R. Buckminster Fuller famous quotes

There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Nature #Educational #Struggle

American labor will realize that its function is not to increase jobs, but to multiply the wealth and to expand the numbers benefited by the wealth at the swiftest possible rate.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Jobs #Numbers #Politics

Real wealth is ideas plus energy.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Real #Ideas #Energy

In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Struggle #Order #Trying

We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Inspirational #Wisdom #Future

You can never learn less; you can only learn more.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Inspirational

There are over 2 million cars standing in front of red lights with their engines going. Then we have over 2 million times approximately 100 horsepower being generated as they are idling there, so that we have something like 200 million horses jumping up and down and going nowhere. Now, we have to count that in our economy when we begin to get down to what is the efficiency of the economy.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Horse #Light #Jumping

When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Beauty #Beautiful #Niece

Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Technology #Genius #Born

Nature is a totally efficient, self-regenerati ng system. IF we discover the laws that govern this system and live synergistically within them, sustainability will follow and humankind will be a success.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Self #Law #Sustainability

It is essential that anyone reading this book know at the outset that the author is apolitical. I was convinced in 1927 that humanity's most fundamental survival problems could never be solved by politics.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Book #Reading #Humanity

There is enough for everyone. People think that there isn't enough, so they get as much as they can, so many people don't have enough.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Hippie #Thinking #People

You can't change the way people think, all you can do is give them a tool, the use of which will change their thinking.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Thinking #Giving #People

If humans are not required to earn a living to be provided survival needs, many are going to want very much to be productive, but not at those tasks they did not choose to do but were forced to accept in order to earn money. Instead, humans will spontaneously take upon themselves those tasks that world society really needs to have done.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Order #Survival #Done

A problem adequately stated is a problem well on its way to being solved.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Way #Problem #Wells

Television is the third parent.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Parent #Television #Thirds

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Inspirational #Change #Wisdom

Our power is in our ability to decide.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Power #Ability

Everyone has the perfect gift to give the world-and if each of us is freed up to give our unique gift, the world will be in total harmony.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Unique #Perfect #Giving

If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don't bother trying to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Thinking #Giving #People

It is not for me to change you. The question is, how can I be of service to you without diminishing your degrees of freedom?
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Degrees

I'm not a genius. I'm just a tremendous bundle of experience.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Life Lesson #Experience #Genius

Initiative can neither be created nor delegated. It can only spring from the self-determining individual, who decides that the wisdom of others is not always better than his own.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Spring #Self #Initiative

Synergy means behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the behavior of their parts.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Mean #Behavior #Synergy

Love is metaphysical gravity.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Love #Life #Valentines Day

I live on Earth at present, and I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process – an integral function of the universe.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Nouns #Earth #Verbs

It is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a higher standard of living than any have ever known. It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishness is unnecessary. War is obsolete. It is a mater of converting the high technology from weaponry to livingry.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#War #Technology #Selfishness

The reward for being a good problem solver is to be heaped with more and more difficult problems to solve
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Rewards #Problem #Difficult

I look for what needs to be done. After all, that's how the universe designs itself.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Strength #Leadership #Guitar

Think of it. We are blessed with technology that would be indescribable to our forefathers. We have the wherewithal, the know-it-all to feed everybody, clothe everybody, and give every human on Earth a chance. We know now what we could never have known before - that we now have the option for all humanity to make it successfully on this planet in this lifetime. Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Blessed #Technology #Thinking

There is no such thing as a failed experiment, only experiments with unexpected outcomes.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Creativity #Outcomes #Unexpected

Man knows so much and does so little.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Sad #Men #Littles

Whenever I draw a circle, I immediately want to step out of it.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Circles #Want #Steps

Don't try to make me consistent. I am learning all the time.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Inspirational Life #Trying #Consistent

It is new design by architects versus world revolution by political leadership.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Political #Design #World

You can never learn less; you can only learn more. The reason I know so much is because I have made so many mistakes.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Sports #Mistake #Reason

Ninety-nine per cent of who you are is invisible and untouchable.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Positivity #Nine #Invisible

We are prisoners of our own metaphors, metaphorically speaking...
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Metaphor #Prisoner

There is no energy crisis, only a crisis of ignorance.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Ignorance #Energy #Crisis

It seemed that the time would come evolutionarily when humans might have acquired enough knowledge of generalized principles to permit a graduation from class-two (entropically selfish) evolution into class-one (syntropically cooperative) evolution, thereafter making all the right moves for all the right reasons.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Selfish #Moving #Class

You can rest assured that if you devote your time and attention to the highest advantage of others, the Universe will support you, always and only in the nick of time.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Support #Age #Attention

Truth is cosmically total: synergetic. Verities are generalized principles stated in semimetaphorical terms. Verities are differentiable. But love is omniembracing, omnicoherent, and omni-inclusive, with no exceptions. Love, like synergetics, is nondifferentiable, i.e., is integral.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Life #Love Is #Principles

None of the world's problems will have a solution until the world's individuals become thoroughly self-educated.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Learning #Self #World

The purpose of our lives is to add value to the people of this generation and those that follow.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Inspirational #People #Add

Don't fight forces, use them.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Fighting #Use #Fighter

The highest of generalizations is the synergetic integration of truth and love.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Life #And Love #Integration

For the first time in history it is now possible to take care of everybody at a higher standard of living than any have ever known. Only ten years ago the 'more with less' technology reached the point where this could be done. All humanity now has the option to become enduringly successful.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Successful #Technology #Years

With our minds alone we can discover those principles we need to employ to convert all humanity to success in a new, harmonious relationship with the universe.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Humanity #Mind #Principles

There are no solids. There are no things. There are only interfering and non-interfering patterns operative in pure principle, and principles are eternal.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Patterns #Principles #Immortality

The nearest each of us can come to God is by loving the truth.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

Since the initial publication of the chart of the electromagnetic spectrum, humans have learned that what they can touch, smell, see, and hear is less than one-millionth of reality. Ninety- nine percent of all that is going to affect our tomorrows is being developed by humans using instruments and working in ranges of reality that are nonhumanly sensible.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Reality #Smell #Nine

[My vision is] To make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Humanity #Vision #World

When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Thinking #Problem #Solve

I set about fifty-five years ago (1927) to see what a penniless, unknown human individual with a dependent wife and newborn child might be able to do effectively on behalf of all humanity
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Children #Years #Wife

All of humanity now has the option to "make it" successfully and sustainably, by virtue of our having minds, discovering principles and being able to employ these principles to do more with less.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Humanity #Mind #Environmental

Whatever humans have learned had to be learned as a consequence only of trial and error experience. Humans have learned only through mistakes.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Inspirational #Mistake #Errors

The opposite of nature is impossible.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Opposites #Impossible

You can't change anything by fighting or resisting it. You change something by making it obsolete through superior methods.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Fighting #Method #Obsolete

The Things to do are: the things that need doing, that you see need to be done, and that no one else seems to see need to be done.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Needs #Done

All children are born geniuses; 9,999 out of every 10,000 are swiftly, inadvertently degeniusized by grownups.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Children #Genius #Born

The most important thing to teach your children is that the sun does not rise and set. It is the Earth that revolves around the sun. Then teach them the concepts of North, South, East and West, and that they relate to where they happen to be on the planet's surface at that time. Everything else will follow.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Children #Important #East

When individuals join in a cooperative venture, the power generated far exceeds what they could have accomplished acting individually.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Peace #Acting #Venture

I have spent most of my life unlearning things that were proved not to be true
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Being True

The one common experience of all humanity is the challenge of problems.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Mistake #Decision #Humanity

I would say, then, that you are faced with a future in which education is going to be number one amongst the great world industries.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Numbers #World

Children are born true scientists. They spontaneously experiment and experience and reexperience again. They select, combine, and test, seeking to find order in their experiences - "which is the mostest? which is the leastest?" They smell, taste, bite, and touch-test for hardness, softness, springiness, roughness, smoothness, coldness, warmness: they heft, shake, punch, squeeze, push, crush, rub, and try to pull things apart.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Crush #Children #Order

