R. Buckminster Fuller > Quotes

“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, Only Integrity Is Going to Count

“We are called to be the architects of the future, not its victims.”
― Buckminster Fuller

“The point is that racism is the product of tribalism and ignorance and both are falling victim to communications and world-around literacy”
― R. Buckminster Fuller

“I haven't learned
How or why
Universe contrived to implode
And intellectually code
The myriadly unique
Chromosomically orchestrated
DNA-RNA,
Quadripartite moleculed,
Binary paired,
Helically extended
And unzippingly dichotomied
Regenerative symphonic
jazz, as
A one and two,
Three and four
Me---You,
Thee---They
And more
Thine and mine,
Sweet citizen,
THYMINE-CYTOSINE
GUANINE-ADENINE”
― Buckminster Fuller, And It Came To Pass — Not To Stay

“A new, self-employed architect scientist is the one in all the world who may accelerate realization of a high-standard survival for all, as now completely practical within the scope of available technology.”
― Richard Buckminster Fuller, Ideas and Integrities: A Spontaneous Autobiographical Disclosure

“It is new design by architects versus world revolution by political leadership.”
― Richard Buckminster Fuller, Ideas and Integrities: A Spontaneous Autobiographical Disclosure

“Search others for their virtue, and yourself for your vices.”
― R. Buckminster Fuller

“If you ignorantly believe there’s not enough life support available on planet Earth for all humanity, then survival only of the fittest seems self-flatteringly to warrant magna-selfishness. However, it is due only to humans’ born state of ignorance and the 99.99-percent invisibility of technological capabilities that they do not recognize the vast abundance of resources available to support all humanity at an omni-high standard of living.”
― R. Buckminster Fuller, Grunch of Giants

“Humanity is an experimental initiative of Universe.”
― R. Buckminster Fuller, Grunch of Giants

“I live on Earth at present, and I don't know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing—a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process—an integral function of the universe.”
― Buckminster Fuller

“Wealth is a person’s ability to survive a certain number of days forward.”
― R. Buckminster Fuller

“We are prisoners of our own metaphors, metaphorically speaking.”
― R. Buckminster Fuller

“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.”
― 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.”
― Richard Buckminster Fuller, Ideas and Integrities: A Spontaneous Autobiographical Disclosure

“Thinking is a momentary dismissal of irrelevancies.”
― R. Buckminster Fuller, Utopia or Oblivion: The Prospects for Humanity

“When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only of how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.”
― Buckminster Fuller

“Every child is born a genius.”
― Buckminster Fuller

“Get ready the greatest new educational facility at the approximate dynamic population center of the North American continent”
― Buckminster Fuller

“Because the armored knight required many helping hands to mount him and maintain his horses and arms, he had to have their goodwill and support lest his helpers overwhelm him when dismounted and encased in his armor.”
― R. Buckminster Fuller, Grunch of Giants

“They experience new-born hope that humans have indeed a destiny of individual significance complementary to the integrity of other individuals.”
― R. Buckminster Fuller, Grunch of Giants

“Cooperen por encima de todo y no se impidan avanzar entre sí ni traten de ganar a costa de alguien más. Cualquier éxito disparejo, será pasajero.”
― R. Buckminster Fuller

“The comprehensive fact, however, is that nothing in Universe touches anything else.
There are no solids. There are, in fact, no things. There are only complex critical-proximity and frequency, unique event aggregates interoperative in pure principle.”
― R. Buckminster Fuller, Grunch of Giants

“Fuimos llamados para ser los arquitectos del futuro, no sus víctimas.”
― R. Buckminster Fuller

“Love is metaphysical gravity.”
― R. Buckminster Fuller

“unity is plural and at minimum two”
― R. Buckminster Fuller

“From my viewpoint, by far the greatest challenge facing the young today is that of responding and conforming only to their own most delicately insistent intuitive awarenesses of what the truth seems to them to be, as based on their own experiences and not on what others have interpreted to be the truth regarding events of which neither they nor others have experience-based knowledge.

This also means not yielding unthinkingly to 'in' movements or to crowd psychology. This involves assessing thoughtfully one's own urges. It involves understanding, but not being swayed by, the spontaneous group spirit of youth. It involves thinking before acting in every instance. It involves eschewing all loyalties to other than the truth and love through which the cosmic integrity and absolute wisdom we identify inadequately by the name 'God' speaks to each of us directly-- and speaks only through our individual awareness of truth, and through our most spontaneous and powerful emotions of love and compassion.”
― R. Buckminster Fuller, Education Automation: Freeing the scholar to return to his studies

“If the total scheme of nature required man to be a specialist she would have made him so by having him born with one eye and a microscope attached to it.”
― R. Buckminster Fuller, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth

“I live on Earth at present, and I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process — an integral function of the universe.”
― R. Buckminster Fuller