R. Buckminster Fuller Mistake Quotations

Most of my advances were by mistake. You uncover what is when you get rid of what isn't.

Human beings were given a left foot and a right foot to make a mistake first to the left, then to the right, left again and repeat.

We were deliberately designed to learn only by trial and error. We're brought up, unfortunately, to think that nobody should make mistakes. Most children get de-geniused by the love and fear of their parents - that they might make a mistake. But all my advances were made by mistakes. You uncover what is when you get rid of what isn't.

Whatever humans have learned had to be learned as a consequence only of trial and error experience. Humans have learned only through mistakes.

Ignorance and greed are part of the evolutionary process, which is just to say that mistakes are part of learning. There is nothing bad about behaviors or perceptions that do not work; they simply have to be given up and replaced by behaviors or perceptions that do work.

If I ran a school, I'd give the average grade to the ones who gave me all the right answers, for being good parrots. I'd give the top grades to those who made a lot of mistakes and told me about them, and then told me what they learned from them.

By and large, I seem to have made more mistakes than any others of whom I know, but have learned thereby to make ever swifter acknowledgment of the errors and thereafter immediately set about to deal more effectively with the truths disclosed by the acknowledgment of erroneous assumptions.

The one common experience of all humanity is the challenge of problems.

You can never learn less; you can only learn more. The reason I know so much is because I have made so many mistakes.

Mistakes are great, the more I make the smarter I get.