R. Buckminster Fuller Quotes

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.

"The further art advances the closer it approaches science," said Leonardo da Vinci, painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, and inventor of the wheelbarrow, and other useful instruments from the speaking tube to a mechanically gyp-proof whore-house, "the further science advances the closer it approaches art."

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.

We are here as local information harvesters, local problem-solvers in support of the integrity of eternally regenerative Universe. The fact that we get away from physical problems doesn't mean we go away from problems. The problems are really rarely physical.

...doing more with less.

Universe is synergetic. Life is synergetic.

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

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

Thinking is a momentary dismissal of irrelevancies.

A problem adequately stated is a problem well on its way to being solved.

Children will draw pictures with everything in them...houses and trees and people and animals...and the sun AND the moon. Grown-up says, "That's a nice picture, Honey, but you put the moon and the sun in the sky at the same time and that isn't right." But the child is right! The sun and moon are in the sky at the same time.

Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment.

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

War is obsolete. We are not here to fight something or tear something down; We are here to be the example of what is possible. Any sane individual will tell you that violence is ... not the way.

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.

We were deliberately designed to learn only by trial and error. We're brought up, unfortunately, to think that nobody should make mistakes. Most children get de-geniused by the love and fear of their parents - that they might make a mistake. But all my advances were made by mistakes. You uncover what is when you get rid of what isn't.

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.

Our brains deal exclusively with special-case experiences.

Tombs are the clothes of the dead and a grave is a plain suit; while an expensive monument is one with embroidery.

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.

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

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.

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

Specialization breeds biases that ultimately aggregate as international and ideological discord, which, in turn, leads to war.

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.

Thou mayest as well expect to grow stronger by always eating as wiser by always reading. Too much overcharges Nature, and turns more into disease than nourishment. 'Tis thought and digestion which makes books serviceable, and give health and vigor to the mind.

We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims.

All human advances occur in the outlaw area.

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

If success or failure of this planet and of human beings depended on how I am and what I do... HOW WOULD I BE? WHAT WOULD I DO?

Technology paces industry, but there's a long lag in the process.

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.

I'm not trying to copy Nature, I'm trying to find the principles she's using.

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

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

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

It is one of the strange facts of experience that when we try to think about the future, our thoughts jump backwards. It may well be that nature has some fundamental metaphysical law by which opening up what we call the future also opens up the past in equal degree.

Search others for their virtue, and yourself for your vices.

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.

There is an inherently minimum set of essential concepts and current information, cognizance of which could lead to our operating our planet Earth to the lasting satisfaction and health of all humanity.

We are most probably here for local information-gathering and local-Universe problem-solving in support of the integrity of eternally regenerative Universe.

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.

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

Our beds are empty two-thirds of the time. Our living rooms are empty seven-eighths of the time. Our office buildings are empty one-half of the time. It's time we gave this some thought.

Love is metaphysical gravity.

It is well known that of every strong woman they say she has a masculine mind.

To do more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing.

It is one of our most exciting discoveries that local discovery leads to a complex of further discoveries. Corollary to this we find that we no sooner get a problem solved than we are overwhelmed with a multiplicity of additional problems in a most beautiful payoff of heretofore unknown, previously unrecognized, & as-yet unsolved problems.