Top 250 R. Buckminster Fuller Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “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.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

52. “God is a verb, not a noun.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

53. “It is the integrity of each individual human that is in final examination. On personal integrity hangs humanity’s fate.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

54. “I see God in the instruments and mechanisms that work reliably.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

55. “Integrity is the courage and self-discipline to cooperate and initiate according to the Divine, which you know in your heart as Truth.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

56. “Our beds are empty two-thirds of the time. Our living rooms are empty seven-eighths of the time. Our office buildings are empty one-half of the time. It’s time we gave this some thought.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

57. “All children are born geniuses, and we spend the first six years of their lives degeniusing them.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

58. “Nature is a totally efficient, self-regenerati ng system. IF we discover the laws that govern this system and live synergistically within them, sustainability will follow and humankind will be a success.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

59. “Humanity has the option to become successful on our planet if we reorient world production away from weaponry – from killingry to livingry. Can we convince humanity in time?”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

60. “We must progress to the stage of doing all the right things for all the right reasons instead of doing all the right things for all the wrong reasons.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

61. “The future is a choice between Utopia and oblivion.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

62. “The further art advances the closer it approaches science, the further science advances the closer it approaches art.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

63. “Life is the spirit incarnate in time.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

64. “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.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

65. “The wave is not the water. The water merely told us about the wave moving by.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

66. “I am a passenger on the spaceship Earth.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

67. “Our power is in our ability to decide.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

68. “I’m not trying to copy Nature, I’m trying to find the principles she’s using.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

69. “None of the world’s problems will have a solution until the world’s individuals become thoroughly self-educated.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

70. “One can study a caterpillar forever and never be able to predict a butterfly.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

71. “I’m not a genius. I’m just a tremendous bundle of experience.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

72. “Whenever I draw a circle, I immediately want to step out of it.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

73. “How often I found where I should be going only by setting out for somewhere else.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

74. “Physics has found no straight lines. Instead, the physical universe consists of only waves undulating back and forth allowing for corrections and balance.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

75. “We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

76. “I have great hope for tomorrow. My hope lies in three things-truth, youth, and love.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

77. “You can’t learn less.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

78. “Love is omni-inclusive, progressively exquisite, understanding and compassionately attuned to other than self.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

79. “Either war is obsolete, or men are.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

80. “Never show unfinished work.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

81. “To ask a politician to lead us is to ask the tail of a dog to lead the dog.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

82. “The nearest each of us can come to God is by loving the truth.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

83. “The explicable requires the inexplicable. Experience requires the nonexperienceable. The obvious requires the mystical.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

84. “The highest of generalizations is the synergetic integration of truth and love.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

85. “When individuals join in a cooperative venture, the power generated far exceeds what they could have accomplished acting individually.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

86. “Those who play with the devil’s toys will be brought by degrees to wield his sword.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

87. “On personal integrity hangs humanity’s fate.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

88. “There is only one revolution tolerable to all men, all societies, all political systems: Revolution by design and invention.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

89. “Whatever humans have learned had to be learned as a consequence only of trial and error experience. Humans have learned only through mistakes.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

90. “I am deeply impressed with the designer of the universe; I am confident I couldnt have done anywhere near such a good job.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

91. “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.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

92. “How do we make the world work?”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

93. “We live in a decaying age. Young people no longer respect their parents. They are rude and impatient. They frequently inhabit taverns and have no self control.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

94. “There is no such thing as genius, some children are just less damaged than others.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

95. “God is the great comprehensive a priori integrity of Universe within which human beings find themselves to be operating.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

96. “A problem adequately stated is a problem well on its way to being solved.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

97. “Nature does have manure and she does have roots as well as blossoms, and you can’t hate the manure and blame the roots for not being blossoms.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

98. “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.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

99. “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.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

100. “I look for what needs to be done.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller