Buckminster Fuller was a designer, inventor, writer and a hero of sustainability. He said and wrote many amazing things, including:
“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.”
“You have to decide whether you want to make money or make sense, because the two are mutually exclusive.”
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
“Nature is a totally efficient, self-regenerating system. If we discover the laws that govern this system and live synergistically within them, sustainability will follow and humankind will be a success.”
“A problem adequately stated is a problem well on its way to being solved.”
“Search others for their virtue, and yourself for your vices.”
“Real wealth is ideas plus energy.”
“To do more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Ignorance and greed are part of the evolutionary process, which is just to say that mistakes are part of learning. There is nothing bad about behaviors or perceptions that do not work; they simply have to be given up and replaced by behaviors or perceptions that do work.”
“I have spent most of my life unlearning things that were proved not to be true”
“When individuals join in a cooperative venture, the power generated far exceeds what they could have accomplished acting individually.”