“I don't know whether I want to improve religion or not. I prefer to get rid of i…” — B. F. Skinner

Behavior used to be reinforced by great deprivation; if people weren't hungry, they wouldn't work. Now we are committed to feeding people whether they work or not. Nor is money as great a reinforcer as it once was. People no longer work for punitive reasons, yet our culture offers no new satisfactions.

No theory changes what it is a theory about; man remains what he has always been.

I don't think my mother and father ever had any doubts about what I was to be punished for or not. My parents come from a very strictly defined culture.

The people who control the condition in which we live have no reason to think beyond more than the next five or 10 years.