Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes 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

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

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

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

Out of my general world-pattern-trend studies there now comes strong evidence that nothing is going to be quite so surprising and abrupt in the future history of man as the forward evolution in the educational process.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Education

God is a verb.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: God

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

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

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

You can rest assured that if you devote your time and attention to the highest advantage of others, the Universe will support you, always and only in the nick of time.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Support, Attention, Time, Age, Will, Rest, Universe

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

I am convinced all of humanity is born with more gifts than we know. Most are born geniuses and just get de-geniused rapidly.
—Buckminster Fuller

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

Real wealth is ideas plus energy.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Energy

You can never learn less; you can only learn more. The reason I know so much is because I have made so many mistakes.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Mistake, Learn, Reason

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

Integrity is the essence of everything successful.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Integrity

The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Politics, Politicians

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

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

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

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

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

Man is a self-balancing, 28-jointed adapter-base biped, and electro-chemical reduction plant, integral with the segregated stowages of special energy extracts in storage batteries, for subsequent activation of thousands of hydraulic and pneumatic pumps, with motors attached; 62,000 miles of capillaries, millions of warning signal, railroad and conveyor systems, crushers and cranes, and a universally distributed telephone system needing no service for seventy years if well managed, the whole extraordinary complex mechanism guided with exquisite precision from a turret in which are located telescopic and microscopic self-registering and recording range-finders, a spectroscope, etc. .. the turret control being closely allied with an air-conditioning intake and exhaust, and a main fuel intake.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Mankind, Man

The earth is like a spaceship that didn’t come with an operating manual.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Earth

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

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

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

Faith is much better than belief. Belief is when someone else does the thinking.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Thinking, Faith

Our power is in our ability to decide.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Power

Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Humanity, Technology

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