Top 217 Quotes & Sayings by Jacque Fresco - Page 3

The majority of the people of the world today are unsane, not insane, unsane meaning having been exposed to methods of evaluation that have long rendered obsolete, our language in the future will change to a saner language where we have no argument in it, 'can there be such a language?' there is, when engineers talk to each other, it's not subject to interpretation, they use math, they use descriptive systems, if I interpreted what another engineer said in the way I think he meant it: you couldn't build bridges, dams, power transmission lines. The language has to have meaning

When they say all men are created equal, that bothers me. I told you some are thin, some are heavy, some have better eyesight than others. I don't know what that means. I think they're trying to talk about equal opportunity and I know that doesn't exist. If you don't have the money to go to college, the word 'equal opportunities' mean nothing

It is not that people are evil or greedy. The conditions that socially support the system force us to behave in socially offensive ways.

We must learn to outgrow our egos in exchange for constructive dialogue rather than debate. In addition, we must be capable of stating problems and proposing solutions clearly and succinctly, without distortion of meaning or misunderstanding, even when these solutions are radically opposed to accepted norms.

The government means industry, if you know what I mean.

Science and education, when devoid of a social conscience or environmental and human concern, are meaningless.

Every action and decision we take – or don’t – ripples into the future. For the first time we have the capability, the technology, and the knowledge to direct these ripples.

Money is only important in a society when certain resources for survival must be rationed and the people accept money as an exchange medium for the scarce resources. Money is a social convention, an agreement if you will. It is neither a natural resource nor does it represent one. It is not necessary for survival unless we have been conditioned to accept it as such.

The Venus Project is neither Utopian nor Orwellian, nor does it reflect the dreams of impractical idealists. Instead, it presents attainable goals requiring only the intelligent application of what we already know. The only limitations are those which we impose upon ourselves.

Living through the 1929 Great Depression helped shape my social conscience. During this time, I realized the earth was still the same place, manufacturing plants were still intact, and resources were still there, but people didn’t have money to buy the products. I felt the rules of the game we play by were outmoded and damaging. This began a life-long quest resulting in the conclusions and designs presented in The Venus Project.

The uncreative mind can spot the wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot the wrong questions" The question has never been: Do we have the money? The question has always been: Do we have the resources?

When you think, you think in terms of your culture.

As man reaches out toward the twenty-first century, he will learn to be suspicious of all ideas that are not formulated so that they can be tested by observation. He will realize that the history of human thought shows that the ideas of which we are surest are the ones we most need to test. He will realize that his common sense only mirrors his training and experience. What seems natural and right to him is usually a reflection of the conditions under which he spent his first decade of life.

I am afraid to live in the society we live in today. Our society cannot be maintained by this type of incompetency.

We're not sane enough yet to enter space until we learn to live together in peace on Earth.

If nations join together now, before the big collapse and share their resources, they can maintain a level of sustainability. Sustain the people that is, and not banks and businesses.

A Resource-Based Economy is in the application of the methods of science with human concern and environmental concern. If we used the scientific method throughout the world, the probability of war drops to zero. The probability of human suffering disappears. Deprivation, poverty, crime - all those things tend to disappear because there's no basis. I'm strictly concerned with the environment that people are raised in and if that environment is altered, so will behaviors be altered.

Architects are mostly self-centered and their buildings express their ego. [They are] not social buildings to make it more comfortable for people - to make life better for people. The cities have to be designed so people can get together and talk with one another.

Lack of education turns soldiers into killing machines.

You can't exceed the system with language. You can only exceed the system with events; recommended procedures that are better. You can't exceed the system by telling people to be good, be kind, be considerate... You have to take away the conditions that makes it necessary for you to be kind. And to be kind, you design highways that aren't slippery; where no accidents, or less accidents, occur. In the future, everybody becomes an innovator - a creator.

Wiser, never wise. Smarter, never smart.

Let's teach our children to be thinkers.

People will continue to search for answers to universal and perplexing problems. But to find meaningful answers, one must first know what questions to ask.

If you remain conventional and don't change, you'll get along. You'll get along in the limited forms of insanity that exist out there. You'll never be able to keep a marriage together, you'll never be able to keep anything together, because the whole goddamn thing isn't together.

We have to ask ourselves what kind of world we want to live in.

Don't get mad at me cause I call something a 'nothing thing'. I mean it's nothing in terms of the majority of people.... I'm not that concerned with my son. I'm more concerned with all people. I look at all people as brothers and sisters. I have no priority for members of the family.

We can work out anything if we put our mind to it, study it, do hard work instead of finding simple answers

We must look at alternatives objectively, and not try to fit the future into our present social mould.

