How often I found where I should be going only by setting out for somewhere else.
Meaning of the quote
Sometimes, the best way to find where you're supposed to go is by first trying to go somewhere else. This quote from American inventor R. Buckminster Fuller suggests that exploring new paths and ideas can actually help you discover your true destination, even if it's not the one you originally had in mind.
More quotes from R. Buckminster Fuller
Sometimes I think we’re alone. Sometimes I think we’re not. In either case, the thought is staggering.
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.
A designer is an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist.
People should think things out fresh and not just accept conventional terms and the conventional way of doing things.
Parents are usually more careful to bestow knowledge on their children rather than virtue, the art of speaking well rather than doing well; but their manners should be of the greatest concern.
Now there is one outstanding important fact regarding spaceship earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it.
I look for what needs to be done. After all, that’s how the universe designs itself.
If you are the master be sometimes blind, if you are the servant be sometimes deaf.
How often I found where I should be going only by setting out for somewhere else.
Here is God’s purpose – for God, to me, it seems, is a verb not a noun, proper or improper.
War is the ultimate tool of politics.
Man knows so much and does so little.
Search others for their virtue, and yourself for your vices.
Great nations are simply the operating fronts of behind-the-scenes, vastly ambitious individuals who had become so effectively powerful because of their ability to remain invisible while operating behind the national scenery.
Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them.
We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims.
If humanity does not opt for integrity we are through completely. It is absolutely touch and go. Each one of us could make the difference.
Truth is a tendency.
We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody.
Most of my advances were by mistake. You uncover what is when you get rid of what isn’t.
Either war is obsolete, or men are.
The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.
Faith is much better than belief. Belief is when someone else does the thinking.
Tension is the great integrity.
Don’t fight forces, use them.
Gold and silver from the dead turn often into lead.
The earth is like a spaceship that didn’t come with an operating manual.
You can never learn less, you can only learn more.
Rashness is the faithful, but unhappy parent of misfortune.
Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we’ve been ignorant of their value.
Integrity is the essence of everything successful.
Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.
Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment.
Those who play with the devil’s toys will be brought by degrees to wield his sword.
Tombs are the clothes of the dead and a grave is a plain suit; while an expensive monument is one with embroidery.
By 2000, politics will simply fade away. We will not see any political parties.
Let architects sing of aesthetics that bring Rich clients in hordes to their knees; Just give me a home, in a great circle dome Where stresses and strains are at ease.
Dictators never invent their own opportunities.
A proverb is much matter distilled into few words.
There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.
God is a verb, not a noun.
I just invent, then wait until man comes around to needing what I’ve invented.
The most important thing about Spaceship Earth – an instruction book didn’t come with it.
What usually happens in the educational process is that the faculties are dulled, overloaded, stuffed and paralyzed so that by the time most people are mature they have lost their innate capabilities.
Ninety-nine percent of who you are is invisible and untouchable.
I’m not a genius. I’m just a tremendous bundle of experience.
Love is metaphysical gravity.
God, to me, it seems, is a verb not a noun, proper or improper.
My ideas have undergone a process of emergence by emergency. When they are needed badly enough, they are accepted.