John B. Watson famous quotes

Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select--doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and, yes, even beggarman and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. I am going beyond my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the contrary and they have been doing it for many thousands of years.
-- John B. Watson

#Artist #Doctors #Race

Psychology, as the behaviorist views it, is a purely objective, experimental branch of natural science which needs introspection as little as do the sciences of chemistry and physics.... The position is taken here that the behavior of man and the behavior of animals must be considered in the same plane.
-- John B. Watson

#Taken #Animal #Men

The first aim of a good college is not to teach books, but the meaning and purpose of life. Hard study and the learning of books are only a means to this end. We develop power and courage and determination and we go out to achieve Truth, Wisdom and Justice. If we do not come to this, the cost of schooling is wasted.
-- John B. Watson

#Determination #Book #Mean

Men are built, not born.... Give me the baby, and I'll make it climb and use its hands in constructing buildings of stone or wood.... I'll make it a thief, a gunman or a dope fiend. The possibilities of shaping in any direction are almost endless...
-- John B. Watson

#Education #Baby #Dope

The Behaviorist cannot find consciousness in the test-tube of his science.
-- John B. Watson

#Tests #Consciousness

There are... for us no instincts—we no longer need the term in psychology. Everything we have been in the habit of calling an 'instinct' today is a result largely of training—belonging to man's learned behavior.
-- John B. Watson

#Men #Psychology #Training

The behaviorist advances the view that what the psychologists have hitherto called thought is in short nothing but talking to ourselves.
-- John B. Watson

#Views #Talking #Psychologist

No one knows just how the idea of a soul or the supernatural started... It probably had its origin in the general laziness of mankind.
-- John B. Watson

#Ideas #Soul #Religion

This dogma (the soul) has been present in human psychology from earliest antiquity. No one has ever touched the soul, or has seen one in a test tube, or has in any way come into a relationship with it as he has with the other objects of his daily experience.
-- John B. Watson

#Psychology #Soul #Religion

An artist’s job is to captivate… if we stumble into truth, we got lucky.

An artist's job is simply to take the mirror in front of your face and hold it there. It's not to give you any answers. It is simply to take that mirror and point it at you.

Now almost every artist outside of New York is connected with some school or some museum school, and even in New York the majority are. That's an interesting fact when you take the idea of making money, making a living selling paintings. Only a dozen or two painters do that.

As for being much known by sight, and pointed out, I cannot comprehend the honor that lies withal; whatsoever it be, every mountebank has it more than the best doctor.

There is a real diversity of talent and background on the A list so as to better reflect our society in all walks. There are people who have been candidates before, Councillors, Doctors, business leaders, charity campaigners.

I want to be a child doctor. A pediatry... how do you call it, pediatrician? Do I like kids? No, not really.

Salvation for a race, nation or class must come from within. Freedom is never granted; it is won. Justice is never given; it is exacted.

Usually when you ask somebody in college why they are there, they'll tell you it's to get an education. The truth of it is, they are there to get the degree so that they can get ahead in the rat race. Too many college radicals are two-timing punks. The only reason you should be in college is to destroy it.

He considered the Rvolution a victroy for the Jews, which opinion, he said, prevailed on the East Side where rejoicing knew no bounds. We felt, added Mr. Cahan, that this is a great triumph for the Jews' cause. The anti-Jewish element in Russia has always been identified with the anti-revolutionary party. Jews having always sat high in the Councils of the revolutionists, all of our race became inseparably linked with the opponents of the government in the official mind.

...Let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man-this race and that race and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in and inferior position...Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal.