Jean Marie > Jean's Quotes

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

“I'm not trying to counsel any of you to do anything really special except dare to think. And to dare to go with the truth. And to dare to really love completely.”
― R. Buckminster Fuller

“When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty........ but
when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is
wrong.”
― R. Buckminster Fuller

“There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly.”
― Buckminster R. Fuller

“I live on Earth at present, and I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process – an integral function of the universe.”
― R. Buckminster Fuller

“Dare to be naive.”
― Buckminster Fuller

“Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines.”
― Richard Buckminster Fuller

“I am convinced that creativity is a priori to the integrity of the universe and that life is regenerative and conformity meaningless.”
― R. Buckminster Fuller, I Seem to Be a Verb

“I'm not a genius. I'm just a tremendous bundle of experience.”
― R. Buckminster Fuller

“Geniuses are just people who had good mothers.”
― Buckminster Fuller

“In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete.”
― Buckminster R. Fuller

“If success or failure of this planet and of human beings depended on how I am and what I do... HOW WOULD I BE? WHAT WOULD I DO?”
― R. Buckminister Fuller

“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.”
― Richard Buckminster Fuller, Grunch of Giants

“We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”
― Charles Bukowski

“Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.”
― Zora Neale Hurston

“Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.”
― Henry Miller

“Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“I just invent. Then I wait until man comes around to needing what I've invented.”
― Buckminster Fuller

“We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.”
― Buckminster Fuller

“I love myself when I am laughing. . . and then again when I am looking mean and impressive.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, I Love Myself When I Am Laughing And Then Again When I Am Looking Mean & Impressive

“All that you need in the way of technique for drawing is bound up in the
technique of seeing - that is, of understanding, which after all is mainly
dependent on feeling. If you attempt to see in the way prescribed by any
mechanical system of drawing, old or new, you will lose the understanding of
the fundamental impulse. Your drawing becomes a meaningless diagram
and the time so spent is wasted.”
― Kimon Nicolaides, The Natural Way to Draw

“I do my thing and you do your thing.
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,
And you are not in this world to live up to mine.
You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful.
If not, it can't be helped.”
― Fritz Perls

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.”
― Max Planck, Where Is Science Going?

“This is one of man's oldest riddles. How can the independence of human volition be harmonized with the fact that we are integral parts of a universe which is subject to the rigid order of nature's laws?”
― Max Planck, Where Is Science Going?

“We have no right to assume that any physical laws exist, or if they have existed up to now, that they will continue to exist in a similar manner in the future.”
― Max Planck, The Universe in the Light of Modern Physics

“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
― Max Planck

“All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together.
We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.”
― Max Planck

“The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

“The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch someone else do it wrong without comment.”
― T. H. White