Buckminster Fuller
Inventor of geodesic dome, systems thinker
Most quoted
"We are blessed with technology that would be indescribable to our forefathers. We have the wherewithal, the know-it-all to feed everybody, clothe everybody, and give every human on Earth a chance. We know now what we could never have known before—that we now have the option for all humanity to make it successfully on this planet in this lifetime. Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment."
— from Critical Path, 1980
"If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top buoyant enough to keep you afloat that comes along makes a fortuitous life preserver. But this is not to say that the best way to design a life preserver is in the form of a piano top. I think that we are clinging to a great many piano tops in accepting yesterday's fortuitous contrivings as constituting the only means for solving a given problem."
— from Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, 1969
"The function of what I call design science is to solve problems by introducing into the environment new artifacts, the availability of which will induce their spontaneous employment by humans and thus, coincidentally, cause humans to abandon their previous problem-producing behaviors and devices."
— from Critical Path
All quotes by Buckminster Fuller (245)
The universe is always trying to tell us something. We just have to listen.
There is no such thing as waste, only resources out of place.
The only way to predict the future is to create it.
We are not meant to be consumers, we are meant to be creators.
The universe is a continuous process of creation and destruction.
The purpose of our lives is to make a difference.
The only way to learn is to do.
The world is a complex system, and we are all interconnected.
Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.
The highest function of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplaceable being.
The ultimate purpose of life is to live it.
Nature is a totally efficient, self-regenerating system. If we discover the laws by which the universe operates, and use them, we don't have to go hungry, we don't have to have any pollution. There is a way to do it.
If the 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?
Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment.
The highest function of the architect is to remove the need for his own profession.
We are all born to be integral to the universe, not just to survive within it.
Man is a function of the universe, and the universe is a function of man.
We should do away with the idea that there is a 'right' way to do things.
There is no such thing as a straight line in the universe.
We are not going to save the world by going to war.
Contemporaries of Buckminster Fuller
Other Architectures born within 50 years of Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983).