R. Buckminster Fuller Quotes

The only way you get economic progress, real standards of living moving higher, is to have the savings of the society continuously invested in the cutting-edge technologies. And those technologies which are obsolescent get dropped out.

Mass prosperity came with the mass innovation that sprung up in 1815 in Britain, soon after in America, and later in Germany and France: It brought sustained growth to these nations - also to nations with entrepreneurs willing and able to copy the innovations.

If you ask an economist what's driven economic growth, it's been major advances in things that mattered - the mechanization of farming, mass manufacturing, things like that. The problem is, our society is not organized around doing that.

Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered.

That the way to achieve higher standards of living for all is through science and technology, taking advantage of better tools, methods and organization.

Technology is probably the single biggest driver of productivity gains for the developed countries. For example, I think it's much more important than free trade.

Nothing increases the number of jobs so rapidly as labor-saving machinery, because it releases wants theretofore unknown, by permitting leisure.

We don't measure whether an economy is developing. We just measure whether companies are selling more, whether inventories are up or down, not whether the health, safety and economic well-being of people are being advanced.

Many of the products which create a modern standard of living are only the physical incorporations of ideas- not only the ideas of an Edison or a Ford but the ideas of innumerable anonymous people who figure out the design of supermarkets, the location of gasoline stations, and the million mundane things on which our material well-being depends. Societies which have more people carrying out physical acts and fewer people supplying ideas do not have higher standards of living. Quite the contrary.

Resources are becoming scarcer. If we want to promote new growth, we should focus on the quality of the value we are creating.

For India's economy to expand as rapidly and yet more sustainably than China's, we need to make our differences into virtues rather than vulnerabilities.

Africa's vibrancy and entrepreneurial spirit is un-matched. There's huge potential here to grow business, create jobs, and to improve living standards.

Energy is a linchpin of economic prosperity, with energy security, reliability, and affordability key preconditions for sustainable growth.

If you're looking at a country like India, the basic subsistence in itself creates its own challenges. So I think that lends to a different level of innovation and a different level of entrepreneurship.

We adapt to technological progress by raising our minimum standards of living and working to stay above this rising threshold.

As hundreds of millions of Chinese have improved their standard of living, this has put enormous pressure on natural resources, raw materials, and food basics, among others.

Development of seamless physical connectivity is key for achieving regional growth, employment, and prosperity.

Improvement of civic facilities is among our priorities, and for this purpose, education, health, infrastructure and transport sectors are being improved through revolutionary steps. Citizens will benefit from all these projects, and their living standard will be raised.

There is no western, capitalistic country in which the conditions of the masses have not improved in an unprecedented way.

Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity; not stifle it.

Some dozens of years ago, there was a debate conducted between people insisting that "this loaf of bread must be redistributed," and the others who said "instead of worrying about redistributing it, cutting differently, let's make it bigger." A third possibility was not imagined: that the loaf may be shrinking. But it is now a genuine possibility. It is even acting upon already, like in the case of the American invasion of Afghanistan and of Iraq in order to secure the supply of petrol for the Americans addicted to gas-guzzling cars.

Used to the conditions of a capitalistic environment, the average American takes it for granted that every year business makes something new and better accessible to him. Looking backward upon the years of his own life, he realizes that many implements that were totally unknown in the days of his youth and many others which at that time could be enjoyed only by a small minority are now standard equipment of almost every household.

The cavemen had the same natural resources at their disposal as we have today, and the difference between their standard of living and ours is a difference between the knowledge they could bring to bear on those resources and the knowledge used today.

Productivity growth is the only possible way to achieve prosperity.

We have a high standard of living. ... In Norway, we've tripled our income since 1970. In the rest of western Europe, income has merely doubled.