Inspirational Quotes by Buckminster Fuller (American Inventor, Philosopher)

Inspirational Quotations by Buckminster Fuller (American Inventor, Philosopher)

Richard Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) was an American inventor, engineer, architect, mathematician, poet, and cosmologist. Among the most original thinkers of the twentieth century, he was a significant contributor to scientific engineering and environmental studies.

Born in Milton, Massachusetts, Fuller was a nonconformist even at an early age. He rejected formal education at Harvard. After the death of a young daughter, Fuller blamed himself and contemplated committing suicide by jumping into Lake Michigan in Chicago. However, he was saved by an epiphany that he should devote himself entirely to the betterment of all humanity.

Fuller spent the next year without speaking to anyone as a mental discipline to focus his thoughts and toil. He worked ceaselessly on solving modern world problems using technology and invented several revolutionary designs.

Fuller also wrote about technology and went on the lecture circuit. By the 1960s, he had become a counterculture legend and a messiah of modern technology. His primary interest was housing and shelter—using the world’s resources with maximum purpose and least waste. He is best known for inventing the geodesic dome—a system of interlocking triangles that enclosed the maximum volume of space with the minimum of raw materials.

Fuller was awarded 25 U.S. patents; he wrote 28 books, received 47 honorary doctorates and numerous awards, and circled the globe fifty-seven times. Besides, he was nominated for several Nobel Prizes. His notable publications include Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1969) and Earth Inc. (1973.)

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Buckminster Fuller

You can never learn less, you can only learn more.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Learn, Learning

You can never change something by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
—Buckminster Fuller

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?
—Buckminster Fuller

Never forget that you are one of a kind. Never forget that if there weren’t any need for you in all your uniqueness to be on this earth, you wouldn’t be here in the first place. And never forget, no matter how overwhelming life’s challenges and problems seem to be, that one person can make a difference in the world. In fact, it is always because of one person that all the changes that matter in the world come about. So be that one person.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Individuality

The minute you choose to do what you really want to do it’s a different kind of life.
—Buckminster Fuller

You can’t learn less.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Learning

What usually happens in the educational process is that the faculties are dulled, overloaded, stuffed and paralyzed so that by the time most people are mature they have lost their innate capabilities.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Education

The most important fact about Spaceship Earth: an instruction book didn’t come with it.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Decisions

Ninety-nine percent of who you are is invisible and untouchable.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Mind, The Mind

Gold and silver from the dead turn often into lead.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Gold

The purpose of our lives is to add value to the people of this generation and those that follow.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Purpose, Live, Follow, People

When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
—Buckminster Fuller

Those who play with the devil’s toys will be brought by degrees to wield his sword.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Evil

Think globally; act locally.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Activism

Now there is one outstanding important fact regarding spaceship earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: World, Earth

Dare to be naive.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Risk, Ignorance

If humanity does not opt for integrity we are through completely. It is absolutely touch and go. Each one of us could make the difference.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Integrity

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.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Manners, Parenting

God is a verb.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: God

The world is now too dangerous for anything less than utopia.
—Buckminster Fuller

We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Help, Cooperation

Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we’ve been ignorant of their value.
—Buckminster Fuller

If you are the master be sometimes blind, if you are the servant be sometimes deaf.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Management

Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Genius, Intelligence

Everything you’ve learned in school as obvious becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There’s not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: The Universe

Here is God’s purpose—for God, to me, it seems, is a verb, not a noun, proper or improper.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: God

Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Nature, Humanity, Human Nature

Don’t fight forces, use them.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Architecture

Controlled time is our true wealth.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Wealth

Most of my advances were by mistake. You uncover what is when you get rid of what isn’t.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Mistakes