Jacque Fresco Quotes & Sayings

There are no good or bad people, humans are shaped by culture. — Jacque Fresco

We will never know what anyone is really like, until everyone has economic security and doesn't have to answer to anyone else. — Jacque Fresco

To be human is to care for your fellow human beings and protecting the environment. — Jacque Fresco

The only hope for developing a new civilization is to accept responsibility for improving our lives through knowledge, understanding, and a deeper comprehension of humanity's relationship to natural processes of evolution. Our future is determined by effort we put forth to achieve this transition. — Jacque Fresco

The Venus Project is neither Utopian nor Orwellian, nor does it reflect the dreams of impractical idealists. Instead, it presents attainable goals requiring only the intelligent application of what we already know. The only limitations are those which we impose upon ourselves. — Jacque Fresco

If nations join together now, before the big collapse and share their resources, they can maintain a level of sustainability. Sustain the people that is, and not banks and businesses. — Jacque Fresco

Money is only important in a society when certain resources for survival must be rationed and the people accept money as an exchange medium for the scarce resources. Money is a social convention, an agreement if you will. It is neither a natural resource nor does it represent one. It is not necessary for survival unless we have been conditioned to accept it as such. — Jacque Fresco

In a society where every man works for himself, individual incentive, working for one's self. If people worked for one's self, there wouldn't be the electric light, there wouldn't be engines and powered vehicles, there wouldn't be electrification and reservoirs and water purification. These are processes that help all people. And processes that help single people is a very primitive value system carried into this century, which is really not necessary. — Jacque Fresco

There's no such thing as designing the perfect utopian city. Everything is subject to change. There are no final frontiers. — Jacque Fresco

You know that you can't go out there and change the world tomorrow morning. It just takes time, and the realization of that does not produce frustration. What produces frustration, is when you expect the world to join with your cause it's so reasonable. It is not reasonable to unreasonable people. — Jacque Fresco

I don't believe in Gods and devils. I think it's man-made stories to try and help people understand where all this came from. They said 'Where did the world come from if there's no God', 'Where did life come from'. Just say 'I don't know'. Don't say some guy made a man and a woman. You have no business doing that, you know what I mean? And then He got mad and flooded the whole world; told Noah to build an arc. These are terrible stories. — Jacque Fresco

War is the supreme failure of bridging the differences between nations. — Jacque Fresco

As we begin to plan for a new human society, we need to foster common values about clean air, water, and other elements of self-sustenance. These, along with a complete inventory of Earth's resources, will form the basis for a holistic approach to cybernated decision-making. — Jacque Fresco

If we really wish to put an end to our ongoing international and social problems we must eventually declare Earth and all of its resources as the common heritage of all the world's people. — Jacque Fresco

As long as there are prisons, police, armies, navies; we are not civilized. When the Earth joins together and uses the Earth intelligently, that will be the beginning of civilization. — Jacque Fresco

You have to take in the whole picture, and ask, "What is it you want? What kind of world do you want?" So, I have drawings of different cities. Those cities have an end goal; they're not just cities. The end goal of those cities is to make things relevant to people that they respond to. There's no other way. — Jacque Fresco

It is not that people are evil or greedy. The conditions that socially support the system force us to behave in socially offensive ways. — Jacque Fresco

War is not the only form of violence imposed on people through inadequate social arrangements. There is also hunger, poverty and scarcity. The use of money and the creation of debt fosters economic insecurity, which perpetuates crime, lawlessness and resentment. Paper proclamations and treaties do not alter the facts of scarcity and insecurity, and nationalism tends only to propagate the separation of nations and the world's people. — Jacque Fresco

We are all victims of culture. — Jacque Fresco

Our customs, behaviors, and values are byproducts of our culture. — Jacque Fresco

We found out that you can't pass on acquired things like bigotry, prejudice, greed. That's all learned in your culture or your sub-culture — Jacque Fresco

Politics is an obsolete way of doing things. Although it was good a hundred years ago, it has no place in today's high tech society. — Jacque Fresco

Wiser, never wise. Smarter, never smart. — Jacque Fresco

There is no such thing as beauty. If your culture says, 'This is a beautiful girl,' that's within the framework of your culture. If you're brought up in an island where people have pointed heads, that would be 'beautiful' in your terms. All these mythological structures is what gets us into trouble; the artificiality of our values that get us into trouble. — Jacque Fresco

Love is a fluxuating thing, not a fixed thing. That's why we don't understand what's happening. — Jacque Fresco

