“In spite of all humans' innate interest in the interrelatedness of all experience, long ago these world-power-structure builders learned to shunt all the bright intellectuals and the physically creative into specialist careers. The powerful reserved for themselves the far easier, because innate, comprehensive functioning. All one needs to do is to discover how self-perpetuating is this disease of specialization is to witness the inter-departmental battling for educational funds and the concomitant jealous guarding of the various specializations assigned to a department's salaried experts on each subject in any university.”

—  Buckminster Fuller

From 1980s onwards, Cosmography (1992)

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 "In spite of all humans' innate interest in the interrelatedness of all experience, long ago these world-power-structure…" by Buckminster Fuller?
Buckminster Fuller photo
Buckminster Fuller 171
American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inv… 1895–1983

Related quotes

Buckminster Fuller photo

“Man is going to be displaced altogether as a specialist by the computer. Man himself is being forced to reestablish, employ, and enjoy his innate "comprehensivity." Coping with the totality of Spaceship Earth and universe is ahead for all of us.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

1960s, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1963)

Lydia Canaan photo

“Art is non-divisive, all inclusive, and universally accessible. It is the primal and sacred heart of the mind, the DNA-deep instinct to express the human soul and to appreciate and delight in the expressions of others. It is the innate Divine Creative Power with which humanity is endowed.”

Lydia Canaan Lebanese singer-songwriter

From Diplomacy and Art http://diplomatartist.com/diplomacy-art/, a contributer article for Diplomat Artist, October 10, 2015

“Cultural products that present people who have no money or power as innately stupid or depraved, and thus unworthy of money or power, are in the interests of the ruling class and the power structure as it stands.”

Meredith Tax (1942) American writer

Source: "Culture is not Neutral, Whom Does it Serve?" (1972), p. 15

Muhammad Yunus photo

“All human beings have an innate skill — survival skill. The fact that poor are still alive is a proof of their ability to survive. We do not need to teach them how to survive. They know this already.”

Muhammad Yunus (1940) Bangladeshi banker, economist and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

Profile at North American Bangladesh Info Center http://www.bongoz.com/people/yunus.html

E.E. Cummings photo

“The All which is beyond comprehension — the All which is perpetually discovered, yet undiscovered: sexual, sweet, Alive!”

E.E. Cummings Him

Him (1927)
Context: A distinct throat. Which breathes. A head: small, smaller than a flower. With eyes and with lips. Lips more slender than light; a smile how carefully and slowly made, a smile made entirely of dream. Eyes deeper than Spring. Eyes darker than Spring, more new... These, these are the further miracles... the breasts. Thighs. The All which is beyond comprehension — the All which is perpetually discovered, yet undiscovered: sexual, sweet, Alive!

Gore Vidal photo

“Despite all evidence to the contrary I do not believe humans innately cruel, but they fear change of any kind.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

Source: 1960s, Julian (1964), Chapter 5, Libanius

Akio Morita photo

“We all learn by imitating, as children, as students, as novices in the world of business. And then we grow up and learn to blend our innate abilities with the rules or principles we have learned.”

Akio Morita (1921–1999) Japanese businessman

Source: Made in Japan (1986), p. 161.

Henri Gaudier-Brzeska photo

“The only way to development(as an artist) cultivating one's own innate powers.”

Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (1891–1915) French painter and sculptor

Letter to Dr Uhlemayr-Savage Messiah By H S (Jim) Ede Heinimann (1931)

James Thurber photo

“We all know that the theater and every play that comes to Broadway have within themselves, like the human being, the seed of self-destruction and the certainty of death. The thing is to see how long the theater, the play, and the human being can last in spite of themselves.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

Quoted in New York Times (21 February 1960).
Letters and interviews

Buckminster Fuller photo

“Our school systems are all nonsynergetic. We take the whole child and fractionate the scope of his or her comprehending coordination by putting the children in elementary schools—to become preoccupied with elements or isolated facts only. Thereafter we force them to choose some specialization, forcing them to forget the whole. … We may well ask how it happened that the entire scheme of advanced education is devoted exclusively to ever narrower specialization. We find that the historical beginnings of schools and tutoring were established, and economically supported by illiterate and vastly ambitious warlords who required a wide variety of brain slaves with which to logistically and ballistically overwhelm those who opposed their expansion of physical conquest. They also simultaneously DIVIDED and CONQUERED any and all "bright ones" who might otherwise rise within their realms to threaten their supremacy. The warlord vitiated their threat by making them all specialists and reserving to himself exclusively the right to think about and act comprehensively. The warlord made all those about him differentiators and reserved the function of integration to himself.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

Source: 1960s, Presentation to U.S. Congressional Sub-Committee on World Game (1969), p. 15

Related topics