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
What this quote means
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.
Themes
FreedomHappinessIllusionPhilosophyHuman Condition
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about personal liberties during a debate.
More from B. F. Skinner
All quotes →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.
B. F. SkinnerRead
No theory changes what it is a theory about; man remains what he has always been.
B. F. SkinnerRead
I am opposed to the military use of animals. I am also opposed to the military use of men.
B. F. SkinnerRead
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.
B. F. SkinnerRead
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.
B. F. SkinnerRead
Similar quotes
No matter what a woman's appearance may be, it will be used to undermine what she is saying and taken to individualize - as her personal problem - observations she makes about the beauty myth in society.
Naomi WolfRead
It is inconceivable that the God who gives Himself in His Son to save us, should have created some people ordained to evil and damnation. There can only be one predestination to salvation. In and through Jesus Christ all people are predestined to be saved. Our free choice is ruled out in this regard. God wants free people, except in relation to this last and definitive decision. We are not free to decide and choose to be damned.
Jacques EllulRead
He who fears he will suffer, already suffers from his fear.
Michel De MontaigneRead
There has to be a common sense cutoff for craziness, and when that threshold is exceeded, then the criteria for publication should get far, far more stringent.
Douglas HofstadterRead
You may bury my body down by the highway side. So my old evil spirit can catch a Greyhound bus and ride.
Robert JohnsonRead
Yet as human beings we have to accept-with humility-that the question of ultimate origins will always remain with us, no matter how deeply we understand the brain and the cosmos that it creates.
Vilayanur S. RamachandranRead