It's hard in a monetary system to trust people.

There are no bad people, there are people with insufficient information to make appropriate decisions.

Our problems are technical, not political

As long as you have war, police, prisons, crime, you are in the early stages of civilization.

Creativity is taking known elements and putting them together in unique ways

If you make a movie of the present day culture, in the future it'll be a horror film.

Our customs, behaviors, and values are byproducts of our culture.

We don't want to hurt anybody, kill anybody, build any prisons, or build police. We want to make it unnecessary for people to steal - so they'll have access to medical care, health care, decent housing, all people, all over the world. As long as you don't share your resources, you are going to have trouble

You can't be conscious unless you have variable receptors... When people say the way I see the world is the way it is - that's ridiculous. We can only see it depending on the quality of our receptors and background.

Much of a behavior acceptable today would be socially offensive in a saner or more logical arrangement.

Love is a fluxuating thing, not a fixed thing. That's why we don't understand what's happening.

Learning to be flexible in values takes a very long time...Of course I felt a little uncomfortable during questioning the concept of God, but then reading about the history and evolution of Gods. There were many different Gods: the God of war, the God of peace, the God of love, which was more like the people that invented them. They behaved, they got angry, they made sacrifices, they created floods when they didn't like the way things are going. This didn't come through as superior intelligence.

I asked myself, 'How are you going to change all these people, they have different values, different customs, different language, different interpretations?' So that’s the time I joined the Ku Klux Klan in Miami. The reason I joined is to see if I could change them. So I dissolved that organization in a month-and-a-half, alone. [Applause] Then I joined the White Citizen Council. The WCC hates foreigners – all foreigners. So I joined that organization; I dissolved it in one month.

Once you accept the fact that people have 'individual choices' and they're 'free' to make those choices. Free to make choices means without being influenced and I can't understand that at all. All of us are influenced in all our choices by the culture we live in, by our parents, and by the values that dominate. So, we're influenced. So there can't be free choices.

I'd declare all the world's resources as a common heritage of all the world's people and get them to join and become one nation who takes care of the environment, the earth, the atmosphere. I'd abolish all separate nations because they are all corrupt.

I was asked once,'your a smart man,why arnt you rich?I replied 'your a rich man,why arnt you smart?

It's wrong to criticize government without offering a possible alternative.

Whatever I decide will not work. It's what people want that will work. So no one decided whether you become a vegetarian or anything else. What determines that is the availability of food. If we run out of vegetation due to floods or natural disasters, people will consume meat and if we run out of meat they will consume vegetables. I have no control over that. That would be up to people.

If your values are not related to the Earth or realistic, you'll believe in things that aren't so, which will hurt you in the long run, and as a species, too.

We could either develop paradise on Earth or oblivion; wipe ourselves out, only the future will tell. It's what you do to make the future.

Most people don't put things together. Geologists study the surface of the earth and geological phenomena. Meteorogists study the weather. That isn't science. Science is the study of all things that affect human beings. They have to be together! A meteorologist has difficulty talking with a sociologist, because they don't understand each other. You can't teach sciences in 'bits'; you have to bring it all together. Science is a way of thinking - a way at arriving at conclusions without your own opinion in it.

In our society, we move people out of government. It's all operated by machines, meaning – not the people, just the products: the farming, the agriculture, the production – it's all machine-designed and programming. But it does not program or design people. People are free to live whatever lifestyle they want to. If they hurt other people, they're helped – they’re not put in prisons

You cannot advocate decency and ethics, you must design the conditions that eliminate the problems. In scarcity, people will tend to steal. If you make things available, people tend not to steal.

You don't see the plug connected to the environment, so it looks like we're free, wandering around. Take the oxygen away, we all die immediately. Take plant life away, we die. And without the sun, all the plants die. So we are connected.

If there's a group like Amish people, that want to live their own lifestyle – they don't want to live in our city – they want to live out in the country, with their own projects. We’ll put up the buildings for them, design the buildings for them, design the food production systems for them – if they want us to. But we don’t control them.

There isn't anything that is said that 'someone' won't take issue with.

The Venus Project is not about new cities or new architecture. It's about a way of thinking

There are no good or bad people, humans are shaped by culture.

Don't forget - you're dealing with aberrated people. They're not responsible for their answers. They're victims of culture. That means they have been influenced by their culture.

All things change. The automobiles change every year. [Your] television set gets lighter and smaller and higher definition. All things in the scientific world change. But politicians do not change. They carry old values and they don't even know it.

It's hard to be decent in a money world. We want to shut down all repetitious jobs, automate it, free people.

Your frame of reference is what you see.