R. Buckminster Fuller Quotes - Page 7

For the first time in history it is now possible to take care of everybody at a higher standard of living than any have ever known. Only ten years ago the 'more with less' technology reached the point where this could be done. All humanity now has the option to become enduringly successful.

All of humanity is in peril of extinction if each one of us does not dare, now and henceforth, always to tell only the truth, and all the truth, and to do so promptly - right now.

I find man utterly unaware of what his wealth is or his fundamental capability is. He says time and again, "We can't afford it." For instance, we are saying now that we can't afford to do anything about pollution but after the costs of not doing something about pollution have multiplied many fold beyond what it would cost to correct it now, we will spend many fold what it would cost us now to correct it.

Children are born true scientists. They spontaneously experiment and experience and reexperience again. They select, combine, and test, seeking to find order in their experiences - "which is the mostest? which is the leastest?" They smell, taste, bite, and touch-test for hardness, softness, springiness, roughness, smoothness, coldness, warmness: they heft, shake, punch, squeeze, push, crush, rub, and try to pull things apart.

Synergy means behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the behavior of their parts.

Dictators never invent their own opportunities.

Quite clearly, our task is predominantly metaphysical, for it is how to get all of humanity to educate itself swiftly enough to generate spontaneous social behaviors that will avoid extinction.

Are you spontaneously enthusiastic about everyone having everything you can have?

Only the free-wheeling artist-explorer, non-academic, scientist-philosopher, mechanic, economist-poet who has never waited for patron-starting and accrediting of his co-ordinate capabilities holds the prime initiative today.

You can never learn less; you can only learn more.

I say that radiation is inherently disintegrative: it comes apart. Gravity is inherently integrative: it pulls together. And to me, there's a good possibility that love is what I'd call metaphysical gravity. It really holds everything together.

The vector equilibrium is the zero point for happenings or nonhappenings: it is the empty theater and empty circus and empty universe ready to accommodate any act and any audience.

Here is God's purpose - For God, to me, it seems, is a verb not a noun, proper or improper; is the articulation not the art, objective or subjective; is loving, not the abstraction "love" commanded or entreated; is knowledge dynamic, not legislative code, not proclamation law, not academic dogma, not ecclesiastic canon. Yes, God is a verb, the most active, connoting the vast harmonic reordering of the universe from unleashed chaos of energy.

Pollution is nothing but resources we're not harvesting.

A problem adequately stated is a problem solved theoretically and immediately, and therefore subsequently to be solved, realistically.

Conceptuality is subjective; realization is objective.

The difference between mind and brain is that brain deals only with memorized, subjective, special-case experiences and objective experiments, while mind extracts and employs the generalized principles and integrates and interrelates their effective employment.

Some of us are just less damaged than others.

My ideas have undergone a process of emergence by emergency. When they are needed badly enough, they are accepted.

In order for a world-around democracy to prosper, world society must learn how to prosper.

It is the integrity of each individual human that is in final examination. On personal integrity hangs humanity's fate.

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.

Specialization is in fact only a fancy form of slavery wherein the 'expert' is fooled into accepting a slavery by making him feel that he in turn is a socially and culturally preferred-ergo, highly secure-lifelong position.

Controlled time is our true wealth.

With our minds alone we can discover those principles we need to employ to convert all humanity to success in a new, harmonious relationship with the universe.