R. Buckminster Fuller Quotes
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Don't attempt to reform man. An adequately organized environment will permit humanity's original, innate capabilities to become successful.
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The word generalization in literature usually means covering too much territory too thinly to be persuasive, let alone convincing. In science, however, a generalization means a principle that has been found to hold true in every special case.... The principle of leverage is a scientific generalization.
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It is the integrity of each individual human that is in final examination. On personal integrity hangs humanity's fate.
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History's political and economic power structures have always abhorred 'idle people' as potential troublemakers. Yet nature never abhors seemingly idle trees, grass, snails, coral reefs, and clouds in the sky.
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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?
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One of humanity's prime drives is to understand and be understood. All other living creatures are designed for highly specialized tasks. Man seems unique as the comprehensive comprehender
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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.
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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
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In the United States, throughout all twenty-four hours of every day of the year - year after year - we have an average of two million automobiles standing in front of red lights with their engines going, the energy for which amounts to that generated by the full of efforts of 200 million horses being completley wasted as they jump up and down going nowhere.
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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.
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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
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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-
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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.
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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.
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Humans have always unknowingly affected all Universe by every act and thought they articulate or even consider.
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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?
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Humanity has the option to become successful on our planet if we reorient world production away from weaponry - from killingry to livingry. Can we convince humanity in time?
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We should stop kidding ourselves. We should let go of things that aren't true. It's always better with the truth.
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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.
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Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe.
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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.
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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.
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Whatever humans have learned had to be learned as a consequence only of trial and error experience. Humans have learned only through mistakes.
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You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.