R. Buckminster Fuller Quotes & Sayings

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

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

Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. — R. Buckminster Fuller

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

Specialization is in fact only a fancy form of slavery wherein the 'expert' is fooled into accepting a slavery by making him feel that he in turn is a socially and culturally preferred-ergo, highly secure-lifelong position. — R. Buckminster Fuller

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

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

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

Every time man makes a new experiment he always learns more. He cannot learn less. He may learn that what he thought was true was not true. By the elimination of a false premise, his basic capital wealth which in his given lifetime is disembarrassed of further preoccupation with considerations of how to employ a worthless time-consuming hypothesis. Freeing his time for its more effective exploratory investment is to give man increased wealth. — R. Buckminster Fuller

I am not optimistic or pessimistic. I feel that optimism and pessimism are very unbalanced. I am a very hard engineer. I am a mechanic. I am a sailor. I am an air pilot. I don't tell people I can get you across the ocean with my ship unless I know what I'm talking about. — 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

The highest of generalizations is the synergetic integration of truth and love. — 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

Whether we are able to be a complete success or failure is in such critical balance that every smallest human test of integrity every smallest moment-to-moment decision tips the scales affirmatively or negatively. — R. Buckminster Fuller

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

The individual can take initiatives without anybody's permission. Only individuals can think. Only the individual disregards his fears and commits himself exclusively to reforming the human environment. — R. Buckminster Fuller

One can study a caterpillar forever and never be able to predict a butterfly. — R. Buckminster Fuller

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

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

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

We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. — R. Buckminster Fuller

Ninety-nine percent of humanity does not know that we have the option to "make it" economically on this planet and in the Universe. We do. — R. Buckminster Fuller

Parents are usually more careful to bestow knowledge on their children rather than virtue, the art of speaking well rather than doing well; but their manners should be of the greatest concern. — R. Buckminster Fuller

There will come a time when the proper education of children, by a glorified system of spontaneous education of choice, similar to the Montessori System, will be made possible. — R. Buckminster Fuller

The universe is non-simultaneously apprehended — 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 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

The future is a choice between Utopia and oblivion. — R. Buckminster Fuller

Life is the spirit incarnate in time. — 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

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 war is obsolete, or men are. — R. Buckminster Fuller

Dictators never invent their own opportunities. — R. Buckminster Fuller

The pyramids, attached with age, have forgotten the names of their founders. — R. Buckminster Fuller

The impossible happens. — R. Buckminster Fuller

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

Quite clearly, our task is predominantly metaphysical, for it is how to get all of humanity to educate itself swiftly enough to generate spontaneous social behaviors that will avoid extinction. — R. Buckminster Fuller

A designer is an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist. — R. Buckminster Fuller

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

Whether humanity is to comprehensively prosper ... depends entirely on the integrity of the human individuals and not on the political and economic systems. The cosmic question has been asked: are humans worthwhile to universe invention? — R. Buckminster Fuller

War is the ultimate tool of politics. — R. Buckminster Fuller

Technology paces industry, but there's a long lag in the process. — R. Buckminster Fuller

Now there is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship Earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it. — R. Buckminster Fuller

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

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. — 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

Coping with the totality of Spaceship Earth and universe is ahead for all of us. — 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

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 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

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

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

Never show unfinished work. — R. Buckminster Fuller

The procedure we are pursuing is that of true democracy. Semi-democracy accepts the dictatorship of a majority in establishing its arbitrary, ergo, unnatural, laws. True democracy discovers by patient experiment and unanimous acknowledgement what the laws of nature or universe may be for the physical support and metaphysical satisfaction of the human intellect's function in universe. — 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

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. — R. Buckminster Fuller

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

Always tell only the truth, and all the truth, and do so promptly - right now. — R. Buckminster Fuller

Only our minds are able to discover the generalized principles operating without exception in each and every special-experience case which if detected and mastered will give knowledgeable
advantage in all instances. — 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

Of course, our failures are a consequence of many factors, but possibly one of the most important is the fact that society operates on the theory that specialization is the key to success, not realizing that specialization precludes comprehensive thinking. — 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

The question of integrity will get finer and finer and more delicate and more beautiful. — R. Buckminster Fuller

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. — 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

I'm utterly convinced that we are all here for one another and that every experience that everyone is having is relevant. It all counts. The Universe is so extraordinarily well designed that it needs all those experiences. — R. Buckminster Fuller

It is essential to release humanity from the false fixations of yesterday which seem now to bind it to a rationale of action leading only to extinction. — 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

The eternal is omniembracing and permeative; and the temporal is linear. This opens up a very high order of generalizations of generalizations. The truth could not be more omni-important, although it is often manifestly operative only as a linear identification of a special-case experience on a specialized subject. — R. Buckminster Fuller

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

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

Truth is the progressive diminution of residual error. — R. Buckminster Fuller

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

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

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

There is something patently insane about all the typewriters sleeping with all the beautiful plumbing in the beautiful office buildings -and all the people sleeping in the slums. — R. Buckminster Fuller

Universe to each must be
All that is, including me.
Environment in turn must be
All that is, excepting me. — R. Buckminster Fuller

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

The self-commissioned architect is the obviously exclusive potential - for as at present used, or designed, the world's resources are serving only forty-four per cent of humanity. — R. Buckminster Fuller

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? — R. Buckminster Fuller

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

The synergetic integral of the totality of all principles is God, whose sum-total behavior in pure principle is beyond our comprehension and is utterly mysterious to us, because as humans
in pure principle
we do not and never will know all the principles — R. Buckminster Fuller

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

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

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

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

On first priority in design consideration is the full realization of individual potential in order to reach the second derivative full realization for all individuals — R. Buckminster Fuller

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

Topology is the science of fundamental pattern and structural relationships of event constellations. — R. Buckminster Fuller

Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment ... Humanity is in 'final exam' as to whether or not it qualifies for continuance in Universe — R. Buckminster Fuller

Some of us are just less damaged than others. — R. Buckminster Fuller

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

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

Universe is synergetic. Life is synergetic. — R. Buckminster Fuller

I have to say, I think that we are in some kind of final examination as to whether human beings now, with this capability to acquire information and to communicate, whether we're really qualified to take on the responsibility we're designed to be entrusted with. And this is not a matter of an examination of the types of governments, nothing to do with politics, nothing to do with economic systems. It has to do with the individual. Does the individual have the courage to really go along with the truth? — R. Buckminster Fuller

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

You don't belong to you. You belong to the Universe and you're here to serve. — R. Buckminster Fuller

Technologically we now have four [seven!] billion billionaires on board Spaceship Earth who are entirely unaware of their good fortune. — R. Buckminster Fuller

I must reorganize the environment of man by which then greater numbers of men can prosper. — 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