R. Buckminster Fuller Quotes

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

We are living in a state of constant scientific revolution. There is not a single area that you can name that is now seen as it was seen a hundred years ago. Nothing is left of the world view of one hundred years ago.

The Stone Age did not end because humans ran out of stones. It ended because it was time for a re-think about how we live.

It's the same each time with progress. First they ignore you, then they say you're mad, then dangerous, then there's a pause and then you can't find anyone who disagrees with you.

We live in an era of revolution, the revolution of rising expectations.

Listen, the next revolution is gonna be a revolution of ideas.

If your goal is to change the world, you can't start by doing things the same old way because it sells better.

Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: 1- It's completely impossible. 2- It's possible, but it's not worth doing. 3- I said it was a good idea all along.

Our ability to create has outreached our ability to use wisely the products of our invention.

... science is the most revolutionary force in the world.

What seems impossible today, may half a century hence have become commonplace.

Once, even the simple metal needle challenged the conventional thinking of a time.

Modernity is disruptive, and I endorse that.

Any time there is a new idea, it can take some time for policy to catch up to it.

Nothing new is on the earth right now. Technology, the things that we're discovering, it's been sitting here just waiting for someone to brush it off and go, 'Oh, let me read that. Let me see how I can use this information.' And it doesn't matter if it's from a tech perspective or a philosophical perspective.

Each work has to pass through these stages—ridicule, opposition, and then acceptance. Those who think ahead of their time are sure to be misunderstood.

He who today utters a bold truth that seems to shock some old institution with the premonition of destruction, and that scares men from their propriety, will a hundred years hence be regarded as a remarkably conservative man. And yet the people who stand peculiarly upon what they call the foundations of conservatism, and hold to hard, practical facts, now stand upon that which one hundred years ago was rank heresy.

Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed.

In the age of revolution you have to be able to imagine revolutionary alternatives to the status quo. If you can't, you'll be relegated to the swollen ranks of keyboard-pounding automatons.

Innovation violates tradition--attacks it in public and steals from it in private.

Just as energy is the basis of life itself, and ideas the source of innovation, so is innovation the vital spark of all human change, improvement and progress.

A world in everlasting conflict between the new idea and the old allegiances, new arts and new inventions against the old establishment.

We live in an extraordinary time. We are caught up in a pace of social and technological change that makes our work, our business and education, sources of anxiety and unfulfillment. Thinking about our thinking and observing our observations can bring us a new world in which work becomes a place for innovation, and in which peace, wisdom, friendship, companionship and community can exist. Let us design this world together.

I'm one of those people that think Thomas Edison and the light bulb changed the world more than Karl Marx ever did.

The content could be done anyplace, but the real invention is the architecture. The architecture is the only work that really defines a new way of doing things. I think this point is fundamental.