Richard's speech during his visit at San Quentin prison (1959). Lot's of valuable thoughts expressed, here are some of them - selections, rough transcription from an audio. Full speech with introduction can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ai4IRYvc_qg

1. Buckminster Fuller @ San Quentin Prison 1959
(warning! these are selections, it's rough transcription from an audio)
(for full recording follow the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ai4IRYvc_qg)
“It really is a completely a personal rule of discipline that I have – not allowing myself to think what I'm
going say to anybody else in advance, cause I don't believe in pre-fabricated thoughts.”
“Now I know I can't jump very high and I can't run very fast – I'm extremely average and what I was
interested in - what the average fellow could do – but I'm really terribly interested not what some freak
could do or some terrific specialist, but what just an average guy could do in our moment in history –
that's what I'm out to. It's the basis of my talk with you.”
“I have a total strategy which I employ over and over again – try to find out all you can about any
subject and don't mind what kind of order it is at all. Try to get all you can about the subject and then
as you get all together, then you make a methodical subdivision – you take all the things that are in
books, all the things in film (if you want). You try some kind of a classification – it's the first great
intellectual act. I'm sure – that's the way our minds work.”
“When I wanted to get someone to back an idea which I had, I went around and get some mechanic
who is my friend and I told him what my invention was and if he got enthusiastic enough about it, then
I went told this man with money that this mechanic... I'm pretty sure he trusted this mechanic's
judgment and if mechanic said it's good - the man will back it. But I didn't expect anyone to back my
ideas. I don't know why I did have this feeling, but I just didn't expect .”
“One thing I could say was - I did seem to be a person of a wide, of a broad pattern of experience and
that there could be some value in that, but if I looked for what assets I had (because I had no money)
– I might be really valuable to society by virtue of a breath of experience.”
“I came to a point where there was pretty clear as far as any human being goes, everybody goes
through it – I' m really saying - AM I ANOTHER FAILURE? I better get myself out of the way so at
least my wife and a baby can <..>. Am I gonna be a dragdown or? Is there any possible reason why
you want to go on?”
“One reason why I was in great deal of trouble was – I've been really extremely accommodating in my
willingness to believe what other fellow asked me to believe. And I was over and over again in
enormous conflict between what is seemed to be good rules given by one fellow (who seemed to be
powerful in his area) and other fellow powerful in his area – each one telling you, giving you sort of the
rules of thumb that he though was - it.”
“I decided that the way that I've acquired bad rules and conflicting thoughts was through words.
Somebody told me these things and there for I saw.. I immediately became very suspicious of words.
Words seemed to be probably one of the most extraordinary tools and acquisitions of men. I don't

2. know weather man has been born with words, but I'm suspicious from what I have learned in the
educational system. Man have obviously evolved words and there might be the time when they didn't
have words. There are much more words that birds or monkeys. <...>I know people inventing words,
but most of the words were here before - so they are tools – they are obviously tools and I'm enough
of mechanic to know that you can use tools in a wrong way and it seemed to me that people - the
facility in which we can make these sounds with a parrot can copy a sound is possibly one of the ways
in which trouble starts.”
'So I've decided – It was very tough on my wife and and.. But I decided I was gonna try to have
moratorium on speech. For approximately two years didn't, I just didn't allow myself to make sounds. I
thought.. See if I could, by doing that - just force myself back to the point where I would really
understand what was it I was thinking and be sure when I made the sound that I really meant to make
that sound and it was not something I was just parroting. Cause I really learned how “factile” I was at
popping things off that somebody else gave me.”
“And although nobody has thought me how to think – I'm gonna have to think.”
“There are ships and there are airplanes and there are houses..”
“None of the tools that we know of, nothing we call machinery and so forth would exist in the world if
man was not in the world.”
“Experiences themselves begin and end – when we go to sleep we certainly don't know – you never
could prove when you wake up – you're the same fellow you went to sleep.”
“Anything I feel or think then, could possibly come out of anything except experiences. <...>. I could
not catch myself ever thinking in terms that didn't have something to do with experience. I don't know
weather you asked yourself that? Just to tell you – there is nobody around to mark our papers in this
kind of situation we're talking about - I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.”
“If I could only think in terms of experiences and I'm thinking HURT - then it has something to do with
experiences. Therefore, I said alright - is it possible then “experiences are finite packages – something
back on the shelf you can go and look at”. And there was time when I didn't feel so hurt.. I can
remember so, so.. If there was a time where there no hurts and hurts are coming since then – could
be - phenomenon we call hurt we can located somewhere within experiences that are up in the
shelves of my own life. And it could be then, if I went back and went over these experiences I might
really find out where something started happening that ends in hurt.'
“At the end where trouble starts - see if you can do something about it by re-organizing physical world
around you.”
“I'm sure that some uncle gave me a knife, before I was four years old and I eagerly wanted to try it
out so... and I Got something red out here in front of me. And it's kind of amusing – something red...
That's all. And then someone said “Oh darling you you cut yourself!” and grab you and rush you off
and give you cake and kisses. Every Time this red thing shows off I get this love and treatment – they

