Buckminster 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

Brain deals exclusively with the physical, and mind exclusively with the metaphysical. — R. Buckminster Fuller

God, to me, it seems, is a verb not a noun, proper or improper. — 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

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

I woke up once in the middle of the night, and Buckminster's paws were on my eyelids. He must have been feeling my nightmares. — Jonathan Safran Foer

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

We must progress to the stage of doing all the right things for all the right reasons instead of doing all the right things for all the wrong reasons. — 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love is metaphysical gravity. — R. Buckminster Fuller

Reform the environment and not man; being absolutely confident that if you give man the right environment, he will behave favorably. — 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

Universe is plural at minimum sixfold. — R. Buckminster Fuller

The universe is non-simultaneously apprehended — R. Buckminster Fuller

The future is a choice between Utopia and oblivion. — 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

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

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

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

Windmills installed around the world converting their direct current into alternating current and feeding the electric energy into the world network can harvest the planet Earth's prime daily energy income source-the wind
and adequately supply all the world's energy needs — R. Buckminster Fuller

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

Sharing is having more. — 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

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

A problem adequately stated is a problem solved theoretically and immediately, and therefore subsequently to be solved, realistically. — R. Buckminster Fuller

So long as mathematicians can impose up-and-down semantics upon students while trafficking personally in the non-up-and-down advantages of their concise statements, they can impose upon the
ignorance of man a monopoly of access to accurate processing of information and can fool even themselves by thought habits governing the becoming behavior of professional specialists, by
disclaiming the necessity of, or responsibility for, comprehensive adjustment of the a priori thought to total reality of universal principles. — R. Buckminster Fuller

Architects (should) involve themselves continuously in anticipatory design as recommended by Buckminster Fuller — Cedric Price

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

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

Man is designed to be a comprehensivist . — R. Buckminster Fuller

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 ... — R. Buckminster Fuller

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. — R. Buckminster Fuller

The physical is inherently entropic, giving off energy in ever more disorderly ways. The metaphysical is antientropic, methodically marshalling energy. Life is antientropic. It is spontaneously inquisitive. It sorts out and endeavors to understand — R. Buckminster Fuller

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

Wealth is the product of energy times intelligence: energy turned into artifacts that advantage human life. — 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

Doing more with less. — 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

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

U.S. labor leaders will realize that automation can multiply man's wealth far more rapidly than it is multiplying at present and that automation will leave all men free to search and research ... Realizing the direct competition with foreign industry on a straight labor basis will mean swiftly decreasing wages per hour and longer hours and decreasing buying power of the public. — 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

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

Tension is the great integrity. — R. Buckminster Fuller

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

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

Bite your tongue. Get a cinder in your eye. When you feel good, you feel nothing. — R. Buckminster Fuller

Above all, I am motivated by the most mysterious drive we ever experience -that of love - I don't think there's any influence on my life that compares with love. — 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

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

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

There is room enough indoors in New York City for the whole 1963 world's population to enter, with room enough inside for all hands to dance the twist in average nightclub proximity. — 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

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

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

The world is now too dangerous for anything less than utopia. — 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

By 2000, politics will simply fade away. We will not see any political parties. — 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

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

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

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

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

Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Mary - the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there's a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trimtab.
It's a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trimtab. Society thinks it's going right by you, that it's left you altogether. But if you're doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go.
So I said, call me Trimtab. — R. Buckminster Fuller

Most importantly we have learned that from here on it is success for all or none, for it is experimentally proven by physics that "unity is plural and at minimum two" - the complementary but not mirror-imaged proton and neutron. You and I are inherently different and complimentary. Together we average as zero - that is, as eternity. — R. Buckminster Fuller

Nature is all that we think we know plus all that we don't know whether or not we know that we don't know it. — 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

There is only one revolution tolerable to all men, all societies, all political systems: Revolution by design and invention. — R. Buckminster Fuller

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

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

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

The Universe consists of non-simultaneously apprehended events. — 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

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

It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. — R. Buckminster Fuller

Rashness is the faithful, but unhappy parent of misfortune. — R. Buckminster Fuller

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. — R. Buckminster Fuller

Get ready the greatest new educational facility at the approximate dynamic population center of the North American continent — R. Buckminster Fuller

Humanity is now experiencing history's most difficult evolutionary transformation. — R. Buckminster Fuller

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

What the scientists have always found by physical experiment was an a priori orderliness of nature, or Universe always operating at an elegance level that made the discovering scientist's working hypotheses seem crude by comparison. The discovered reality made the scientists exploratory work seem relatively disorderly. — 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 look for what needs to be done — R. Buckminster Fuller

Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the thought is staggering. — R. Buckminster Fuller

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