“Evolution consists of many great revolutionary events taking place quite independently of man's consciously attempting to bring them about. Man is very vain; he likes to feel that he is responsible for all the favorable things that happen, and he is innocent of all the unfavorable happenings. But all the larger evolutionary patternings seeming favorable or unfavorable to man's conditioned reflexing are transpiring transcendentally to any of man's conscious planning or contriving.”

— Buckminster Fuller

1960s, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1963)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Evolution consists of many great revolutionary events taking place quite independently of man's consciously attempting …" by Buckminster Fuller?

Buckminster Fuller 171

American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inv… 1895–1983

Related quotes

“Any one who speaks in favor of bringing the Arab refugees back must also say how he expects to take the responsibility for it, if he is interested in the state of Israel. It is better that things are stated clearly and plainly: We shall not let this happen.”

Golda Meir (1898–1978) former prime minister of Israel

Speech to the Knesset, reported in Ner (October 1961)

“But the wise man knows that all things are in store for him. Whatever happens, he says: “I knew it.””

Seneca the Younger book Epistulae morales ad Lucilium

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter LXXVI: On Learning Wisdom in Old Age

“He is so vain that he wants to figure in history as the settler of all the great questions; but a Parliamentary constitution is not favorable to such ambitions; things must be done by parties, not by persons using parties as tools.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Letter to Lord John Manners, referring to the tactics of Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel (17 December 1846), cited in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield (Vol. 2) (1913), p. 337-338.

“It is — or seems to be — a wise sort of thing, to realise that all that happens to a man in this life is only by way of joke, especially his misfortunes, if he have them. And it is also worth bearing in mind, that the joke is passed round pretty liberally & impartially, so that not very many are entitled to fancy that they in particular are getting the worst of it.”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Letter to Samuel Savage (24 August 1851), as published in The Writings of Herman Melville : The Northwestern-Newberry Edition (1993), edited by Lynn Horth, Vol. 14, p. 203

“Since the white man says he came from the evolution of animals, well, maybe the black man didn't. The white man has made so many errors in the handling of people that maybe he did come from a gorilla or a fish and crawl up on the sand and then into the trees. Of course, evolution doesn't take God into consideration. I don't think people learned to do all the things they do through evolution.”

Charles Mingus (1922–1979) American jazz double bassist, composer and bandleader

As quoted in More Than A Fakebook : The Music Of Charles Mingus (1991) by Andrew Homzy

“A physical man does not receive the things of the spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot get to know [them], because they are examined spiritually. However, the spiritual man examines indeed all things, but he himself is not examined by any man.”

Paul of Tarsus book First Epistle to the Corinthians

1 Corinthians 2:14,15 http://www.watchtower.org/e/bible/1co/chapter_002.htm
First Epistle to the Corinthians

“Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man;
He’s ben on all sides thet give places or pelf;
But consistency still wuz a part of his plan,—
He’s ben true to one party, an’ thet is himself.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

No. 2
The Biglow Papers (1848–1866), Series I (1848)

“The superior man thinks of virtue; the small man thinks of comfort. The superior man thinks of the sanctions of law; the small man thinks of favors which he may receive.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

君子喻於義，小人喻於利。
James Legge, translation (1893)
The Superior Man is aware of Righteousness, the inferior man is aware of advantage.
The virtuous man is driven by responsibility, the non-virtuous man is driven by profit. [by 朱冀平]
The Analects, Chapter I, Chapter IV

“That man is … odd," I dared say to William.
"He is, or has been, in many ways a great man. But for this very reason he is odd. It is only petty men who seem normal.”

Umberto Eco book The Name of the Rose

The Name of the Rose (1980)

“This is the last programme in this natural history, and it's very different from all the others because it's been devoted to just one animal: ourselves. And that may have been a very misleading thing to have done. It may have given the impression that somehow man was the ultimate triumph of evolution, that all those thousands of millions of years of development had no purpose other than to put man on Earth. There is no scientific evidence whatsoever for such a belief. No reason to suppose that man's stay on Earth should be any longer than that of the dinosaurs. He may have learned how to control his environment, how to pass on information from one generation to another, but the very forces of evolution that brought him into existence here on these African plains are still at work elsewhere in the world, and if man were to disappear, for whatever reason, there is doubtless somewhere some small, unobtrusive creature that would seize the opportunity and, with a spurt of evolution, take man's place. But although denying a special place in the world may be becomingly modest, the fact remains that man has an unprecedented control over the world and everything in it. And so, whether he likes it or not, what happens next is very largely up to him.”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

Closing lines
Life on Earth (1979)

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Buckminster Fuller 171

Related quotes

Related topics