This is a curated selection of Buckminster Fuller quotes (personally curated by me on my own lifelong learning journey). This page is intended as a learning resource for educational purposes and only meant to offer an overview/introduction. Short quotes aren’t a substitute for source material, so if this page sparks your interest, explore more deeply by checking out Buckminster Fuller’s books (Amazon).
Page Contents:
- Nature & Evolution Quotes
- Mind & Thinking Quotes
- Learning & Comprehensivity Quotes
- Problem Solving & Final Exam Quotes
- God Quotes
25 Buckminster Fuller Quotes on Nature, Mind, God, & More
Buckminster Fuller Quotes on Nature & Evolution
“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.” — Buckminster Fuller
“When people say something is ‘natural’, natural is the way they found it when they checked into the picture, and this picture has been changing incredibly rapidly … I don’t have a word for ‘artificial’. I don’t have a word ‘unnatural’. I say, if nature permits it, it is natural; if nature doesn’t permit it, you can’t do it. You may not be familiar with the fact that nature allows that, but your unfamiliarity doesn’t make it unnatural.” — Buckminster Fuller
“I only was able to do what I did because it was of the times. Things had to be ripe. Nature has a gestation rate.” — Buckminster Fuller
“Evolution is at work. You and I didn’t invent that universe, we didn’t invent that planet, we didn’t invent those laws. There’s something much bigger operating. The thing to do is to stand off and try to see what those are.” — Buckminster Fuller
“Evolution is trying very hard to make all humanity one family, giving up all nations … What’s going on is a swift integration in a myriad ways of all humanity—not into united nations, but into united-space-planet people.” — Buckminster Fuller
Buckminster Fuller Quotes on Mind & Thinking
“All humans were born naked, absolutely helpless, ignorant. We had to find our way by trial and error gradually to discover that that we have mind, and that mind can discover principles.” — Buckminster Fuller
“We are here clearly for our minds—our capability to discover principles operating in the universe … Human mind has gradually been pulling the curtain aside and discovering some of the great design of the universe itself.” — Buckminster Fuller
“All of humanity now has the option to ‘make it’ successfully and sustainably, by virtue of our having minds, discovering principles and being able to employ these principles to do more with less.” — Buckminster Fuller
“This is the first generation saying, ‘I’m going to do my own thinking.’ This is a great change because if we do survive it’s because man is using his mind, is doing his own thinking, and not leaving it to somebody else … Dare to go along with the truth mind discovers.” — 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 … You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” — Buckminster Fuller
Buckminster Fuller Quotes on Learning & Comprehensivity
“Dare to be naive … That’s the only way you’ll ever learn anything.” — Buckminster Fuller
“Every time we make an experiment, you always learn more—you can’t learn less … The know-how always increases.” — Buckminster Fuller
“The Oxford dictionary has about 100,000 words, indicating that little human beings in their trial and error have discovered over 100,000 nuances of information that were so different that they really needed their own word.” — Buckminster Fuller
“Man is designed to be a comprehensivist … Deliberately specializing man was led back unwittingly once more to reemploy his innately comprehensive capabilities … Man himself is being forced to reestablish, employ, and enjoy his innate ‘comprehensivity.'” — 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.” — Buckminster Fuller
Buckminster Fuller Quotes on Problem Solving & Final Exam
“What is common to all lives in all history? Problems, problems, problems. We’re here for that … Our game on our planet is problem solving.” — Buckminster Fuller
“Society has what I call ‘emergence by emergency’ … My ideas have undergone a process of emergence by emergency. When they are needed badly enough, they are accepted.” — Buckminster Fuller
“Humanity is now in what I call a ‘final exam’ as to whether we qualify to stay here … The present evolutionary crisis of humans on planet Earth is that of a final examination for their continuance in universe. It’s not an examination of political, economic, or religious systems, but of the integrity of each and all individual humans … We ought to be looking into what’s my experience teach me needs to be done, which if attended to properly can bring success for all humanity, and if left unattended might find all humanity in real trouble … There is no joy equal to that of being able to work for all humanity and doing what you’re doing well.” — Buckminster Fuller
“I now know with the resources we’ve already mined and the knowledge we already have, it’s highly feasible to take care of all of humanity at a higher standard of living than anybody has ever known … It is a mater of converting the high technology from weaponry to livingry … Because of the working assumption that there is nowhere nearly enough to go around, this is why we have politics … Having discovered there really is enough to go around, I then find that politics are really now obsolete … If we dumped all the machinery and technology we have into the ocean, within six months humanity would die. If we dumped all the politicians all around the world in the ocean, everything would go along very nicely.” — Buckminster Fuller
“I am progressively ceasing to own things, not on a political-schism basis … but simply on a practical basis. Possession is becoming progressively burdensome and wasteful and therefore obsolete … We don’t really own anything. We are really part of an extraordinary regenerative system, and it’s really that kind of truth that’s going to manifest.” — Buckminster Fuller
Buckminster Fuller Quotes on God
“By ‘real God’ I don’t mean a person, but I mean the great intellectual integrity governing all the great designing.” — Buckminster Fuller
“Since all the cosmic scale inventing and designing is accomplishable only by intellect, and it’s not the intellect of humans, it’s obviously that of the eternal intellectual integrity we call ‘God.’” — Buckminster Fuller
“The greatest mistake we have ever made is to assume that the supreme authority over life and universe is not God but is either like organized religions or the humanly constituted most powerful socioeconomic systems leaders.” — Buckminster Fuller
“Without God, the little individual human could do nothing. However, in addition to brains, God gave humans mind. Human mind alone has been given access to some of the eternal laws governing physical and metaphysical universe.” — Buckminster Fuller
“Try to understand what God is doing; try to look at it evolutionarily.” — Buckminster Fuller
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