Richard Buckminster Fuller was an American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor, and futurist. He published more than 30 books, coining or popularizing terms such as “Spaceship Earth”, “Dymaxion” house/car, ephemeralization, synergetic, and “tensegrity”.
Fuller operated as a practical philosopher who demonstrated his ideas as inventions that he called “artifacts.” Inspirational R. Buckminster Fuller quotes will get you thinking more creatively and allow your mind to explore new ways of being.
If you’re searching for life quotes and sayings that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of inspirational Elon Musk quotes, powerful Thomas Edison quotes, and famous Terence Mckenna quotes.
Most Famous R. Buckminster Fuller Quotes
Dare to be naïve. R. Buckminster Fuller
There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly. R. Buckminster Fuller
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. R. Buckminster Fuller
Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we’ve been ignorant of their value. R. Buckminster Fuller
Love is metaphysical gravity. R. Buckminster Fuller
I just invent, then wait until man comes around to needing what I’ve invented. R. Buckminster Fuller
We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims. R. Buckminster Fuller
We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims. R. Buckminster Fuller
There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly. R. Buckminster Fuller
Those who play with the devil’s toys will be brought by degrees to wield his sword. R. Buckminster Fuller
American labor will realize that its function is not to increase jobs, but to multiply the wealth and to expand the numbers benefited by the wealth at the swiftest possible rate. R. Buckminster Fuller
We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody. R. Buckminster Fuller
There are over 2 million cars standing in front of red lights with their engines going. Then we have over 2 million times approximately 100 horsepower being generated as they are idling there, so that we have something like 200 million horses jumping up and down and going nowhere. Now, we have to count that in our economy when we begin to get down to what is the efficiency of the economy. R. Buckminster Fuller
Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons. R. Buckminster Fuller
There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly. R. Buckminster Fuller
Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment. R. Buckminster Fuller
We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. R. Buckminster Fuller
I look for what needs to be done. After all, that’s how the universe designs itself. R. Buckminster Fuller
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. R. Buckminster Fuller
Never forget that you are one of a kind. Never forget that if there weren’t any need for you in all your uniqueness to be on this earth, you wouldn’t be here in the first place. And never forget, no matter how overwhelming life’s challenges and problems seem to be, that one person can make a difference in the world. In fact, it is always because of one person that all the changes that matter in the world come about. So be that one person. R. Buckminster Fuller
When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong. R. Buckminster Fuller
Humans beings always do the most intelligent thing…after they’ve tried every stupid alternative and none of them have worked. R. Buckminster Fuller
Faith is much better than belief. Belief is when someone else does the thinking. R. Buckminster Fuller
When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty…but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong. R. Buckminster Fuller
Most of my advances were by mistake. You uncover what is when you get rid of what isn’t. R. Buckminster Fuller
You can’t change the way people think, all you can do is give them a tool, the use of which will change their thinking. R. Buckminster Fuller
Now there is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship Earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it. R. Buckminster Fuller
I’m not trying to counsel any of you to do anything really special except dare to think. And to dare to go with the truth. And to dare to really love completely. R. Buckminster Fuller
Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de geniuses them. R. Buckminster Fuller
The minute you choose to do what you really want to do, it’s a different kind of life. R. Buckminster Fuller
A designer is an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist. R. Buckminster Fulle
When I was born, humanity was 95 per cent illiterate. Since I’ve been born, the population has doubled and that total population is now 65 per cent literate. That’s a gain of 130 fold of the literacy. When humanity is primarily illiterate, it needs leaders to understand and get the information and deal with it. When we are at the point where the majority of humans them-selves are literate, able to get the information, we’re in an entirely new relationship to Universe. We are at the point where the integrity of the individual counts and not what the political leadership or the religious leadership says to do. R. Buckminster Fuller
How often I found where I should be going only by setting out for somewhere else. R. Buckminster Fuller
If humanity does not opt for integrity we are through completely. It is absolutely touch and go. Each one of us could make the difference. R. Buckminster Fuller
If you are the master be sometimes blind, if you are the servant be sometimes deaf. R. Buckminster Fulle
Physics has found no straight lines. Instead, the physical universe consists of only waves undulating back and forth allowing for corrections and balance. R. Buckminster Fuller
I look for what needs to be done. After all, that’s how the universe designs itself. R. Buckminster Fuller
I just invent. Then I wait until man comes around to needing what I’ve invented. R. Buckminster Fuller
Tombs are the clothes of the dead and a grave is a plain suit; while an expensive monument is one with embroidery. R. Buckminster Fuller
It is essential that anyone reading this book know at the outset that the author is apolitical. I was convinced in 1927 that humanity’s most fundamental survival problems could never be solved by politics. R. Buckminster Fuller
Great nations are simply the operating fronts of behind the scenes, vastly ambitious individuals who had become so effectively powerful because of their ability to remain invisible while operating behind the national scenery. R. Buckminster Fuller
Dear reader, traditional human power structures and their reign of darkness are about to be rendered obsolete. R. Buckminster Fuller
Now there is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship Earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it. R. Buckminster Fuller
I am a passenger on the spaceship Earth. R. Buckminster Fuller
By 2000, politics will simply fade away. We will not see any political parties. R. Buckminster Fuller
Love is omni-inclusive, progressively exquisite, understanding and compassionately attuned to other than self. R. Buckminster Fuller
Let architects sing of aesthetics that bring Rich clients in hordes to their knees; Just give me a home, in a great circle dome Where stresses and strains are at ease. R. Buckminster Fuller
The purpose of our lives is to add value to the people of this generation and those that follow. R. Buckminster Fuller
One in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a wage. R. Buckminster Fuller
The courage to cooperate or initiate are based entirely on the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth as the divine mind within you tells you the truth is. R. Buckminster Fuller
My ideas have undergone a process of emergence by emergency. When they are needed badly enough, they are accepted. R. Buckminster Fuller
Parents are usually more careful to bestow knowledge on their children rather than virtue, the art of speaking well rather than doing well but their manners should be of the greatest concern. R. Buckminster Fuller
Parents are usually more careful to bestow knowledge on their children rather than virtue, the art of speaking well rather than doing well; but their manners should be of the greatest concern. R. Buckminster Fuller
The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living. R. Buckminster Fuller
If humanity does not opt for integrity we are through completely. It is absolutely touch and go. Each one of us could make the difference. R. Buckminster Fuller
Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them. R. Buckminster Fuller
People should think things out fresh and not just accept conventional terms and the conventional way of doing things. R. Buckminster Fuller
It really does require a courage and a self-disciplining to go along with that truth. R. Buckminster Fuller
What usually happens in the educational process is that the faculties are dulled, overloaded, stuffed and paralyzed so that by the time most people are mature they have lost their innate capabilities. R. Buckminster Fuller
My ideas have undergone a process of emergence by emergency. When they are needed badly enough, they are accepted. R. Buckminster Fuller
I hope you enjoy reading this collection of powerful R. Buckminster Fuller quotes. Let me know which one you like most.
