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)
Synergy is the only word in our language that means behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the behavior of their parts.
I am not a genius. I am just a tremendous bundle of experience.
Man is a self-balancing, 28-jointed adapter-base biped, an electrochemical reduction plant, integral with the solar system, maintained by steady-state thermo-photosynthesis.
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.
We are all born inventors, but we are taught to specialize.
The ultimate purpose of technology is to do more with less.
What we are talking about is a design science revolution.
I live on Earth at present, and I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing—a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process—an integral function of the universe.
Whether humanity is to continue to exist or not, depends entirely on the consciously willed evolutionary adjustments of humanity.
The minute you understand that you can poke holes in the universe and make new things, you realize that you have a responsibility to do so.
I'm not trying to be a genius. I'm just trying to be a good human being.
To make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without anybody being disenfranchised.
The highest integrity is to be true to oneself.
There is no such thing as a straight line in the universe. Everything is curved.
We are all born with genius. It's just that some of us lose it along the way.
Man is a self-balancing, 28-jointed adapter-base biped, an electrochemical reduction plant, integral with the earth's electro-magnetically integrated system.
The true business of people is to go on living.
The Earth is a magnificent spaceship, but it's a very fragile one.
We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and take responsibility for it as a whole.
Nature is a totally efficient, self-regenerating system. If we discover the laws by which the universe operates, we will be able to operate our own lives and our own societies in a similar way.
Contemporaries of Buckminster Fuller
Other Architectures born within 50 years of Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983).