R. Buckminster Fuller

Of course, our failures are a consequence of many factors, but possibly one of the most important is the fact that society operates on the theory that specialization is the key to success, not realizing that specialization precludes comprehensive thinking.

Now there is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship Earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it.

Dare to be naive.

When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.

Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment

Children are born true scientists. They spontaneously experiment and experience and reexperience again. They select, combine, and test, seeking to find order in their experiences - "which is the mostest? which is the leastest?" They smell, taste, bite, and touch-test for hardness, softness, springiness, roughness, smoothness, coldness, warmness: they heft, shake, punch, squeeze, push, crush, rub, and try to pull things apart.

I am the only guinea pig I have.

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.

Racism, pollution and the rest of it are themselves very close to extinction.

A self-balancing, 28-jointed adaptor-based biped; an electro-chemical reduction plant, integral with segregated stowages of special energy extracts in storage batteries, for subsequent actuation of thousands of hydraulic and pneumatic pumps, with motors attached; 62,000 miles of capillaries....

I think I am a verb.

Either war is obsolete or men are.

God is a verb.

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

Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the thought is staggering.

Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment.