person we see behaves as he does, we attribute his behavior to a person we cannot see, whose behavior we cannot explain either but about whom we are not inclined to ask questions.
It's always a Catch-22 situation. They hate you if you're the same, and they hate you if you're different.
Silence has many dimensions. It can be a regression and an escape, a loss of self, or it can be presence, awareness, unification, self-discovery. Negative silence blurs and confuses our identity, and we lapse into daydreams or diffuse anxieties. Positive silence pulls us together and makes us realize who we are, who we might be, and the distance between these two.
I am good. I live good. I think good. I don't have to feel good to be good, I take my goodness wherever I go.
To conclude that women are unfitted to the task of our historic society seems to me the equivalent of closing male eyes to female facts.
Make us worthy Lord to serve our fellow men throughout the world who live and die in poverty and hunger. Give them through our hands this day their daily bread and by our understanding love, give peace and joy.
Sooner or later, all the peoples of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood.
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