Top 250 R. Buckminster Fuller Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “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

Featured in: Change Quotes, Transformation Quotes, Changing the World Quotes, Problem-Solving Quotes, Innovation Quotes

2. “There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

Featured in: Struggle Quotes

3. “The more we learn the more we realize how little we know.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

Featured in: Lifelong Learning Quotes

4. “To do more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

Featured in: Efficiency Quotes

5. “There is no such thing as a failed experiment, only experiments with unexpected outcomes.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

Featured in: Creativity Quotes

6. “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

7. “Integrity is the essence of everything successful.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

Featured in: Integrity Quotes

8. “Love is metaphysical gravity.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

Featured in: Love Is Quotes, Valentine's Day Quotes

9. “We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

10. “Don’t fight forces, use them.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

11. “A fool with a tool still remains a fool.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

12. “In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

Featured in: Struggle Quotes

13. “You either make sense or you make money.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

Featured in: Quotes About Money, Making Money Quotes

14. “Wealth is a measure of a person’s ability to survive so many days forward.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

Featured in: Wealth Quotes

15. “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

16. “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.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

Featured in: Self-Care Quotes, Believe in Yourself Quotes, Firsts Quotes, Personal Branding Quotes

17. “All children are born geniuses; 9,999 out of every 10,000 are swiftly, inadvertently degeniusized by grownups.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

Featured in: Intelligence Quotes, Quotes About Kids, Genius Quotes

18. “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.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

19. “Sharing is having more.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

20. “People never leave a sinking ship until they see the lights of another ship approaching.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

21. “If we do more with less, our response will be adequate to take care of everybody.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

22. “You don’t belong to you. You belong to the Universe and you’re here to serve.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

23. “You can never learn less; you can only learn more. The reason I know so much is because I have made so many mistakes.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

Featured in: Sports Quotes, Mistake Quotes

24. “The purpose of our lives is to add value to the people of this generation and those that follow.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

25. “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.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

26. “If you change the environment, you change the people.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

27. “There is no energy crisis, only a crisis of ignorance.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

28. “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

29. “Real wealth is ideas plus energy.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

30. “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

31. “Mistakes are great, the more I make the smarter I get.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

32. “Everyone has the perfect gift to give the world-and if each of us is freed up to give our unique gift, the world will be in total harmony.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

33. “I have spent most of my life unlearning things that were proved not to be true.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

34. “The opposite of nature is impossible.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

35. “I call intuition cosmic fishing. You feel a nibble, then you’ve got to hook the fish.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

Featured in: Intuition Quotes

36. “The minute you begin to do what you really want to do, it’s really a different kind of life.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

37. “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?”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

38. “Geniuses are just people who had good mothers.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

39. “You can make money or you can make sense. The two are mutually exclusive.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

Featured in: Making Money Quotes

40. “The dark ages still reign over all humanity, and the depth and persistence of this domination are only now becoming clear. This Dark Ages prison has no steel bars, chains, or locks. Instead, it is locked by misorientation and built of misinformation.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

41. “Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

42. “Controlled time is our true wealth.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

43. “You can never learn less; you can only learn more.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

44. “Seeing-is-believing is a blind spot in man’s vision.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

45. “The Universe consists of non-simultaneously apprehended events.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

46. “A designer is an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

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

— R. Buckminster Fuller

48. “The reward for being a good problem solver is to be heaped with more and more difficult problems to solve.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

49. “Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

50. “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