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Buckminster Fuller Quotes
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Richard Buckminster Fuller was an American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor, and futurist.

Fuller published more than 30 books, coining or popularizing terms such as "Spaceship Earth", "Dymaxion" , ephemeralization, synergetic, and "tensegrity". He also developed numerous inventions, mainly architectural designs, and popularized the widely known geodesic dome. Carbon molecules known as fullerenes were later named by scientists for their structural and mathematical resemblance to geodesic spheres.

Fuller was the second World President of Mensa from 1974 to 1983.



Wikipedia  

✵ 12. July 1895 – 1. July 1983
Buckminster Fuller photo
Buckminster Fuller: 171   quotes 28   likes

Buckminster Fuller Quotes

“The effective decisions can only be made by the independently thinking and adequately informed human individuals and their telepathically intercommunicated wisdom--the wisdom of the majority of all such human individuals--qualifying for continuance in Universe as local cosmic problem-solvers--in love with the truth and in individually spontaneous self-commitment to absolute faith in the wisdom, integrity, and love of God, who seems to wish Earthian humans to survive.”

Buckminster Fuller

From 1980s onwards, Critical Path (1981)

Love , Wisdom , God , Truth

“A pattern has an integrity independent of the medium by virtue of which you have received the information that it exists. Each of the chemical elements is a pattern integrity. Each individual is a pattern integrity. The pattern integrity of the human individual is evolutionary and not static.”

Buckminster Fuller

Pattern Integrity 505.201 http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/s05/p0400.html#505
1970s, Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975), "Synergy" onwards

“Less is more.”

Buckminster Fuller

"Less is more" is often misattributed to Fuller or to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and it has become a prominent motto for minimalist philosophies. It was actually used much earlier in Robert Browning's "Andrea del Sarto" (1855), and the similar German phrase "minder ist oft mehr" by Christoph Martin Wieland in Der Teutsche Merkur (1774). The expression "...doing more with less" is part of Fuller's definition of Ephemeralization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephemeralization.
Misattributed

“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.”

Buckminster Fuller

Prime Design (May 1960), later published in The Buckminster Fuller Reader (1970) edited by James Meller
1960s

World , Dance

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

Buckminster Fuller

From 1980s onwards, Critical Path (1981)

Joy

“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.”

Buckminster Fuller

1005.54 http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/s10/p0520.html#1005.50
1970s, Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975), "Synergy" onwards

Love , Truth

“Wealth is our organized capability to cope effectively with the environment in sustaining our healthy regeneration and decreasing both the physical and metaphysical restrictions of the forward days of our lives.”

Buckminster Fuller

1960s, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1963)

Wealth

“Synergy is the only word in our language which identifies the meaning for which it stands. Since the word is unknown to the average public, as I have already pointed out, it is not at all surprising that synergy has not been included in the economic accounting of our wealth transactions or in assessing our common wealth capabilities.”

Buckminster Fuller

1960s, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1963)

Wealth

“The new human networks' emergence represents the natural evolutionary expansion into the just completed, thirty-years-in-its-buildings world-embracing, physical communications network. The new reorienting of human networking constitutes the heart-and-mind-pumped flow of life and intellect into the world arteries.”

Buckminster Fuller

From 1980s onwards, Grunch of Giants (1983)

Life , World , Communication , Nature

“We can now take care of everybody at a higher standard of living than anybody has ever known. It does not have to be “you or me,” so selfishness is unnecessary and war is obsolete. This has never been done before.”

Buckminster Fuller

From 1980s onwards, Norie Huddle interview (1981)
Context: Neither the great political or financial powers of the world nor the population in general realize that the engineering-chemical-electronic revolution now makes it possible to produce many more technical devices with ever less material. We can now take care of everybody at a higher standard of living than anybody has ever known. It does not have to be “you or me,” so selfishness is unnecessary and war is obsolete. This has never been done before. Only twelve years ago technology reached the point where this could be done. Since then it has made it ever so much easier to do.

War , Selfishness

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

Buckminster Fuller

From 1980s onwards, Critical Path (1981)

Love , God , Truth

“The procedure we are pursuing is that of true democracy. Semi-democracy accepts the dictatorship of a majority in establishing its arbitrary, ergo, unnatural, laws. True democracy discovers by patient experiment and unanimous acknowledgement what the laws of nature or universe may be for the physical support and metaphysical satisfaction of the human intellect's function in universe.”

Buckminster Fuller

1960s, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1963)

Law , Democracy , Support , Nature

“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 and co-ordinator of local universe affairs.”

Buckminster Fuller

1960s, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1963)

Understanding , Universe

“Thinking is a momentary dismissal of irrelevancies.”

