Buckminster Fuller Quotes

I'm not a genius. I'm just a tremendous bundle of experience.

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

Integrity is the courage and self-discipline to cooperate and initiate according to the Divine, which you know in your heart as Truth.

War is obsolete.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.

You can't change anything by fighting or resisting it. You change something by making it obsolete through superior methods.

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

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

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

You can never learn less; you can only learn more.

The one common experience of all humanity is the challenge of problems.

The wave is not the water. The water merely told us about the wave moving by.

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.

We should stop kidding ourselves. We should let go of things that aren't true. It's always better with the truth.

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

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?

God is a verb, not a noun.

Television is the third parent.

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.

On personal integrity hangs humanity's fate

People never leave a sinking ship until they see the lights of another ship approaching.

Tension is the great integrity.

Don't try to make me consistent. I am learning all the time.

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.

The opposite of nature is impossible.

The nearest each of us can come to God is by loving the truth.

Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment.

There is no joy equal to that of being able to work for all humanity and doing what you're doing well.

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.

We are prisoners of our own metaphors, metaphorically speaking.

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

Nature does have manure and she does have roots as well as blossoms, and you can't hate the manure and blame the roots for not being blossoms.

Seeing-is-believing is a blind spot in man's vision.

Most of my advances were by mistake. You uncover what is when you get rid of what isn't.

You have to decide whether you want to make money or make sense, because the two are mutually exclusive.

A problem adequately stated is a problem well on its way to being solved.

I look for what needs to be done. After all, that's how the universe designs itself.

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.

Those who play with the devil's toys will be brought by degrees to wield his sword.

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

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.

Don't attempt to reform man. An adequately organized environment will permit humanity's original, innate capabilities to become successful.

All human advances occur in the outlaw area.

Topology is the science of fundamental pattern and structural relationships of event constellations.

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

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.

We are powerfully imprisoned in these Dark Ages simply by the terms in which we have been conditioned to think.

Now there is one outstanding important fact regarding spaceship earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it.

You can never learn less; you can only learn more. The reason I know so much is because I have made so many mistakes.

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

Either war is obsolete, or men are.