3. tell you've been hurt, so after a while you say “ok, i've not been hurt, but.. ” (audience laughs). I really
don't think that my first experiences of cutting myself there was any such thing - we would call, really
- an anguish kind of hurt about it. It was just red.”
“Every pain I had is really – my greatest resources on my packages of inventory of pain.”
“I really liked all people I've met working and I really liked mechanics and I found myself machine fitter
and I've made good mechanic and I work hard.”
“Suddenly, I was given some money by my years allowance and I didn't know anything about money
at all and I spent my whole years allowance in one week..”
“Patterns were suddenly taking place which seemed to move some people into power and some
people into non-power, that you could not see and you could not seem to deal with.”
“I've never lost any sense of proportion about individual and the big show, but I've gradually begin to
see that even as an individual, if he had enough right kind of experiences – could ask important
enough questions and find enough kind of answers to develop a very large set of machinery. And
could make the right kinds of experiments to convince himself whether they really work.”
“I began to see that there are tool complexes. A factory is a complex of tools.”
“Learn how to formulate questions which a machine can ask.”
“Think far enough ahead - regarding society and it's needs.”
“What I call – even – invisible tools, because next thing we begin to discover is that as we learn more
and more about principles – the principles themselves are inherently invisible, but they are made
visible as the tools.”
“This child didn't know the word “mine” and she's sitting there playing with her own bucket and another
child comes along and says “that's mine” and then somebody else came a long said thats mine. Pretty
soon, I saw her get up to somebody else and say “that's mine!” Year and a half old.. and just trying off.
And this is your license..”
“Something men tend to think about – I call this – they say - that's natural - that's they way things
always were and this machinery is something unnatural. So there is something they call – that's the
way it always was – there is nature. And I've begun to realize that this “the way it always was” - the
way things look natural to people is something itself can be older.”
“My granddaughter – she saw thousands, literally thousands of airplanes in the sky, before she ever
saw a bird – therefore we actually can say – airplanes were more normal in her sky than the bird. They
were more natural than bird.”

4. “Can an individual be effective in this moment of integrating world (in view of massive corporations,
massive habits, etc.). Could an individual actually be effective in this day on his own initiative - without
asking anybodys to say should he go ahead or not go ahead.”
“In thinking out loud - one of the things you've got to do – make very quick decisions as to weather
withing the amount of time available to communicate to somebody else or to yourself, weather you
have the right to choose or introduce certain things that would make the experience a little richer. “
“I don't know weather you know this man's name – some of you would.. There was Thomas Malthus -
man named Thomas Malthus in England (approximately contemporary of Darwin). Malthus is an
economist. I don't know if he was called an economist at that time, he is in a world of economics, so..
finance, in England. Thomas is a character living at a time when for the first time from all around the
world the first reports from the whole world are coming in. Now you see, up to this moment there was
no way you can get the reports about everything in the world – certainly regarding basic economics:
how many people there are and how fast they are growing and what kind of goods they seem to be
producing, what seems to be in their country and what can you expect out of this picture? And
Thomas Malthus suddenly ran into picture and he looked over the records and for a decade and
another decade back and <...> what he have found - told to the British.. He said - “It's very clear, now
that we see the whole world picture that no matter what else we've been dreaming about economics –
about good luck, or that there are gods that you can make sacrifices to – there seems to be that
people are producing themselves much more rapidly than they're able to produce the goods..
Therefore we can say that there is not enough to go around and the case is going to get worse and
worse..”
Up to the time of Thomas Malthus whatever anybody have had thought about – i'm not going to get
well here, but i'm going to get there. People began to migrate and here is why you had colonization
and migration. In the hope, if things get here too tight, there is a brand new country over there and
nobody in it and we got lots of room. We get sort of feeling that by the time you really split out – there
might be enough to go around – that's something like A FEELING. BUT Malthus blasted that feeling
completely.
He's not published widely at all, probably read in very secret records of British Empire, because they
were suddenly warned what they rub against. From this point on – the basic political theory of the
British empire was - IT IS YOU OR ME – and I don't feel unfriendly to other fellow, i'm very sorry
about it, but if it's going to be you or me – I hope it's going to be the other fellow. At least I hope it's not
going to be my kid.. Whatever are our human emotional relationships might be – we try to protect our
side even though we might say “i don't mind, i'm an old one.. but I would like the kids to have a
chance”.
“For instance if we think about coral reef. A little coral animal is probably unaware of a pattern of a
coral front. <...> He's within it and he has no way of seeing or feeling any report of the rest of the coral
front. Let alone the pattern of great coral reef, let alone the coral reef in the ocean and how it affects
the ocean of the Pacific. So unaware actually on the ocean currents on the earth in such a way as to
guarantee thermo balance that makes possible biological human life. In similar way - man was making
patterns in the universe that he was unaware of..”
“Every so often I have to do so and so.. Every so often I need water. I can't drink all the water that I
could use, but I've got a perfectly good kind of a cup here – so they were able then to get water when
they need it not needing to stay by the water all the time.”

5. “By large the nest did not much change in those patterns in any of the living species and men tend to
change the designs, you see.”
“We use our tools in a way as to make possible to make new tools. For instance if I cut off my own
hair, which I could do and do very frequently. That hair could be used for some other separate
function, for me and might be part of a device – a basket or something and those external devices
being part of me – we are not really clear where we do end and where we don't end – where might cut
ourselves off.”
“Men are not unique in employing tools. As for instance we take a bird – the bird's nest is a pattern. All
living species (men, ants, etc.) have total life patterns – ecological patterns. The great many of the
migrating birds – the males go north before the females and then they begin to through their sensing
apparatus to discover conditions that seem to be favorable for the reproduction. They pick certain kind
of tree that's going to be favorable for this kind of type of bird. Certain kind of hunting ground for the
kind of food they are going to need.. The male bird will come in the woods somewhere and they will
take positions on different branches. We often see birds fighting on the ground, two birds.. And we say
what they are fighting about? And why they always seem to fight the same species? They don't seem
to fight other kind of species.. What they are doing is literally like if you're standing in line, standing in
line and lengthening the line out to accommodate people standing in line. But the birds are not doing
this in linear way as we do, but they do it in multidimensional way, cause the bird live multi
dimensionally. He does not tend to live in paths, highways, roads – like we do. So, they need a
certain amount of room. Then they begin going in, flying a lot of different directions from that branch
and if they don't run into another bird – that's alright, cause if they run into – they spread out. They are
trying to find a spherical zone, which becomes their domain and this zone is predicated on how far the
female bird could fly from the nest and get a worm or insect and get back to the nest before an egg
gets too cold. So there is very tight thermo-chemical balance going on here. And the different species
know those different balances. Some big birds might have very short distances, some little might have
really large territories.”
“Man is only aware of his physical experience – there is touching and there is smelling, hearing and
the seeing. Insurance company will give you an equal compensation for a loss of an eye or loss of a
finger.”

6. “If I'm going to blindfold my eyes and i'm going to stop up my years, my nostrils and mouth – now the
only way I could get around in unfamiliar territory - I'm going to be watching with my foot very
carefully. Without making any kind of move - I could not get any more information really greater than
from my toe to the opposite fingertip. If I was very familiar with the territory that I was working around
here, as we do very young – we begin to learn (say in some countries summer place) – you know that
path from here to the water – even if it's night – you're able to run. <...> So even if it's dark you dare to
run.”
“Now i'm going to shut down my ability to touch things to get some information about the world – so
you do tie up your feet and tie up your hands and cover all up your skin. Now leave only your nostrils
out and keep your ears shut off and eyes shut off. So you begin to feel what's happening in the world
only by the way smells come to you. You'd be able to smell as far as gases can be concentrated in
other gasses without getting so diffused as not being recognizable. Man have had smelled in a still air
coming out from the sea – they have been able to smell pine trees or islands, sometimes up to 5
miles. But winds blow to you – say there is great forest fire somewhere – you can smell it. The winds
blow so fast as it does not have chance to to get too diffused, before it gets to you.”
“How far can I hear? Well, by test man have heard for instance - atomic explosions a hundred miles
away - and how fast can you hear? Well, you can hear as fast as the speed of sound and you can add
the velocity of the wind blowing you direction.”
“Let me shut off all the faculties, except sight – how far can men see? Well you can see star and man
have seen starts billion miles away. How fast can you see? You can see as fast as the speed of light.”
“These figures are not at all close to one another. You could put first three on the chart that is readable
one from the other – you would have to take an airplane to the fourth and by the time you get there –
the first three look like they are one.”
“Let's look at the little child as they are born – there is a beginning – they start to use - touch sense
right away – their eyes are not being used at all, they pay no attention to the sounds, but they seem to
bring the smell pretty quickly, pretty soon they are reach around for utter to have their milk.”
“From this point on they begin to integrate very quickly their mouth and their fingers (very sensitive
feelers) and taste. But they begin to integrate this information so one can check out on the other. The
child begins to hear and very much latter still begins to use their eyes. In other words the order of
magnitude is the order in which they are employed.”
“Clearly the first things first – touching. Terrific sensitivity in that. Now once I've learned that I began to
notice something else – which is – that the first three in relation to the fourth are so relatively slow. We
start with the first three – they are the first ones they are the ones we're able to integrate. As a child
you pretty soon are making noises and so forth.”
“Men have developed instruments to measure the speed of light – which was quite an accomplishment
– we now know that light does have some speed, because up to that time men explained enormous

7. velocities of the speed of the light by saying light was instantaneous. Because of this assuming –
instantaneous and the one that you can really count on is touch (let me have whole of it). Because of
this profound base of the touch and fooling ourselves we see things instantaneously – therefore we
come into a habit of believing that we see things outside ourselves (seeing things where the news
come from, rather than from where we get news – which is our brain). In seeing radiation is actually
bouncing of the hand and it's being picked up by straight scanning device – it gets back in the brain
and it gets actually reported on the scanning basis. Because we believe things are actually there and
been forced to go and actually check if it as was actually there and became so confident that our
reportage was correct and so good with our eye, this little tiny shift of a billionth of a second from
knowing that we're seeing it out here to thinking we're seeing out there is really one of the easiest
ways man gets fooled.”
“You say – I'm what you can touch, just like I'm some kind of a thing or a doll – I'm also saying to you
however, that if you were dogs you probably come and smell me. If you come along the street he will
notice you from far away, because he can smell your pattern.”
“The word “adam” is a very familiar word to us. It was invented – the actual sound “a-d-a-m” saying it
– this sound was invented by a man named Democritus. This word “adam” was not in the world until
Democritus probably gave himself some speech moratorium and doing some really good thinking -
decided he needed a name for something very very small.”
“Tools are discovered by man – discovering within themselves certain functions which are repeated
and witch could be better handled by externalizing that function – leaving it behind – to be joined by
them later on. So I see where the man has become tremendously successful – he has probably
differentiated out of his total capabilities. More functions than all the other species.”
“Here is the way I'm going to define tools used by the craft – they are tools which can be and have
been invented by individual starting naked in the wilderness with nobody to tell you what to do. What a
man can do starting naked in the wilderness without knowledge of any experience of other men? Any
one man starting in any one wilderness in the amount of space that he can travel in his lifetime
walking - would not run into too many kinds of chemical elements. He would only have a very limited
number of experiences (in most cases) in terms of something is hard, or soft, or pullable, or whatever
it is he wants to do - to change, give it some kind of effective shape (form).”
“The definition of the industrial tools – these are tools that can't be produced by one man. This makes
a really great distinction. You take a modern hammer, it has alloy head which one man can't possibly
invent (to take iron out of the rock, etc.) “

8. “The sum total of all experiences of all men in history as reported from one to another, including all the
experiments, all their undertakings, what have you learned? It's a sum total, somebody called it “know
how” of all men in all history in the relation to all the geography to all the chemical elements found
around the world. “
“There is a word synergy - behavior of the whole systems unpredicted by behaviors of any of the
components (elements, parts, etc.). If we want to know a little more about nature we've got to play a
synergetics.”
“We come to elementary school – we learn about elements – we learn about one and the two and the
three, learn to put them together (a and b and c together).. Put a few simple elements together then
you get a few more to complex or advanced by being able to bring a few more components and deal
with them.”
“We're finding that all structures of nature are tetrahedronal. Tetra – the greek word – four. Hedron –
side. It's a four sided figure. I would like to give up some of the Greek words, because they seem to be
confusing - people don't know what I'm saying. Four-sided-figure – took me three words to say what
the Greek say in one, so why not learn the Greek one? (audience laughs)
“We could call it three point landing of an airplane, an engineer calls it a fix end. When we get fixed
ends – we begin to get terrific rigidity. Let's see tetrahedron inside the cube. Tetrahedron has six
edges and the six edges correlate with six edges of the cube .”
“Energy did escape from a local system – we call it entropy. Energy is out of this one. If it's
dissociating with this one it's associating with another. It does not go out of the world as you say...”
Thanks for the read!
Justin