We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.
B. F. SkinnerRead
If the world is to save any part of its resources for the future, it must reduce not only consumption but the number of consumers.
Interpretation
What this quote means
To preserve resources for future generations, society must limit consumption and the population.
B.F. Skinner's quote emphasizes the urgent need for society to rethink its approach to resource management. It suggests that in order to ensure sustainability, not only should we decrease our consumption habits, but we also need to consider the impact of our population growth on the environment and available resources. This calls for a collective responsibility towards both individual consumption and broader demographic trends that affect resource availability for future generations.
Themes
ResourcesSustainabilityConsumptionPopulationFuture
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in an environmental conference to emphasize the importance of sustainable resource management.
More from B. F. Skinner
All quotes βEach 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
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