R. Buckminster Fuller Quotes

The most important thing about Spaceship Earth - an instruction book didn't come with it.

God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the seas…. God said “Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It’s yours.”

For how many people do you think might yet stand on this planet before the sun grows cold? That's the responsibility we hold in our hands.

The Earth does not belong to us: we belong to the Earth.

The images of Earth's delicate biosphere, contrasting with the sterile moonscape where the astronauts left their footsteps, have become iconic for environmentalists: these may indeed be the Apollo programme's most enduring legacy.

The human brain now holds the key to our future. We have to recall the image of the planet from outer space: a single entity in which air, water, and continents are interconnected. That is our home.

The heart of our relationship, this natural environment that has blessed us really all along the west coast of North America, on both sides of the border we've realized that this incredible natural wealth comes with a price.

Man is a complex animal; he makes deserts bloom and lakes die.

The earth is one big interconnected entity. If you hurt a piece, you hurt the whole. If you hurt the people, you hurt the environment.

Humans merely share the earth. We can only protect the land, not own it.

I realize the answer is not to create wilderness and walk away.

Fortunately, nature is as generous with its problems as Nobel with his fortune. The more we know, the more aware we are of what we know not.

The further human society drifts away from nature, the less we understand interdependence.

In a fragile environment, we need to be aware of ourselves as members of a uniquely powerful species living among other species who are quite as interesting as we are but vulnerable to us because we are cleverer in more destructive ways.

If we do not permit the earth to produce beauty and joy, it will in the end not produce food, either.

Each generation takes the earth as trustees. We ought to bequeath to posterity as many forests and orchards as we have exhausted and consumed.

Nature has provided us a spectacular toolbox. The toolbox exists. An architect far better and smarter than us has given us that toolbox, and we now have the ability to use it.

The first rule of sustainability is to align with natural forces, or at least not try to defy them.

Genetic design is something we can use to fight the lack of sustainability we humans are forcing on the earth's environment.

If you don't have an ethic of conservation, you basically have a license to drive a Hummer through the Amazon.

The earth is a fickle place for all life, not least the human project of civilization.

If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?

It is not oil or the environment, it is oil and the environment. We are living in the same world. We are not enemies.

We're not passengers on Spaceship Earth. We're the crew.

We habitually engage in meddling with nature. Until this century most of this meddling was good. Witness the preservation of the European countryside. But since then we've smoked it up and littered it and dumped too much in too many waters. I don't think it's our privilege to behave this way.