R. Buckminster Fuller Quotes

Those who have much are often greedy. Those who have little always share.

The more we take the less we become, the fortune of one man means less for some.

There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed.

Well, like I said, there's no reason everyone can't have a piece of the pie, even if there's a gordo there eating most of it.

The greatest difficulty with the world is not its ability to produce, but the unwillingness to share.

You shouldn't go around the world behaving ruthlessly when you don't have to. Sometimes you do have to. There is only so much pie to go around. If you're going to take more than your fair share of pie, as socialists would look at it, then someone else is not getting his. That means you've got to take it away from them.

Poverty wants some, luxury many, and avarice all things.

Poverty is born of super-abundance itself.

Nature is rich; but everywhere man, the heir of nature, is poor. Never in this happy country or elsewhere except in the Land of Miracle, where "they did all eat and were filled"-has there been enough of anything for the people. Never since time began have all the sons and daughters of men been all warm, and all filled, and all shod and roofed.

Perhaps a day might come when there would be at last be enough to go round

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed

We are loaded down with too many good things, more than we could ever need, while others are desperate for a small loaf. The good things we cling to are more than money; we hoard our resources, our gifts, our time, our families, out friends....how ludicrous it is to hold on to the abundance God has given us and merely repeat the words 'thank you'.

It’s scandalous when one thinks about the people who live in a world in which they need not be hungry, in which they need not die without medical care, in which they need not be illiterate, they need not feel hopeless and miserable so much of the time, and yet they are.

When somebody greedily comes along and thinks that they gonna snatch everything, and you have so many people that have not, the passion that drives me is trying to make them understand that they have to share. So, my art reflects that; the whole reason I do what I do reflects that.

If you want a fulfilled life, stop thinking about wealthy people and what they have and you don't. Stop thinking from a place of scarcity.

There is enough to go around. Lack of the will to share is the problem, not lack of the stuff to share.

Abundance is rooted in community, not individualism. Abundance is what is before our eyes, but we cannot see when we are blinded by greed.

Greed says there is never enough. Abundance says there is more than enough. Greed closes the door behind itself. Abundance opens the door for others.

A soul that is reluctant to share does not as a rule have much of its own. Miserliness is here a symptom of meagerness.

The hoarders, who are anxiously worried about losing something, are, psychologically speaking, the poor impoverished people, regardless of how much they have. Whoever is capable of giving of themselves is rich.

He is rich enough who does not want bread.

Isn't life strange? There are people who have so many leftover clothes they can't stuff them all in their wardrobe. And then there are people like me, whose socks never match.

Let's suppose we all just materialized on Earth and there was a bunch of potatoes on the ground, okay? There's just six of us. Only six humans. We come into a clearing and there's potatoes on the ground. Now, my instinct would be, let's everybody get some potatoes. "Everybody got a potato? Joey didn't get a potato! He's small, he can't hold as many potatoes. Give Joey some of your potatoes." "No, these are my potatoes!" That's the Republicans. "I collected more of them, I got a bigger pile of potatoes, they're mine. If you want some of them, you're going to have to give me something."

A wealthy doctor who can help a poor man, and will not without a fee, has less sense of humanity than a poor ruffian, who kills a rich man to supply his necessities.

My definition of prosperity would be quite different than what most people probably imagine or think, because I think that a wholeness word that means nothing missing, nothing broken. It's not finances or materialism.