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.
R. Buckminster FullerRead
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.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that without the need to earn money for survival, people would naturally engage in more meaningful and fulfilling work.
R. Buckminster Fuller argues that when survival needs are met without the requirement of earning a living, individuals will seek out work that is more personally meaningful to them rather than being coerced into jobs merely for financial survival. This implies a shift towards a society where productivity is driven by passion and necessity, rather than obligation and financial pressure.
In practice
In a keynote speech about future work environments, this quote could illustrate the importance of creating fulfilling job opportunities.
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.
There is no such thing as genius, some children are just less damaged than others.
Only the free-wheeling artist-explorer, non-academic, scientist-philosopher, mechanic, economist-poet who has never waited for patron-starting and accrediting of his co-ordinate capabilities holds the prime initiative today.
The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.
I have spent most of my life unlearning things that were proved not to be true
The earth is like a spaceship that didn't come with an operating manual.
The spirit of democracy... requires change of the heart... requires the inculcation of the spirit of brotherhood.
We stumble on, thinks Jaslyn, bring a little noise into the silence, find in others the ongoing of ourselves. It is almost enough.
Watch them clamber, these swift monkeys! They clamber over one another and thus drag one another into the mud and the depth. They all want to get to the throne: that is their madness — as if happiness sat on the throne. Often, mud sits on the throne — and often the throne also on mud. Mad they all appear to me, clambering monkeys and overardent. Foul smells their idol, the cold monster: foul, they smell to me altogether, these idolators.
It's strange how the human mind swings back and forth, from one extreme to another. Does truth lie at some point of the pendulum's swing, at a point where it never rests, not in the dull perpendicular mean where it dangles in the end like a windless flag, but at an angle, nearer one extreme than another? If only a miracle could stop the pendulum at an angle of sixty degrees, one would believe the truth was there.
I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we've struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We've made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions.
She would have liked not to be alive, or to be always asleep.
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