Buckminster Fuller

Utopia or Oblivion: The Prospects of Humanity (1969)
1960s

Thinking

“The question of integrity will get finer and finer and more delicate and more beautiful.”

Buckminster Fuller

From 1980s onwards, Only Integrity is Going to Count (1983)

Beauty , Question

“Each age is characterized by its own astronomical myriads of new, special-case experiences and problems to be stored in freshly born optimum capacity human brains — which storages in turn may disclose to human minds the presence of heretofore undiscovered, unsuspectedly existent eternal generalized principles.”

Buckminster Fuller

1970s, Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975), Moral of the work

Age , Problem

“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.”

Buckminster Fuller

From 1980s onwards, Cosmography (1992)

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

Buckminster Fuller

No More Secondhand God (1963)
1960s

God

“Gravity is the inwardly cohering force acting integratively on all systems. Radiation is the outwardly disintegrating force acting divisively upon all systems.”

Buckminster Fuller

000.113 http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/s00/p0000.html
1970s, Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975), "Synergy" onwards

“The Universe consists of non-simultaneously apprehended events.”

Buckminster Fuller

As quoted by Robert Anton Wilson in Maybe Logic - The Lives and Ideas of Robert Anton Wilson (2003)
From 1980s onwards

Universe

“Are you spontaneously enthusiastic about everyone having everything you can have?”

Buckminster Fuller

From 1980s onwards, Critical Path (1981)

“Don't fight forces, use them.”

Buckminster Fuller

In Shelter (May 1932), 2 No. 4, 36, and (Nov 1932) No. 5, 108. Cited in Richard Buckminster Fuller, Joachim Krausse (ed.) and Claude Lichtenstein (ed.), Your Private Sky: Discourse (2001), 17; sometimes quoted or paraphrased as "Don't oppose forces, use them."
1920s–1950s

Fight

“CALL ME TRIMTAB”

Buckminster Fuller

Inscription on his headstone. On a ship the trimtab is a small but crucial part of a the rudder mechanism, which controls the direction of the vessel; on an aircraft it is a small adjustable tab on the trailing edge of the elevator control surface set by the pilot to trim the aircraft in a steady and level orientation. This use for his epitaph comes from statements he had made in life, including an interview with Barry Farrell in Playboy (February 1972): 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. He is also quoted at the Buckminster Fuller Institute http://challenge.bfi.org/faq/ as having said: When I thought about steering the course of the "Spaceship Earth" and all of humanity, I saw most people trying to turn the boat by pushing the bow around. I saw that by being all the way at the tail of the ship, by just kicking my foot to one side or the other, I could create the "low pressure" which would turn the whole ship. If ever someone wanted to write my epitaph, I would want it to say "Call me Trimtab".

From 1980s onwards

Source: Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Buckminster Fuller / Quotes / From 1980s onwards

“Sum-totally, we find that the physical constituent of wealth-energy-cannot decrease and that the metaphysical constituent-know-how-can only increase. This is to say that everytime we use our wealth it increases.”

Buckminster Fuller

1960s, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1963)

Wealth

“Politicians are always realistically maneuvering for the next election. They are obsolete as fundamental problem-solvers.”

Buckminster Fuller

As quoted in Synergetics Dictionary : The Mind of Buckminster Fuller (1986) by E. J. Applewhite
From 1980s onwards

Problem

“The courage to cooperate or initiate are based entirely on the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth as the divine mind within you tells you the truth is. It really does require a courage and a self-disciplining to go along with that truth.”

Buckminster Fuller

From 1980s onwards, Only Integrity is Going to Count (1983)

Truth , Courage

“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

I Seem to Be a Verb (1970)
1970s

Universe

“World Game finds that 60 percent of all the jobs in the U. S. A. are not producing any real wealth—i. e., real life support. They are in fear-underwriting industries or are checking-on-other-checkers, etc.”

Buckminster Fuller book Critical Path

Pg 223. - Google Books Result https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0312174918 - 1982 - ‎History
From 1980s onwards, Critical Path (1981)

Life , World , Fear , Game

“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.”

Buckminster Fuller

1970s, Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975), The Wellspring of Reality

Literature , Science

“Nature never “fails.” Nature complies with its own laws. Nature is the law. When Man lacks understanding of Nature’s laws and a Man-contrived structure buckles unexpectedly, it does not fail. It only demonstrates that Man did not understand Nature’s laws and behaviors. Nothing failed. Man’s knowledge or estimating was inadequate.”

