Home • Manifesto • Essays • Solutions • Activism • Free eBooks • Quotations
Quotations from
R. Buckminster Fuller [1895-1983]
| Richard Buckminster 'Bucky' Fuller was born in Milton, Massachusetts; he worked many basic labor jobs, served in the U.S. Navy during World War I, and then his house-building company failed in 1927. Severely depressed and contemplating suicide, he had an epiphany near Lake Michigan and took on living his life as an experiment, intending to change the world and benefit all humanity. The Dymaxion automobile followed in 1933 and the Dymaxion house in 1946. He received a patent for improvements to geodesic domes in 1954. He wrote more than 30 books and gave lectures around the world, famously wearing three watches in order to keep track of time zones. |  |
Links are provided below for further investigation.
The references to WMail issues indicate quotes that appeared in the free monthly 'WMail' ezine
connected with the revolutionary "Working Minds Philosophy of Empowerment" created by G.E. Nordell.
After WMail Issue #72 in October 2007, essays & quotations & news are being posted to the Dateline Chamesa blog
The Buckminster Fuller Institute [est. 1983]
Buckminster Fuller entry at Wikipedia
R. Buckminster Fuller Page at Maison d'Être Philosophy Bookstore
“The individual can take initiatives without anybody's permission.” {Issue #1}
• •
“Either man is obsolete or war is. War is the ultimate tool of politics.” {Issue #29}
• •
“I just invent. Then I wait until man comes around to needing what I've invented.” {Issue #37}
• •
“None of the world's problems will have a solution until the world's individuals
become thoroughly self-educated.” {Issue #43 & blog 10/2007}
• •
“For the first time in history it is now possible to take care of everybody at a higher standard of living than any have ever known. Only ten years ago the 'more with less' technology reached the point where this could be done. All humanity now has the option of becoming enduringly successful.” (1980) {Issue #45}
• •
“Reason is necessary for survival, and anti-Reason has led Mankind to the brink of extinction.” {Issue #45}
• •
“Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case,
the thought is staggering.” {Issue #55}
• •
“Man must learn to think for himself, rather than follow blindly what he has been taught.” {blog 9/2008}
• •
“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.” {blog 4/2011}
• •
“Thinking is a momentary dismissal of irrelevancies.” {blog 11/2013}
• •
“The most important fact about Spaceship Earth: an instruction manual didn't come with it.” {blog 8/2014}
• •
“Only the impossible happens. The Universe is impossible. You and I are impossible. And there it is.” {blog 8/2014}
• •
“Whether humanity makes it or not depends on the way [that] we behave today.” {blog 8/2014}
• •
“You can't better the world by simply talking to it. Philosophy to be effective must be mechanically applied.” {blog 3/2016}
• •
“You cannot change things by fighting existing reality: To change things you must build a new model
to make the existing model obsolete.” {blog 4/2017}
• •
“The minute [that] you begin to do what you really want to do, it’s really a different kind of life.” {blog 10/2017}
• •
“Integrity is the essence of everything successful.” {blog 3/2018}
• •
“Those who play with the devil's toys will be brought by degrees to wield his sword.” {blog 7/2018}
• •
“Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them.” {blog 9/2018}
• •
“Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for the wrong reasons.” {blog 10/2018}
• •
“Dare to be naïve.” {blog 8/2019}
• •
“There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you [that] it's going to be a butterfly."
• •
“[This paradigm shift] could be the most significant turning point in our evolution because it means [that] we could move from
a you-or-me world – a world where either you or I make it, and where we need to compete and fight to see who wins – to
a you-and-me world, where all of us can make it.” - in the 1950s {blog 10/2022}
• •
“How do we make the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation,
without ecological offense or disadvantage to anyone?” {blog 1/2023}
Buckminster Fuller Quotations Not Yet Used on Blog
"Man is
Abraham Lincoln Quotations Page
Albert Einstein Quotations Page
Greek philosopher Aristotle Quotations Page
Ayn Rand Quotations Page
Barack Obama Quotations Page
Benjamin Franklin Quotations Page
Bertrand Russell Quotations Page
E.B. White Quotations Page
Edward Abbey Quotations Page
Edward R. Murrow Quotations Page
Eleanor Roosevelt Quotations Page
Elbert G. Hubbard Quotations Page
Eric Hoffer Quotations Page
Ernest Hemingway Quotations Page
F. Scott Fitzgerald Quotations Page
Franklin Delano Roosevelt Quotations Page
Friedrich Nietzsche Quotations Page
G.E. Nordell Quotations Page
G.K. Chesterton Quotations Page
George Bernard Shaw Quotations Page
George Orwell Quotations Page
H.L. Mencken Quotations Page
Helen Keller Quotations Page
Henry David Thoreau Quotations Page
J.K. Rowling Quotations Page
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotations Page
John F. Kennedy Quotations Page
John Steinbeck Quotations Page
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Quotations Page
Louis D. Brandeis Quotations Page
Mahatma Gandhi Quotations Page
Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotations Page
Mark Twain Quotations Page
Dr. Maya Angelou Quotations Page
Greek philosopher Plato Quotations Page
Oscar Wilde Quotations Page
R. Buckminster Fuller Quotations Page at Working Minds «« you are here
Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotations Page
Robert A. Heinlein Quotations Page
Dr. Samuel Johnson Quotations Page
Steve Jobs Quotations Page
Theodore Roosevelt Quotations Page
Thomas Alva Edison Quotations Page
Thomas Jefferson Quotations Page
Virginia Woolf Quotations Page
Voltaire Quotations Page
Werner Erhard Quotations Page
Will Rogers Quotations Page
Wm. Faulkner Quotations Page
Wm. Shakespeare Quotations Page
Winston Churchill Quotations Page
Magic Lantern's Great Movie Quotes Page
Books of Quotations Page at Working Minds
R. Buckminster Fuller [1895-1983] Page at Maison d'Être Philosophy Bookstore
back to Working Minds Quotations Pages •• back to Working Minds Philosophy homepage