Buckminster Fuller quotes - page 9

Evolution consists of many great revolutionary events taking place quite independently of man's consciously attempting to bring them about. Man is very vain; he likes to feel that he is responsible for all the favorable things that happen, and he is innocent of all the unfavorable happenings. But all the larger evolutionary patternings seeming favorable or unfavorable to man's conditioned reflexing are transpiring transcendentally to any of man's conscious planning or contriving. (Buckminster Fuller)
You may very appropriately want to ask me how we are going to resolve the ever-acceleratingly dangerous impasse of world-opposed politicians and ideological dogmas. I answer, it will be resolved by the computer. View quote
Buckminster Fuller
Man is going to be displaced altogether as a specialist by the computer. Man himself is being forced to reestablish, employ, and enjoy his innate "comprehensivity." Coping with the totality of Spaceship Earth and universe is ahead for all of us. View quote
Buckminster Fuller
Less is more. View quote
Buckminster Fuller
Wealth is our organized capability to cope effectively with the environment in sustaining our healthy regeneration and decreasing both the physical and metaphysical restrictions of the forward days of our lives. View quote
Buckminster Fuller
Synergy is the only word in our language which identifies the meaning for which it stands. Since the word is unknown to the average public, as I have already pointed out, it is not at all surprising that synergy has not been included in the economic accounting of our wealth transactions or in assessing our common wealth capabilities. View quote
Buckminster Fuller
We can now take care of everybody at a higher standard of living than anybody has ever known. It does not have to be "you or me,” so selfishness is unnecessary and war is obsolete. This has never been done before. View quote
Buckminster Fuller
Sum-totally, we find that the physical constituent of wealth-energy-cannot decrease and that the metaphysical constituent-know-how-can only increase. This is to say that everytime we use our wealth it increases. View quote
Buckminster Fuller
There are no solids. There are no things. There are only interfering and noninterfering patterns operative in pure principle, and principles are eternal. Principles never contradict principles.... The synergetic integral of the totality of principles is God, whose sum-total behavior in pure principle is beyond our comprehension and is utterly mysterious to us, because as humans - in pure principle - we do not and never will know all the principles. View quote
Buckminster Fuller
Selected quotes from the chapter on Synergy onwards... View quote
Buckminster Fuller
Society assumes that specialization is natural, inevitable, and desirable. Yet in observing a little child, we find it is interested in everything and spontaenously apprehends, comprehends, and co-ordinates an ever-expanding inventory of experiences. ... Nothing seems to be more prominent about human life than its wanting to understand all and put everything together. (Buckminster Fuller)
We have not been seeing our Spaceship Earth as an integrally-designed machine which to be persistently successful must be comprehended and serviced in total. View quote
Buckminster Fuller
Those whom God hath joined together let no one put asunder. View quote
Buckminster Fuller
I find all of our world society is operating exclusively in parts. We know this because the word synergy is unknown popularly and it is the only word that means "behavior of wholes unpredicted by behavior of their parts.”. View quote
Buckminster Fuller
Nature never "fails." View quote
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: they heft, shake, punch, squeeze, push, crush, rub, and try to pull things apart. View quote
Buckminster Fuller
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. View quote
Buckminster Fuller
Truth is a tendency. View quote
Buckminster Fuller
Mistakes are great, the more I make the smarter I get. View quote
Buckminster Fuller
I have spent most of my life unlearning things that were proved not to be true. View quote
Buckminster Fuller
The minute you begin to do what you really want to do, it's really a different kind of life. (Buckminster Fuller)
If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don't bother trying to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking. View quote
Buckminster Fuller
It is not for me to change you. The question is, how can I be of service to you without diminishing your degrees of freedom? View quote
Buckminster Fuller
There is enough for everyone. People think that there isn't enough, so they get as much as they can, so many people don't have enough. View quote
Buckminster Fuller
Don't try to make me consistent. I am learning all the time. View quote
Buckminster Fuller