Buckminster Fuller

In "How Little I Know", in Saturday Review (12 Nov 1966), 152. Excerpted in Buckminster Fuller and Answar Dil, Humans in Universe (1983), 31.
"The Comprehensive Man", Ideas and Integrities: A Spontaneous Autobiographical Disclosure (1963), 75-76.
1960s

Law , Behavior , Understanding , Nature

“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…”

Buckminster Fuller

From 1980s onwards, Grunch of Giants (1983)

Dependency

“There is nothing that a single massive sphere will or can ever do by itself that says it will both exert and yield attractively with a neighboring massive sphere and that it yields progressively: every time the distance between the two is halved, the attraction will be fourfolded. This unpredicted, only mutual behavior is synergy.”

Buckminster Fuller

103.00 http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/s01/p0100.html
1970s, Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975), "Synergy" onwards

Behavior , Time

“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.”

Buckminster Fuller

1970s, Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975), The Wellspring of Reality

Falseness

“Love is metaphysical gravity.”

Buckminster Fuller

From 1980s onwards, Critical Path (1981)

Love

“Synergy means behavior of integral, aggregate, whole systems unpredicted by behaviors of any of their components or subassemblies of their components taken separately from the whole.”

Buckminster Fuller

102.00 http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/s01/p0100.html
1970s, Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975), "Synergy" onwards

Behavior

“Dare to be naïve.”

Buckminster Fuller

Source: 1970s, Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975), Moral of the work, p. xix.

“They are not multi-national, but supra-national — above nations. They don’t need any passports. They can go in and out of countries without permission from anyone.”

Buckminster Fuller

From 1980s onwards, Buckminster Fuller Talks Politics (1982)

Country

“But it can hardly be read in a week. It takes some study.”

Buckminster Fuller

From 1980s onwards, Buckminster Fuller Talks Politics (1982)

Study , Reading

“Critical Path is a way to dig yourself out from all that misinformation.”

Buckminster Fuller

From 1980s onwards, Buckminster Fuller Talks Politics (1982)

Way

“Science... the ways it does its calculating that approximately nobody going in at a basic level can gain any sense of the whole.”

Buckminster Fuller

From 1980s onwards, Buckminster Fuller Talks Politics (1982)

Sense , Science , Way

“The young world is giving up any interest in their political system. They have decided that it is absolutely corrupt.”

Buckminster Fuller

From 1980s onwards, Buckminster Fuller Talks Politics (1982)

World

“That’s the basis of all politics: it has to be you or me, there’s not enough for both of us. Survival of the fittest.”

Buckminster Fuller

From 1980s onwards, Buckminster Fuller Talks Politics (1982)

“Politics is policy. What policy should you follow in view of the idea that there isn’t enough to go around — the power of the few, or the needs of the many? Political economy is based on misassumptions...”

Buckminster Fuller

From 1980s onwards, Buckminster Fuller Talks Politics (1982)

Idea

“There are no solids. There are no things. There are only interfering and noninterfering patterns operative in pure principle, and principles are eternal. Principles never contradict principles.... The synergetic integral of the totality of 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.”

Buckminster Fuller

From 1980s onwards, Critical Path (1981)

God , Behavior

“Humans have always unknowingly affected all Universe by every act and thought they articulate or even consider.... Realistic, comprehensively responsible, omni-system-considerate, unselfish thinking on the part of humans does absolutely affect human destiny.”

Buckminster Fuller

From 1980s onwards, Critical Path (1981)

Universe , Thinking , Parting

“It is a matter of converting the high technology from weaponry to livingry. The essence of livingry is human-life advantaging and environment controlling. With the highest aeronautical and engineering facilities of the world redirected from weaponry to livingry production, all humanity would have the option of becoming enduringly successful.”

Buckminster Fuller

Source: From 1980s onwards, Critical Path (1981)

World , Life , Success

“War is obsolete. It could never have been done before. Only ten years ago… technology reached the point where it could be done. Since then the invisible technological-capability revolution has made it ever easier so to do.”

Buckminster Fuller

From 1980s onwards, Critical Path (1981)

War

“Neither the great political and financial power structures of the world, nor the specialization-blinded professionals, nor the population in general realize… that 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.”

Buckminster Fuller

From 1980s onwards, Critical Path (1981)

World , Selfishness

“Selected quotes from the chapter on Synergy onwards…”

Buckminster Fuller

1970s, Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975), "Synergy" onwards

Quotes

“All previous revolutions have been political—in them the have-not majority has attempted revengefully to pull down the economically advantaged minority. If realized, this historically greatest design revolution will joyously elevate all humanity to unprecedented heights.”

Buckminster Fuller

From 1980s onwards, Critical Path (1981)