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We speak erroneously of “artificial” materials, “synthetics”, and so forth. The basis for this erroneous terminology is the notion that Nature has made certain things which we call natural, and everything else is “man-made”, ergo artificial.

R. Buckminster Fuller

Initiative can neither be created nor delegated. It can only spring from the self-determining individual, who decides that the wisdom of others is not always better than his own.
R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER

Determine Initiative Self Spring
Observation of my life to date shows that the larger the number for whom I work, the more positively effective I become. Thus, it is obvious that if I work always and only for all humanity, I will be optimally effective.
R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER

Humanity Numbers Obvious
Every time man makes a new experiment he always learns more. He cannot learn less.
R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER

Experiments Men More
The dark ages still reign over all humanity, and the depth and persistence of this domination are only now becoming clear. This Dark Ages prison has no steel bars, chains, or locks. Instead, it is locked by misorientation and built of misinformation.
R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER

Dark Persistence Thinking
Nature is all that we think we know plus all that we don’t know whether or not we know that we don’t know it.
R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER

Knows Plus Thinking
There is something patently insane about all the typewriters sleeping with all the beautiful plumbing in the beautiful office buildings -and all the people sleeping in the slums.
R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER

Beautiful Sleep Typewriters
Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we’ve been ignorant of their value.
R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER

Business Ignorant Littering
Truth is the progressive diminution of residual error.
R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER

Errors Progressive Truth
We find all the no-life-support-wealth-producing people going to their 1980s jobs in their cars and buses, spending trillions of dollars’ worth of petroleum daily to get to their no-wealth-producing jobs.
R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER

Home Jobs People Petroleum Producing
Don’t change the man. Change his environment.
R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER

Environment He Man Men
Some of us are just less damaged than others.
R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER

Damaged Learning Others
Mistakes are great, the more I make the smarter I get.
R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER

Mistake More Smarter
You do not belong to you. You belong to the universe. The significance of you will remain forever obscure to you, but you may assume you are fulfilling your significance if you apply yourself to converting all you experience to highest advantage to others.
R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER

Forever Humanity Spiritual
Only our minds are able to discover the generalized principles operating without exception in each and every special-experience case which if detected and mastered will give knowledgeable advantage in all instances.
R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER

Generalized Giving Mind Special
When individuals join in a cooperative venture, the power generated far exceeds what they could have accomplished acting individually.
R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER

Acting Peace Venture
It is essential that anyone reading this book know at the outset that the author is apolitical. I was convinced in 1927 that humanity’s most fundamental survival problems could never be solved by politics.
R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER

Book Humanity Reading