Every time man makes a new experiment he always learns…

Every time man makes a new experiment he always learns more. He cannot learn less. He may learn that what he thought was true was not true. By the elimination of a false premise, his basic capital wealth which in his given lifetime is disembarrassed of further preoccupation with considerations of how to employ a worthless time-consuming hypothesis. Freeing his time for its more effective exploratory investment is to give man increased wealth.

Sourced, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1963)

Other Buckminster Fuller Quotes

If the 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? - View Quote Details on If the success or failure of this planet, and of…
Thinking is a momentary dismissal of irrelevancies. - View Quote Details on Thinking is a momentary dismissal of irrelevancies.
Every child has an enormous drive to demonstrate competence. If humans are not required to earn a living to be provided survival needs, many are going to want very much to be productive, but not at those tasks they did not choose to do but were forced to accept in order to earn money. Instead, humans will spontaneously take upon themselves those tasks that world society really needs to have done. - View Quote Details on Every child has an enormous drive to demonstrate competence. If…
What humans have spontaneously identified as good and bad — or as positive and negative — are evolutionary complementations in need of more accurate identifications. - View Quote Details on What humans have spontaneously identified as good and bad —…
The wellspring of reality is the family of weightless generalized principles. - View Quote Details on The wellspring of reality is the family of weightless generalized…
The nearest each of us can come to God is by loving the truth. - View Quote Details on The nearest each of us can come to God is…
As a consequence of the slavish “categoryitis” the scientifically illogical, and as we shall see, often meaningless questions “Where do you live?” “What are you?” “What religion?” “What race?” “What nationality?” are all thought of today as logical questions. By the twenty-first century it either will have become evident to humanity that these questions are absurd and anti-evolutionary or men will no longer be living on Earth. - View Quote Details on As a consequence of the slavish “categoryitis” the scientifically illogical,…
There are no solids. There are no things. There are only interfering and noninterfering patterns operative in pure principle, and principles are eternal. Principles never contradict principles…. The synergetic integral of the totality of principles is God, whose sum-total behavior in pure principle is beyond our comprehension and is utterly mysterious to us, because as humans — in pure principle — we do not and never will know all the principles. - View Quote Details on There are no solids. There are no things. There are…
We evolute toward ever lesser brain comprehension lags — ergo, toward ever diminishing error; ergo, ever diminishing misunderstandings; ergo, ever diminishing fear, and its brain-lagging painful errors of objectivity; wherefore we approach eternal instantaneity of absolute and total comprehension. The eternal instantaneity of no lag at all. However, we have now learned from our generalizations of the great complexity of the interactions of principles as we are disembarrassed of our local, exclusively physical chemistry of information-sensing devices — that what is approached is eternal and instant awareness of absolute reality of all that ever existed. All the great metaphysical integrity of all the individuals, which is potential and inherent in the complex interactions of generalized principles, will always and only coexist eternally. - View Quote Details on We evolute toward ever lesser brain comprehension lags — ergo,…
Our brains deal exclusively with special-case experiences. 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. - View Quote Details on Our brains deal exclusively with special-case experiences. Only our minds…