. . . So I vowed to keep myself alive, but only if I would never use me again for just me - each one of us is born of two, and we really belong to each other. I vowed to do my own thinking, instead of trying to accommodate everyone else's opinion, credo's and theories. I vowed to apply my inventory of experiences to the solving of problems that affect everyone aboard planet Earth.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Thinking #Two #Trying

You can't better the world by simply talking to it. Philosophy to be effective must be mechanically applied.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Philosophy #Talking #World

Are you spontaneously enthusiastic about everyone having everything you can have?
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Enthusiasm #Enthusiastic

There is no joy equal to that of being able to work for all humanity and doing what you're doing well.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Joy #Humanity #Able

The world is now too dangerous for anything less than utopia.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Motivation #Inspiration #World

I am convinced all of humanity is born with more gifts than we know. Most are born geniuses and just get de-geniused rapidly.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Confidence #Self Esteem #Humanity

Integrity is the essence of everything successful.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Inspirational #Success #Integrity

My ideas have undergone a process of emergence by emergency. When they are needed badly enough, they are accepted.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Ideas #Emergencies #Enough

Now there is one outstanding important fact regarding spaceship earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Motivational #Wisdom #Book

I just invent, then wait until man comes around to needing what I've invented.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Men #Technology #Waiting

Humans beings always do the most intelligent thing…after they’ve tried every stupid alternative and none of them have worked
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Stupid #Intelligent #Alternatives

Let architects sing of aesthetics that bring Rich clients in hordes to their knees; Just give me a home, in a great circle dome Where stresses and strains are at ease.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Stress #Home #Circles

I am deeply impressed with the designer of the universe; I am confident I couldnt have done anywhere near such a good job.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Jobs #Done #Good Job

By 2000, politics will simply fade away. We will not see any political parties.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Party #Technology #Political

How often I found where I should be going only by setting out for somewhere else.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Life #Journey #Apathy

I'm not trying to counsel any of you to do anything really special except dare to think. And to dare to go with the truth. And to dare to really love completely.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Thinking #Trying #Special

I am a passenger on the spaceship Earth.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Earth #Spaceships #Passengers

Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Technology #Humanity #Reason

If humanity does not opt for integrity we are through completely. It is absolutely touch and go. Each one of us could make the difference.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Integrity #Differences #Humanity

The minute you begin to do what you really want to do, it's really a different kind of life.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Life #Motivational #Positive

God, to me, it seems, is a verb not a noun, proper or improper.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Nouns #Statistics #Verbs

Those who play with the devil's toys will be brought by degrees to wield his sword.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Play #Devil #Toys

The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#War #Moving #Gun

We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Success #Fate #Diversity

Faith is much better than belief. Belief is when someone else does the thinking.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Faith #Believe #Thinking

If you are the master be sometimes blind, if you are the servant be sometimes deaf.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Management #Sometimes #Blind

The earth is like a spaceship that didn't come with an operating manual.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Inspirational #Space #Environmental

Search others for their virtue, and yourself for your vices.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Vices #Virtue #Spectacular

If I ran a school, I'd give the average grade to the ones who gave me all the right answers, for being good parrots. I'd give the top grades to those who made a lot of mistakes and told me about them, and then told me what they learned from them.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Education #Mistake #School

Most of my advances were by mistake. You uncover what is when you get rid of what isn't.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Mistake #Spectacular

I am convinced that creativity is a priori to the integrity of the universe and that life is regenerative and conformity meaningless.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Integrity #Creativity #Conformity

People should think things out fresh and not just accept conventional terms and the conventional way of doing things.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Creativity #Apology #Thinking

I am enthusiastic over humanity’s extraordinary and sometimes very timely ingenuity. If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top buoyant enough to keep you afloat that comes along makes a fortuitous life preserver. But this is not to say that the best way to design a life preserver is in the form of a piano top. I think that we are clinging to a great many piano tops in accepting yesterday’s fortuitous contrivings as constituting the only means for solving a given problem.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Mean #Thinking #Piano

Dear reader, traditional human power structures and their reign of darkness are about to be rendered obsolete.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

#Darkness #Reign #Obsolete