If you want your children to relate to the culture you live in, if you want to train them outside of the general system, you have to tell your children that ordinary children tend to say things like 'I can run faster than you; I can draw better than you; I know things you don't know'. You have to tell them what normal children are like. Normal children are messed up and you have to tell them about that. But if you instruct your child in high correlation with the physical world, they won't be able to relate with normal children. Normal means mixed up as I use the word. — Jacque Fresco

The system you're brought up under tries to make you like the people that succeeded in that system. — Jacque Fresco

If you remain conventional and don't change, you'll get along. You'll get along in the limited forms of insanity that exist out there. You'll never be able to keep a marriage together, you'll never be able to keep anything together, because the whole goddamn thing isn't together. — Jacque Fresco

War represents the supreme failure of nations to resolve their differences. From a strictly pragmatic standpoint, it is the most inefficient waste of lives and resources ever conceived. — Jacque Fresco

We can work out anything if we put our mind to it, study it, do hard work instead of finding simple answers — Jacque Fresco

We must look at alternatives objectively, and not try to fit the future into our present social mould. — Jacque Fresco

If you took the profit out of war, there would be no war. What the hell do you think war is? You think we go to another country to bring democracy? We go there 'cause there's oil, resources or something we need. — Jacque Fresco

Learning to be flexible in values takes a very long time ... Of course I felt a little uncomfortable during questioning the concept of God, but then reading about the history and evolution of Gods. There were many different Gods: the God of war, the God of peace, the God of love, which was more like the people that invented them. They behaved, they got angry, they made sacrifices, they created floods when they didn't like the way things are going. This didn't come through as superior intelligence. — Jacque Fresco

Today we have access to highly advanced technologies. But our social and economic system has not kept up with our technological capabilities that could easily create a world of abundance, free of servitude and debt. — Jacque Fresco

If orange trees grew all over the country, you couldn't sell oranges. Do you understand that? So, all our decision making is based upon scarcity or the availability of resources. If we have a shortage of any kind of resource, we put all the labs to work on making substitute materials. People always worry about 'What if we run out of a certain material?', but we have enough technology today to make thousands of different substitutes. — Jacque Fresco

Merely complaining without proposing an alternative offers nothing. — Jacque Fresco

We could either develop paradise on Earth or oblivion; wipe ourselves out, only the future will tell. It's what you do to make the future. — Jacque Fresco

All things change. The automobiles change every year. [Your] television set gets lighter and smaller and higher definition. All things in the scientific world change. But politicians do not change. They carry old values and they don't even know it. — Jacque Fresco

Youre a rich man, why arent you smart? — Jacque Fresco

Most people don't put things together. Geologists study the surface of the earth and geological phenomena. Meteorogists study the weather. That isn't science. Science is the study of all things that affect human beings. They have to be together! A meteorologist has difficulty talking with a sociologist, because they don't understand each other. You can't teach sciences in 'bits'; you have to bring it all together. Science is a way of thinking - a way at arriving at conclusions without your own opinion in it. — Jacque Fresco

You can either have one guy lifting a billion pounds by himself, and it takes many years of planning and preparation - or you can have a billion people, each lifting one pound, and it takes a mere moment. This is the power of unity. — Jacque Fresco

If you're shipwrecked on an island with 10 million dollars and your wife has gold and diamonds, but there's no water, no arable land, no fish, you have nothing. Money is a 'nothing' thing. — Jacque Fresco

As man reaches out toward the twenty-first century, he will learn to be suspicious of all ideas that are not formulated so that they can be tested by observation. He will realize that the history of human thought shows that the ideas of which we are surest are the ones we most need to test. He will realize that his common sense only mirrors his training and experience. What seems natural and right to him is usually a reflection of the conditions under which he spent his first decade of life. — Jacque Fresco

The fact that cultures are failing all over the world means that they don't know how to operate a society to make it work. Politicians have no real knowledge of technology; therefore, they are not capable of increasing food production, designing transportations systems that are safe ... They have no knowledge in that area. Therefore it's senseless to talk to them about anything of significance. — Jacque Fresco

If you had a free society you couldn't get people to go to war, if you had an intelligent type of upbringing in ones children. They would say; There must be many other ways of solving problems other then killing people. — Jacque Fresco

We don't know how to live together on Earth, how the hell are we going to live together on Mars? — Jacque Fresco

You can't exceed the system with language. You can only exceed the system with events; recommended procedures that are better. You can't exceed the system by telling people to be good, be kind, be considerate ... You have to take away the conditions that makes it necessary for you to be kind. And to be kind, you design highways that aren't slippery; where no accidents, or less accidents, occur. In the future, everybody becomes an innovator - a creator. — Jacque Fresco

