Buckminster Fuller

change fight reality new model obsolete

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.

To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

― Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)

caterpillar butterfly

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

― Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)

live category thing process universe

“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 (1895-1983)

human intelligent stupid alternative

“Humans beings always do the most intelligent thing…after they’ve tried every stupid alternative and none of them have worked”

― Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)

obvious universe solids surface line

“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.”

― Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)

humanity right technology wrong reasons

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

― Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)

mistakes smart

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

― Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)

existing paradigm obsolete new

"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.

That, in essence, is the higher service to which we are all being called."

— Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)

job employment Malthus drudgery

"We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everyone has to be employed at some sort of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwian theory, he must justify his right to exist."

— Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)

problem artifact obsolete economic grid basis kilowatt kWh

“I always try to solve problems by some artifact, some tool or invention that makes what people are doing obsolete, so that it makes this particular kind of problem no longer relevant. My answer would be to develop a world energy grid, an electric grid where everybody is on the same grid. All of a sudden, there would be no problems anymore, no international troubles. Our new economic basis wouldn't be gold or dollars; it would be kilowatt hours.”

— Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)