R. Buckminster Fuller Quotes

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

It is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a 'higher standard of living than any have ever known.' It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishness is unnecessary and henceforth unrationalizable as mandated by survival.

Never forget that you are one of a kind. Never forget that if there weren't any need for you in all your uniqueness to be on this earth, you wouldn't be here in the first place. And never forget, no matter how overwhelming life's challenges and problems seem to be, that one person can make a difference in the world. In fact, it is always because of one person that all the changes that matter in the world come about. So be that one person.

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

Nature is a totally efficient, self-regenerati ng system. IF we discover the laws that govern this system and live synergistically within them, sustainability will follow and humankind will be a success.

You do not belong to you. You belong to the universe. The significance of you will remain forever obscure to you, but you may assume you are fulfilling your significance if you apply yourself to converting all you experience to highest advantage to others. Make the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.

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.

There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly.

Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value.

Think of it. We are blessed with technology that would be indescribable to our forefathers. We have the wherewithal, the know-it-all to feed everybody, clothe everybody, and give every human on Earth a chance. We know now what we could never have known before - that we now have the option for all humanity to make it successfully on this planet in this lifetime. Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment.

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.

Mistakes are great, the more I make the smarter I get.

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.

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

If humans are not required to earn a living to be provided survival needs, many are going to want very much to be productive, but not at those tasks they did not choose to do but were forced to accept in order to earn money. Instead, humans will spontaneously take upon themselves those tasks that world society really needs to have done.

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.

Love is metaphysical gravity.

The pyramids, attached with age, have forgotten the names of their founders.

Integrity is the essence of everything successful.

As long as one human being is hungry, the entire human race is hungry.

Ninety-nine per cent of who you are is invisible and untouchable.

When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Never forget that you are one of a kind. Never forget that if there weren't any need for you in all your uniqueness to be on this earth, you wouldn't be here in the first place.

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.

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

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.

Thinking is a momentary dismissal of irrelevancies.

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?

Real wealth is ideas plus energy.

There is no energy crisis, only a crisis of ignorance.

The word synergy comes from the Greek sin-ergo, meaning, to work together. It describes a mutually supportive atmosphere of trust, where each individual element works towards its own goals, and where the goals may be quite varied; nevertheless, because all elements of a synergetic system support one another, they also support the whole.

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

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. Then you will conceive your own way of doing that which needs to be done - that no one else has told you to do or how to do it. This will bring out the real you that often gets buried inside a character that has acquired a superficial array of behaviors induced or imposed by others on the individual.

I have spent most of my life unlearning things that were proved not to be true

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.

You never change people by fighting their existing reality.

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.

The World has become too dangerous for anything less than Utopia.

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

We are in an age that assumes the narrowing trends of specialization to be logical, natural, and desirable. Consequently, society expects all earnestly responsible communication to be crisply brief.... In the meantime, humanity has been deprived of comprehensive understanding.

[My vision is] To make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.

Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.

To expose a 4.2 Trillion dollar ripoff of the American people by the stockholders of the 1000 largest corporations over the last one-hundred years will be a tall order of business.

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