Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Buckminster Fuller (American Inventor, Philosopher)

Richard Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) was an American inventor, engineer, architect, mathematician, poet, and cosmologist. Among the most original thinkers of the twentieth century, he was a significant contributor to scientific engineering and environmental studies.

Born in Milton, Massachusetts, Fuller was a nonconformist even at an early age. He rejected formal education at Harvard. After the death of a young daughter, Fuller blamed himself and contemplated committing suicide by jumping into Lake Michigan in Chicago. However, he was saved by an epiphany that he should devote himself entirely to the betterment of all humanity.

Fuller spent the next year without speaking to anyone as a mental discipline to focus his thoughts and toil. He worked ceaselessly on solving modern world problems using technology and invented several revolutionary designs.

Fuller also wrote about technology and went on the lecture circuit. By the 1960s, he had become a counterculture legend and a messiah of modern technology. His primary interest was housing and shelter—using the world’s resources with maximum purpose and least waste. He is best known for inventing the geodesic dome—a system of interlocking triangles that enclosed the maximum volume of space with the minimum of raw materials.

Fuller was awarded 25 U.S. patents; he wrote 28 books, received 47 honorary doctorates and numerous awards, and circled the globe fifty-seven times. Besides, he was nominated for several Nobel Prizes. His notable publications include Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1969) and Earth Inc. (1973.)

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Buckminster Fuller

Controlled time is our true wealth.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Wealth

You can never learn less; you can only learn more. The reason I know so much is because I have made so many mistakes.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Learn, Mistake, Reason

Out of my general world-pattern-trend studies there now comes strong evidence that nothing is going to be quite so surprising and abrupt in the future history of man as the forward evolution in the educational process.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Education

Faith is much better than belief. Belief is when someone else does the thinking.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Thinking, Faith

Everything you’ve learned in school as obvious becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There’s not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: The Universe

Those who play with the devil’s toys will be brought by degrees to wield his sword.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Evil

When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
—Buckminster Fuller

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: the heft, shake, punch, squeeze, push, crush, rub, and try to pull things apart.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Children

Dictators never invent their own opportunities.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Tyranny

If I ran a school, I’d give the average grade to the ones who gave me all the right answers, for being good parrots. I’d give the top grades to those who made a lot of mistakes and told me about them, and then told me what they learned from them.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Mistakes, Education

The pyramids, attached with age, have forgotten the names of their founders.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Historians, History

God is a verb.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: God

The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Politicians, Politics

Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we’ve been ignorant of their value.
—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.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Individuality

Most of my advances were by mistake. You uncover what is when you get rid of what isn’t.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Mistakes

Don’t fight forces, use them.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Architecture

You can rest assured that if you devote your time and attention to the highest advantage of others, the Universe will support you, always and only in the nick of time.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Age, Attention, Rest, Time, Support, Will, Universe

The purpose of our lives is to add value to the people of this generation and those that follow.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Follow, Purpose, People, Live

Real wealth is ideas plus energy.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Energy

Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Humanity, Nature, Human Nature

Dare to be naive.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Ignorance, Risk

The minute you choose to do what you really want to do it’s a different kind of life.
—Buckminster Fuller

Love is metaphysical gravity.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Love

The earth is like a spaceship that didn’t come with an operating manual.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Earth

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.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Integrity

You can never learn less, you can only learn more.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Learn, Learning

People should think things out fresh and not just accept conventional terms and the conventional way of doing things.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: Tradition

There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.
—Buckminster Fuller

Here is God’s purpose—for God, to me, it seems, is a verb, not a noun, proper or improper.
—Buckminster Fuller
Topics: God

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