R. Buckminster Fuller Quotes

The poet, like the lover, is a menace on the assembly line.

Conformists die, but heretics live forever.

Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer.

I'm a smart enough person to know that I don't want everyone to be cookie-cutter versions of the nine guys who wear Converse sneakers.

To be different is not necessarily to be ugly; to have a different idea is not necessarily to be wrong. The worst possible thing is for all of us to begin to look and talk and act and think alike.

The creative universe begins with its essentiality, and, whatever path the imagination takes, ends with its purity.

If I did what has already been done, I would be a plagiarist and would consider myself unworthy; so I do something different and people call me a scoundrel. I'd rather be a scoundrel than a plagiarist!

Wasn't the whole point of being an artist, or at least part of it, that you didn't have to wear a tie?

You spend all your life trying to do something they put people in asylums for.

All art is based on non-conformity.

Ideation is not a synonym for innovation, conformity is not its simple antonym, and innovation is not the automatic consequence of "creative thinking.".

I am very attracted by bad taste-it is a lot more exciting than that supposed good taste which is nothing more than a standardized way of looking at things.

We all have to fight to maintain our unique style and taste in a world that would have us conform.

It's boring to be like everybody.

The world in general disapproves of creativity, and to be creative in public is particularly bad. Even to speculate in public is rather worrisome.

You must pay for conformity. All goes well as long as you run with conformists. But you, who are honest men in other particulars, know that there is alive somewhere a man whose honesty reaches to this point also, that he shall not kneel to false gods, and, on the day when you meet him, you sink into the class of counterfeits.

Style is originality; fashion is fascism. The two are eternally and unalterably opposed.

The business community wants remarkable advertising, but turns a cold shoulder to the kind of people who can produce it. That is why most advertisements are so infernally dull.... our business needs massive transfusions of talent. And talent, I believe, is most likely to be found among nonconformists, dissenters, and rebels.

I notice that when people have no sense of responsibility, you call them either criminals or geniuses.

The beating of drums, which delights young writers who serve a party, sounds to him who does not belong to the party line like a rattling of chains, and excites sympathy rather than admiration.

I just tend to admire people who go for what they believe in, like David Lynch for example, and just say what goes through their heads, and are not afraid of people not accepting them. I have no respect for people who deliberately try to be weird to attract attention, but if that's who you honestly are, you shouldn't try to "normalize yourself". It's a fine line.

Angry contradiction of the patriarch is not creativity; it's delinquency calling for attention. Difference for the sake of difference is as empty an achievement as slavishly following the commercial imperative.

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.

Never change for the mainstream—stay in your lane, and if you’re talented and resilient enough the mainstream will come to you.