Buckminster Fuller Quotes

Great nations are simply the operating fronts of behind-the-scenes, vastly ambitious individuals who had become so effectively powerful because of their ability to remain invisible while operating behind the national scenery. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

Either man is obsolete or war is. War is the ultimate tool of politics. Political leaders look out only for their own side. Politicians are always realistically maneuvering for the next election. They are obsolete as fundamental problem-solvers. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

I figure...

...that the people are now more deeply conscious than ever before in history of the existence and functioning principles of universal, inexorable physical laws; of the pervading, quietly counseling truth within each and every one of us; of the power of love; and--each man by himself--of his own developing, dynamic relationship with his own conception of the Almightiness of the All-Knowing.

...that our contemporaries just don't wear their faith on their sleeves anymore.

...that people have removed faith from their sleeves because they found out for themselves that faith is much too important for careless display. Now they are willing to wait out the days and years for the truthful events, encouraged individually from within; and the more frequently the dramatic phrases advertising love, patriotism, fervent belief, morals, and good fellowship are plagiarized, appropriated and exhibited in the show windows of the world by the propaganda whips for indirect and ulterior motives, no matter how meager the compromise--the more do people withdraw within themselves and shun taking issue with the nauseating perversions, though eternally exhibiting quiet indifference, nonchalance or even cultivating seemingly ignorant acceptance. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

You cannot change how someone thinks, but you can give them a tool to use which will lead them to think differently. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

You take the senses away, and there is no consciousness. Consciousness comes from experience. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

By and large, I seem to have made more mistakes than any others of whom I know, but have learned thereby to make ever swifter acknowledgment of the errors and thereafter immediately set about to deal more effectively with the truths disclosed by the acknowledgment of erroneous assumptions. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

One in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a wage. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

History's political and economic power structures have always abhorred 'idle people' as potential troublemakers. Yet nature never abhors seemingly idle trees, grass, snails, coral reefs, and clouds in the sky. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

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

Havenotness is caused by society's failure to design and produce the right tools and goods. Money alone is not the panacea. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

How much does your building weigh?
A question often used to challenge architects to consider how efficiently materials were used for the space enclosed. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

Our brains deal exclusively with special-case experiences. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

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

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

Every child has an enormous drive to demonstrate competence. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

All the present bureaucracies of political governments, great religious organizations, and all big businesses find that physical success for all humanity would be devastating to the perpetuation of their ongoing activities. This is because all of them are founded on the premise of ameliorating individual cases while generally exploiting on behalf of their respective political, religious, or business organizations the condition of no-where-nearly-enough-life-support-for-all and its resultant great human suffering and discontent. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

No man can prove upon awakening that he is the man who he thinks went to bed the night before, or that anything that he recollects is anything other than a convincing dream. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

If we dump all the machinery and take the knowledge we have in the ocean within six months humanity will die. If we dump all the politician all around the world in the ocean everything will go along very nicely. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

You can make money or you can make sense. The two are mutually exclusive. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

We are going to have to find ways of organizing ourselves cooperatively,sanely, scientifically, harmonically and in regenerative spontaneity with the rest of humanity around the earth ... 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. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

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

For at least 2,000,000 years men have been reproducing and multiplying on a little automated spaceship called earth. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

Nature does have manure and she does have roots as well as blossoms, and you can't hate the manure and blame the roots for not being blossoms. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

We shall have to stop looking askance on trends in relation to sex merely as a reproductive capability, i.e. that it is normal to make babies. Society will have to change in its assessment of what the proclivities of humanity may be. Our viewpoints on homosexuality, for example, may have to be reconsidered and more wisely adjusted. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

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

We must start with scientific fundamentals, and that means with the data of experiments and not with assumed axioms predicated only upon the misleading nature of that which only superficially seems to be obvious. It is the consensus of great scientists that science is the attempt to set in order the facts of experience. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

We have reached the point where we are now possessed of sufficient information for each individual human to dare to exercise the option to "make it" rather than having to depend on the decisions of an educated elite. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

