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)
We are meant to be successful. We are meant to be happy. We are meant to be healthy.
The problems of the world cannot be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were.
There is no such thing as waste, only unharvested resources.
We are all here to contribute our unique capabilities to the collective good.
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 start to manage it as if it were an integrally operating system.
There is no such thing as a straight line. All lines are curves.
The minute you understand that you can contribute to the universe, you are a success.
Nature is a totally efficient, self-regenerating system. If we discover the laws by which the universe operates, and use those laws to make our tools and our ways of living, we will be sustainable.
Whether humanity is to continue and prosper on Spaceship Earth depends on the consciously-chosen design of our future.
The highest integrity is to be true to yourself.
We are all born with genius. It's just that we lose it as we grow up.
The only way to make a living is to give.
The end of the world is not the end of the world. It's the end of an era.
What we are talking about is a new way of thinking, a new way of seeing, a new way of being.
The universe is an integrity. It is not a collection of separate parts.
The true business of people should be to go around telling each other what they know and what they don't know.
We are all one. We are all connected. We are all part of the same universal consciousness.
The only way to achieve true freedom is to be free from the need to control others.
The greatest good for the greatest number is not a political slogan, it is a scientific imperative.
What we are doing is creating a new world, not just fixing the old one.
Contemporaries of Buckminster Fuller
Other Architectures born within 50 years of Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983).