R. Buckminster Fuller Quotes

The minute that you're not learning I believe you're dead.

I keep working because I learn something new all the time.

Scientists learn about the world in three ways: They analyze statistical patterns in the data, they do experiments, and they learn from the data and ideas of other scientists. The recent studies show that children also learn in these ways.

To say that prediction is the purpose of a scientific theory is to confuse means with ends. It is like saying that the purpose of a spaceship is to burn fuel. ... Passing experimental tests is only one of many things a theory has to do to achieve the real purpose of science, which is to explain the world.

There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge available to us: observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.

I see no difference between scientific exploration and human exploration.

Science is the tool of the Western mind and with it more doors can be opened than with bare hands.

Whereas the man of action binds his life to reason and its concepts so that he will not be swept away and lost, the scientific investigator builds his hut right next to the tower of science so that he will be able to work on it and to find shelter for himself beneath those bulwarks which presently exist.

Experiment is fundamentally only induced observation.

The first steps in the path of discovery, and the first approximate measures, are those which add most to the existing knowledge of mankind.

In science, one learns the most by studying what seems to be the least.

Every time man makes a new experiment he always learns more. He cannot learn less. He may learn that what he thought was true was not true. By the elimination of a false premise, his basic capital wealth which in his given lifetime is disembarrassed of further preoccupation with considerations of how to employ a worthless time-consuming hypothesis. Freeing his time for its more effective exploratory investment is to give man increased wealth.

Experiment is the mother of knowledge.

One important idea is that science is a means whereby learning is achieved, not by mere theoretical speculation on the one hand, nor by the undirected accumulation of practical facts on the other, but rather by a motivated iteration between theory and practice.

It's the journey that matters. Learning is more important than the test. Practice well, and the games will take care of themselves.

If it disagrees with experiment, it's wrong.

Truly every generation discovers the world all new again and knows it can improve it.

Acquiring knowledge is a form of imitation.

Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons, with the greatest for the last.

The young child approaching a new subject or anew problem is like the scientist operating at the edge of his chosen field.

The test of all knowledge is experiment.

As countries get rich they start increasing education and the very educated people tend to not like trial and error, because they think they're obligated to use the body of knowledge they have.

Physics and those parts of other fields that grow out of physics - chemistry, the structure of big molecules - in those domains, there is a lot of progress. In many other domains, there is very little progress in developing real scientific understanding.

If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and its development