We are not taught to be thinkers, but reflectors of our culture. Let's teach our children to be thinkers. — Jacque Fresco

We have the technology to build a global paradise on earth, and at the same time, we have the power to end life as we know it. I am a futurist. I cannot predict the actual future - only what it can be if we manage the earth and its resources intelligently. — Jacque Fresco

So your having trouble with your partner. Well ask yourself, if you were in a relationship with a replica of yourself how long would it last? — Jacque Fresco

When biological technology becomes further advanced, human beings as we know them, will become a modified species. If we as human beings fail to include the possibility of this development in our overall, social evolution we will witness the decline of our species — Jacque Fresco

You can teach people specific reasoning, such as how to fly a kite or build a wheel. General reasoning cannot be imparted upon people, particularly if they like things the way they are - meaning, if their reactions are very simple. The reason most people behave badly or poorly is because they only understand simple things. — Jacque Fresco

What will drive people if they don't have money or reward? The reward is the end of war, the end of poverty, most crime, and the end of begging for medical care. Everyone will be cared for and educated. There will be no taxation, and no advantage group. No technical elitism, or any other kind of elitism. If that isn't incentive enough, then I don't know what is. — Jacque Fresco

If our system continues without modification involving environmental and social concern, we will face an economic and social break down. — Jacque Fresco

When somebody asks, 'Whats the answer to all of these questions?' that's absurd. There is no answer, there are answers, along the way. — Jacque Fresco

Lack of education turns soldiers into killing machines. — Jacque Fresco

LOVE is to stop making demands on people and give them room to grow. — Jacque Fresco

It is not enough to criticize society without offering a workable alternative. — Jacque Fresco

Science and education, when devoid of a social conscience or environmental and human concern, are meaningless. — Jacque Fresco

There is only a policeman in front of something you have need for and don't have access to, so you put a guard there ... But if orange trees and apple trees grew all over the place, you couldn't sell them. — Jacque Fresco

I am afraid to live in the society we live in today. Our society cannot be maintained by this type of incompetency. — Jacque Fresco

Our universities today are better equipped than ever, and the wars keep getting worse. — Jacque Fresco

Anthropology studies different cultures; mainly primitive, but it doesn't think its own culture is primitive, unfortunately. There is no field that you can study today that isn't trapped in the culture in some way. It's hard to escape your culture. — Jacque Fresco

We accept, without sufficient consideration, a system that breeds inefficiencies and actually encourages the creation of shortages. — Jacque Fresco

When you live in a false society, that bases its wealth upon money, then that society itself will collapse eventually. Not because I say so, because it's not based on physical reference. — Jacque Fresco

The social designs that are proposed in [The Venus Project] merely provide the opportunity for individuals to develop their fullest potential in whatever endeavor they choose without the fear of loss of individuality or submission to uniformity. — Jacque Fresco

There isn't anything that is said that 'someone' won't take issue with. — Jacque Fresco

Whatever happens in the world is real, what one thinks should have happened is projection. We suffer more from our fictitious illusion and expectations of reality. — Jacque Fresco

We live in a world where our social system is old, our language is old, the way we acquire goods and services is outdated, our cities are detrimental to our health, chaotic and a tremendous waste of resource, and most of all our politics and values no longer serve us. — Jacque Fresco

In a monetary system, most of us live near our work with a house, car, and lifestyle we can afford (or, all too often, cannot afford), rather than the one we prefer. We are only as free as our purchasing power permits. Even many wealthy people today select a residence mainly to impress others with their status. Lacking a true sense of self worth, many live to impress others. — Jacque Fresco

The Venus Project is not about new cities or new architecture. It's about a way of thinking — Jacque Fresco

Much of a behavior acceptable today would be socially offensive in a saner or more logical arrangement. — Jacque Fresco

We must stop constantly fighting for human rights and equal justice in an unjust system, and start building a society where equal rights are an integral part of the design. — Jacque Fresco

We are all an integral part of the chain of life. — Jacque Fresco

Self-centeredness will bring on the destruction of our world. National pride separates people. All people need the same thing. When you really get down to it, you'll find that all people need good food, clean water, clean air, and a decent environment, meaning education as to how to relate to one another and to avoid conflict, how to accept the differences where different people draw different conclusions. — Jacque Fresco

You don't need to get rid of religion; you have to outgrow the need for it. In other words, instead of hoping for the good life, you make the good life. — Jacque Fresco

This is not a dictatorship, this is based upon scientific evidence to support a given project. If you want to put up a building, say half a mile high, the material has to be available. Using statistics is not a dictatorship. It's a method of getting the most from existing resources. — Jacque Fresco

Capitalism, Socialism, Fascism, Communism, the Free-Market ... What good are these approaches for? These attempts are made by men who are cerebral insufficient. I'm trying to give you back your brain, which they took away from you in schools and in your upbringing. I'm trying to show you how the world works. So if you want a better world, you have to get up off your ass and make it better — Jacque Fresco

The original intent of laws was to get the masses of people to accept the limitations superimposed upon them as being the result of their own misbehavior. — Jacque Fresco

You have to tell your children about the world they live in, about the discrepancies, about the things that don't work ... So you have to bring it up with a scientific orientation so they learn to ask questions, and learn how to say the most difficult thing in the world: 'I don't know'. — Jacque Fresco

The majority of the people of the world today are unsane, not insane, unsane meaning having been exposed to methods of evaluation that have long rendered obsolete, our language in the future will change to a saner language where we have no argument in it, 'can there be such a language?' there is, when engineers talk to each other, it's not subject to interpretation, they use math, they use descriptive systems, if I interpreted what another engineer said in the way I think he meant it: you couldn't build bridges, dams, power transmission lines. The language has to have meaning — Jacque Fresco

In our search for more, we have blinded ourselves to our personal responsibility for challenging these absurdities. A resource-based society considers us all equal shareholders of Earth. We are responsible both for the planet and for our relationship with each other. — Jacque Fresco

I don't want you to trust me, I want you to question everything I say. — Jacque Fresco

One may reasonably ask: Why do people cling to the values and practices of the past, when they so obviously no longer work? Long-standing thought patterns are hard to overcome because they often appear to serve the interests of the individual, and old ways of thinking are simpler and easier to handle. In a two-valued way of thinking, as in good and bad, right and wrong, love and hate, cause and effect, very little logical analysis is involved. — Jacque Fresco

Armies are created to protect an established system, not people. In the future, an educated humanity will not stand for war. — Jacque Fresco

We have more than enough to take care of everybody on earth at this time. If we have a shortage of anything, it's very easy for science to make a substitute material. There's no shortage of anything except brains in Washington. — Jacque Fresco

At the beginning of World War II the U.S. had a mere 600 or so first-class fighting aircraft. We rapidly overcame this short supply by turning out more than 90,000 planes a year. The question at the start of World War II was: Do we have enough funds to produce the required implements of war? The answer was No, we did not have enough money, nor did we have enough gold; but we did have more than enough resources. It was the available resources that enabled the US to achieve the high production and efficiency required to win the war. Unfortunately this is only considered in times of war. — Jacque Fresco

It's hard to be decent in a money world. We want to shut down all repetitious jobs, automate it, free people. — Jacque Fresco

If technology does not liberate all people for the pursuit of higher aspirations in human achievement, then all its technical potential will be meaningless. — Jacque Fresco

The question is not whether there is intelligent life out there, the question is, whether there is intelligent life down here. As long as you have war, police, prisons, crime, you are in the early stages of civilization. — Jacque Fresco

If you make a movie of the present day culture, in the future it'll be a horror film. — Jacque Fresco

So, "normal" is really what society dictates as normal and if we're born in that world, we would see that as normal. But if you think about it for a second, is it really? — Jacque Fresco

The way we use technology is completely wasteful. We duplicate many vacuum cleaners, tools; In the future we will make the best of equipment and make it available to everyone. — Jacque Fresco

I didn't want to teach my kid how to read, so I used to read to him at night and close the book at the most interesting part. He said, "What happened then, daddy?" I said, "If you learn to read, you can find out. I'm too tired to read. I'll read to you tomorrow." So, he had a need to want to learn how to read. Don't teach children how to read. Don't teach them mathematics. Give them a reason to want it. In school, they're working ass-backwards. — Jacque Fresco

If you make people uniform, you can control them. If you teach people to read, and think, and question things, you lose control. So, the best idea is to separate people if you wish to maintain a monetary system. It's called divide and conquer. By dividing people, they're not a threat, you can control them. — Jacque Fresco

It's hard in a monetary system to trust people. — Jacque Fresco

As long as superstition and ignorance prevail, humanity will fall short of eradicating war, poverty, and hunger. — Jacque Fresco

I have no notions of a perfect society, I don't know what that means. I know we can do much better than what we've got, I'm no utopian, I'm not a humanist that would like to see everybody living in warmth and harmony: I know that if we don't live that way, we'll kill each other and destroy the Earth. — Jacque Fresco

Our problems are technical, not political — Jacque Fresco

You cannot advocate decency and ethics, you must design the conditions that eliminate the problems. In scarcity, people will tend to steal. If you make things available, people tend not to steal. — Jacque Fresco