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)
Ninety-nine percent of who you are is invisible and untouchable.
There is no energy crisis, only a crisis of ignorance.
Man is a self-balancing, 28-jointed adapter-base biped, an electrochemical reduction plant, integral with the solar system, maintained by commonly 200-million-year-old genetic energy-packaging and delivery system.
The less we use, the more we have.
What we are talking about is a design revolution.
The things to do are: the things that need doing, that you see need to be done, and that no one else seems to see need to be done.
If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don't bother trying to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking.
We are all born inventors, but we are taught to be consumers.
The highest purpose of our lives is to be of service to others.
Specialization is for insects.
Either war is obsolete, or men are.
There is no such thing as a problem that cannot be solved.
The purpose of our lives is to add value to the world.
We are not going to save the world by being nice.
The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.
Everything is energy.
The ultimate purpose of technology is to make the world work for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.
If you want to get rid of a problem, get rid of the cause.
The future is not a place we are going to, but one we are creating.
I am not a genius. I am just a curious person.
Contemporaries of Buckminster Fuller
Other Architectures born within 50 years of Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983).