We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.
B. F. SkinnerRead
When you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.
Interpretation
Pursue your interests with dedication and focus.
This quote by B. F. Skinner emphasizes the importance of curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge. It suggests that when you encounter something that piques your interest, you should prioritize it above all else and dedicate your time to exploring and understanding it deeply.
In practice
During a workshop on innovation, one might quote this to inspire attendees to explore new ideas.
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.
A book should serve as an axe to the ice inside us.
I believe sanity and realism can be restored to the teaching of Mathematical Statistics most easily and directly by entrusting such teaching largely to men and women who have had personal experience of research in the Natural Sciences.
I went to a segregated school; I was born a Negro, not a black man.
A man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people.
The content of most textbooks is perishable, but the tools of self-directedness serve one well over time.
Universities exist to transmit knowledge and understanding of ideas and values to students not to provide entertainment for spectators or employment for athletes.
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