We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.
B. F. SkinnerRead
No theory changes what it is a theory about; man remains what he has always been.
Interpretation
Theoretical concepts do not alter the fundamental nature of humanity.
B. F. Skinner's quote emphasizes that despite various theories or ideas we may develop about human behavior or nature, the essence of what it means to be human remains unchanged. This reflects on the permanence of human nature in contrast to the transitory nature of theoretical constructs.
In practice
In a debate discussing the implications of behavioral theories on education.
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.
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.
Fame is also won at the expense of others. Even the well-deserved honors of the scientist or man of learning are unfair to many persons of equal achievements who get none. When one man gets a place in the sun, the others are put in a denser shade. From the point of view of the whole group there's no gain whatsoever, and perhaps a loss.
I have always reckoned the dignity of the republic of first importance and preferable to life.
Envy, propelled by fear, can be even more toxic than anger, because it involves the thought that other people enjoy the good things of life which the envier can't hope to attain through hard work and emulation.
When people say, "I know God forgives me, but I can't forgive myself," they mean that they have failed an idol, whose approval is more important than God's.
The newspaper that obstructs the law on a trivial pretext, for money's sake, is a dangerous enemy to the public weal. That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse.
Now, one of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one's house.
There is no absolute point of view from which real and ideal can be finally separated and labelled.
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