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Take the initiative. Go to work, and above all co-operate and don't hold back on one another or try to gain at the expense of another. Any success in such lopsidedness will be increasingly short-lived. These are the synergetic rules that evolution is employing and trying to make clear to us. They are not man-made laws. They are the infinitely accommodative laws of the intellectual integrity governing universe.

Buckminster Fuller#36

EvolutionIntegrityCooperationSuccessWorkJusticeTrust

About this quote

What does it mean?
Success comes from initiative, work, and cooperation. Gaining at others' expense leads to short-lived results.
In plain terms
Work together fairly or your success will not last.
What can you take from it?
Cooperation ensures lasting success.

Where it applies

  • business
  • community
  • negotiation

Putting it to work

  • share benefits
  • align goals
  • avoid exploitation

Questions to consider

  • How do you ensure fairness in your work?
  • Why does lopsided success fail?

Another view

Cooperation may fail without enforcement against cheaters.

More from Buckminster Fuller

  1. While no politician or political system can ever afford to yield understandably and enthusiastically to their adversaries and opposers, all politicians can and…

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  2. It is one of our most exciting discoveries that local discovery leads to a complex of further discoveries. Corollary to this we find that we no sooner get a pr…

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  3. You may very appropriately want to ask me how we are going to resolve the ever-acceleratingly dangerous impasse of world-opposed politicians and ideological do…

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