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

I do not look upon human beings as good or bad. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

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

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

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

The point is that racism is the product of tribalism and ignorance and both are falling victim to communications and world-around literacy ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

All children are born geniuses, and we spend the first six years of their lives degeniusing them. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

The assumption is that the inevitability of a solution's realization is inherent in the interaction of human intellect and the constantly transformative evolution of physical universe. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

I say that radiation is inherently disintegrative: it comes apart. Gravity is inherently integrative: it pulls together. And to me, there's a good possibility that love is what I'd call metaphysical gravity. It really holds everything together. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

Physics has found no straight lines. Instead, the physical universe consists of only waves undulating back and forth allowing for corrections and balance. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

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

Synergy is the only word in our language that means behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the separately observed behaviors of any of the system's separate parts or any subassembly of
the system's parts. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

Here is God's purpose - For God, to me, it seems, is a verb not a noun, proper or improper; is the articulation not the art, objective or subjective; is loving, not the abstraction "love" commanded or entreated; is knowledge dynamic, not legislative code, not proclamation law, not academic dogma, not ecclesiastic canon. Yes, God is a verb, the most active, connoting the vast harmonic reordering of the universe from unleashed chaos of energy. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

People never leave a sinking ship until they see the lights of another ship approaching. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

If man chooses oblivion, he can go right on leaving his fate to his political leaders. If he chooses Utopia, he must initiate an enormous education program - immediately, if not sooner. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

I call intuition cosmic fishing. You feel a nibble, then you've got to hook the fish. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. BUCKMINSTER FULLER ~ Daniel Quinn

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

What humans have spontaneously identified as good and bad - or as positive and negative - are evolutionary complementations in need of more accurate identifications. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

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

The impossible happens. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

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

Humanity has the option to become successful on our planet if we reorient world production away from weaponry - from killingry to livingry. Can we convince humanity in time? ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

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

You never change people by fighting their existing reality. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

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

Right now I am a passenger on space vehicle Earth zooming about the Sun at 60,000 miles per hour somewhere in the solar system. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

Doing the right things for the wrong reasons is typical of humanity. Precession - not conscious planning - provides a productive outcome for misguided political and military campaigns. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

It seems that truth is progressive approximation in which the relative fraction of our spontaneously tolerated residual error constantly diminishes. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

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. - BUCKMINSTER FULLER FROM ~ Vishen Lakhiani

For man to go from less than 1% haves to 40%, living at high standard - despite decreasing resources - cannot be explained by anything other than by doing more than less. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

We are operating at an overall mechanical efficiency of only four percent ... Therefore, we find that if we increase the overall mechanical efficiency to only twelve percent we can take care of everybody. That three-fold increase in the overall efficiency can only be accomplished by redesign. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

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

Integrity is the courage and self-discipline to cooperate and initiate according to the Divine, which you know in your heart as Truth. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

Geniuses are just people who had good mothers. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

Relativity is inherently convergent, though convergent toward a plurality of centers of abstract truths. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

The more for whom we strive to serve, the greater effectiveness we will have. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

At first the, only subconsciously apprehended, approaching confluences of complex events make themselves known intuitively within the intellectual weather. Then comes a gradually awakening
consciousness of the presence of new families of differentiating-out challenging concepts of every day prominence. It is with these randomly patterning families of separate concepts that
evolution is about to deal integratively. As a now specific unitary problem it may be disposed of effectively when and if that unified problem becomes "adequately stated" and thereby
comprehensibly solvable. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

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

Buckminster Fuller was one of those world historic geniuses who reminded us of the extraordinary things that are possible, and inspires all of us to set about doing them! ~ Marianne Williamson

Consisting mostly of recirculating scrapped metals, 80% of all the metals that have ever been mined are still at work. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

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

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

We live in a decaying age. Young people no longer respect their parents. They are rude and impatient. They frequently inhabit taverns and have no self control. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

Dare to be naive. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

Unity is plural and, at a minimum, is two. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

We as economic society are going to have to pay our whole population to go to school and pay it to stay at school. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

[A]ll the categories of creatures act individually as special-case and may be linearly analyzed; retrospectively, it is discoverable that inadvertently they are all interaffecting one another synergetically as a spherical, interprecessionally regenerative, tensegrity spherical integrity. Geodesic spheres demonstrate the compressionally discontinuous
tensionally continuous integrity. Ecology is tensegrity geodesic spherical programming. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

Children, as well as grown-ups, in their individual, glorified, drudgery-proof homes of Labrador, the tropics, the Orient, or where you will, to which they can pass with pleasure and
expedition by means of ever-improving transportation, will be able to tune in their television and radio to the moving picture lecture of, let us say, President Lowell of Harvard; the
professor of Mathematics of Oxford; of the doctor of Indian antiquities of Delhi, etc. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

By the time you are 88 years old, you "have consumed 300 tons of food, air and water." ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

Buckminster Fuller explained to me once that because our world is constructed from geometric relations like the Golden Ratio or the Fibonacci Series, by thinking about geometry all the time, you could organize and harmonize your life with the structure of the world. ~ Einar Thorsteinn

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

Thinking is a momentary dismissal of irrelevancies. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

As long as one human being is hungry, the entire human race is hungry. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

Man is going to be displaced altogether as a specialist by the computer. Man himself is being forced to reestablish, employ, and enjoy his innate 'comprehensivity. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

Buckminster Fuller himself was fond of stating that what seems to be happening at the moment is never the full story of what is really going on. He liked to point out that for the honey bee, it is the honey that is important. But the bee is at the same time nature's vehicle for carrying out cross-pollination of the flowers. Interconnectedness is a fundamental principle of nature. Nothing is isolated. Each event connects with others. ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

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

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

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

The vector equilibrium is the zero point for
happenings or nonhappenings: it is the empty
theater and empty circus and empty universe
ready to accommodate any act and any audience. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

Don't change the man. Change his environment. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

However, if we leave the industrial machinery and their energy-distribution networks and leave them also all the people who have routine jobs operating the industrial machinery and distributing its products, and we take away from all the industrial countries all their ideologies and all the politicians and political machine workers, people would keep right on eating. Possibly getting on a little better than before. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

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

It is noted that from 1967 to 1995 essays on negative emotions far outnumbered those on positive emotions in the psychological literature. The ratio was 21:1. Even those supreme perpetrators of pop nihilism, The New York Times and The Washington Post, have a better ratio than psychological literature. They average 12 negative stories to every one that might be construed to be non-negative. Many of their non-negative stories, however, cover success in sports and entertainment.

I demand that the purveyors of despair who pretend to be dispassionate observes of the human condition go ahead and disclose that the 10 most beautiful words in the English languages are chimes, dawn, golden, hush, lullaby, luminous, melody, mist, murmuring, and tranquil; that Java sparrows prefer the music of Back over that of Schoenberg; that math experts have determined there are 1/96 trillion ways to lace up your shoes; that the Inuit term for making love is translated as 'laughing together in bed;' and that according to Buckminster Fuller, "pollution is nothing but resources we're not harvesting. ~ Rob Brezsny

A proverb is much matter distilled into few words. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

To do more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

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

I have great hope for tomorrow. My hope lies in three things-truth, youth, and love. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

We should stop kidding ourselves. We should let go of things that aren't true. It's always better with the truth. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

Today's news consists of aggregates of fragments. Anyone who has taken part in any event that has subsequently appeared in the news is aware of the gross disparity between the actual and the reported events. We also learn frequently of prefabricated and prevaricated evens of a complex nature purportedly undertaken for the purposes wither of suppressing or rigging the news, which in turn perverts humanity's tactical information resources. All history becomes suspect. Probably our most polluted resource is the tactical information to which humanity spontaneously reflexes. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

You either make sense or you make money. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

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

Only the free-wheeling artist-explorer, non-academic, scientist-philosopher, mechanic, economist-poet who has never waited for patron-starting and accrediting of his co-ordinate capabilities holds the prime initiative today. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller