Pirsig Robert Quotes
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Pirsig Robert Quotes & Sayings
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To some extent the romantic condemnation of rationality stems from the very effectiveness of rationality in uplifting men from primitive conditions.
— Robert M. Pirsig
Writing it seemed to have higher quality than not writing it, that was all.
— Robert M. Pirsig
The dictum that Science and its offspring, technology, are "value free," that is, "quality free," has got to go.
— Robert M. Pirsig
You don't have to go fishing, of course, to fix your motorcycle.
— Robert M. Pirsig
I have money, fame, a happy wife, our daughter Nell.
— Robert M. Pirsig
It's important now to just live with this and not fight it mentally ... mind control ... .
— Robert M. Pirsig
Analytic and romantic understanding should be united at a basic level. Reassimilate the passions from which the rational mind fled.
— Robert M. Pirsig
I turn my head from side to side.
— Robert M. Pirsig
Mental reflection is so much more interesting than TV it's a shame more people don't switch over to it.
— Robert M. Pirsig
People spend their entire lives at those lower altitudes without any awareness that this high country exists.
— Robert M. Pirsig
They contain no matter," I continue, "and have no energy and therefore, according to the laws of science, do not exist except in people's minds.
— Robert M. Pirsig
Real science and real philosophy are not guided by preconceptions of what subjects are important to consider. That
— Robert M. Pirsig
In the high country of the mind one has to become adjusted to the thinner air of uncertainty ...
— Robert M. Pirsig
Bouncing on beds, I remember from childhood, is a great depression reliever.
— Robert M. Pirsig
New York has always been going to hell but somehow it never gets there.
— Robert M. Pirsig
It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top.
— Robert M. Pirsig
It's nice to start journeys pleasantly, even when you know they won't end that way.
— Robert M. Pirsig
Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual abstractions.
— Robert M. Pirsig
I wake up wondering if I know we're near mountains because of memory or because of something in the air.
— Robert M. Pirsig
Art is anything you can do well. Anything you can do with Quality.
— Robert M. Pirsig
Although motorcycle riding is romantic, motorcycle maintenance is purely classic.
— Robert M. Pirsig
If you have a high evaluation of yourself then your ability to recognize new facts is weakened.
— Robert M. Pirsig
Familiarity can blind you
— Robert M. Pirsig
When you have mountains in the distance or even hills, you have space.
— Robert M. Pirsig
Familiarity can blind too.
— Robert M. Pirsig
Zen is the "spirit of the valley," not the mountaintop.
— Robert M. Pirsig
It's so hard when contemplated in advance, and so easy when you do it.
— Robert M. Pirsig
My favorite cure for boredom is sleep. It's very easy to get to sleep when bored and very hard to get bored after a long rest.
— Robert M. Pirsig
I go on living, more from force of habit than anything else.
— Robert M. Pirsig
I don't want to own these prairies, or photograph them, or change them, or even stop or even keep going.
— Robert M. Pirsig
If you stare at a wall from four in the morning till nine at night, and you do that for a week, you are getting pretty close to nothingness.
— Robert M. Pirsig
Even in the presence of others he was completely alone.
— Robert M. Pirsig
Caring about what you are doing is considered either unimportant or taken for granted.
— Robert M. Pirsig
It's the clothes that make them think you're not really there.
— Robert M. Pirsig
Squareness is such a uniquely intellectual disease.
— Robert M. Pirsig
The Buddha resides as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain.
— Robert M. Pirsig
If someone's ungrateful and you tell him he's ungrateful, okay, you've called him a name. You haven't solved anything.
— Robert M. Pirsig
It states that the context of the question is such that a yes or no answer is in error and should not be given. "Unask the question" is what it says.
— Robert M. Pirsig
Motorcycle maintenance gets frustrating. Angering. Infuriating. That's what makes it interesting.
— Robert M. Pirsig
It's better not to see than to see wrongly.
— Robert M. Pirsig
After a while you may find that the nibbles you get are more interesting than your original purpose of fixing the machine.
— Robert M. Pirsig
If your mind is truly, profoundly stuck, then it might be much better off than when it was loaded with ideas
— Robert M. Pirsig
Chris asks, "What are you going to stick to?""Mah guns, boy, mah guns," I tell him. "That's the Code of the West. — Robert M. Pirsig
The idea that "all men are created equal" is a gift to the world from the American Indian.
— Robert M. Pirsig
Boredom always precedes a period of great creativity.
— Robert M. Pirsig
My personal feeling is that this is how any further improvement of the world will be done: by individuals making Quality decisions and that's all.
— Robert M. Pirsig
Some things you miss because they're so tiny you overlook them. But some things you don't see because they're so huge.
— Robert M. Pirsig
Miles later and the heat is just ferocious. Sunglasses and goggles are not enough for this glare. You need a welder's mask.
— Robert M. Pirsig
Not sure of much of anything these days. Maybe that's why I talk so much.
— Robert M. Pirsig
Up until my first book was published, I had all this potential, people would say, and I screwed up. After it, I could say: 'No, I didn't screw up.'
— Robert M. Pirsig
I suppose philosophy is historically not a woman's game, though that is changing.
— Robert M. Pirsig
It's all right," Phaedrus said. "We just accidentally stumbled over a genuine question, and the shock is hard to recover from.
— Robert M. Pirsig
Quality isn't a thing. It is an event.
— Robert M. Pirsig
When you've got a Chautauqua in your head, it's extremely hard not to inflict it on innocent people.
— Robert M. Pirsig
Absence of Quality is the essence of squareness.
— Robert M. Pirsig
My favorite piece of technical writing: Assembly of Japanese bicycle require great peace of mind.
— Robert M. Pirsig
One geometry cannot be more true than another; it can only be more convenient. Geometry is not true, it is advantageous.
— Robert M. Pirsig
The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself,
— Robert M. Pirsig
The pencil is mightier than the pen.
— Robert M. Pirsig
The classic mode, by contrast, proceeds by reason and by laws - which are themselves underlying forms of thought and behavior.
— Robert M. Pirsig
The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself.
— Robert M. Pirsig
So round and round you go, spinning mental wheels and nowhere finding anyplace to get traction. What the hell ... is it?
— Robert M. Pirsig
You always suppress momentary anger at something you deeply and permanently hate.
— Robert M. Pirsig
It's all taking the customer's money and giving him exactly what he wants and then leaving him poorer than when he started.
— Robert M. Pirsig
Every answer one finds leads to ten more questions. The more we learn the less we know.
— Robert M. Pirsig
The funny thing about insane people is that it is kind of the opposite of being a celebrity. Nobody envies you.
— Robert M. Pirsig
If one person complains he just makes it that much harder for the others. They've got stamina. They know how to keep on going.
— Robert M. Pirsig
But of course, without the top you can't have any sides. It's the top that defines the sides.
— Robert M. Pirsig
As long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible.
— Robert M. Pirsig
The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.
— Robert M. Pirsig
We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with the emphasis on "good" rather than on "time" ...
— Robert M. Pirsig
For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses.
— Robert M. Pirsig
I did not want to write one of those sequels that famous first-book authors get into where everybody says, 'Oh yeah.'
— Robert M. Pirsig
Just a sort of unexplained sadness that comes each afternoon when the new day is gone forever and there's nothing ahead but increasing darkness.
— Robert M. Pirsig
Quality tends to fan out like waves.
— Robert M. Pirsig
Physical discomfort is important only when the mood is wrong.
— Robert M. Pirsig
The real purpose of the scientific method is to make sure nature hasn't misled you into thinking you know something you actually don't know.
— Robert M. Pirsig
And I think it's about time to return to the rebuilding of this American resource - individual worth.
— Robert M. Pirsig
When you look directly at an insane man all you see is a reflection of your own knowledge that he's insane, which is not to see him at all.
— Robert M. Pirsig
We keep passing unseen through little moments of other people's lives.
— Robert M. Pirsig
Overall goals must be scaled down in importance and immediate goals must be scaled up.
— Robert M. Pirsig
If Quality were dropped, only rationality would remain unchanged.
— Robert M. Pirsig
Logic presumes a separation of subject from object; therefore logic is not final wisdom.This is Zen. This is my motorcycle maintenance.
— Robert M. Pirsig
When you live in the shadow of insanity, the appearance of another mind that thinks and talks as yours does is something close to a blessed event.
— Robert M. Pirsig
To the ocean. That sounds right. Where the waves roll in slowly and there's always a roar and you can't fall anywhere. You're already there.
— Robert M. Pirsig
There's no such thing as morality.
— Robert M. Pirsig
Data without generalization is just gossip.
— Robert M. Pirsig
It's better to live with a sad truth than with all the happy progress talk you get up here in the North.
— Robert M. Pirsig
She was strangely unaware that she could look and see freshly for herself, as she wrote, without primary regard for what had been said before.
— Robert M. Pirsig
The only Zen you find on tops of mountains is the Zen you bring there.
— Robert M. Pirsig
The best students always are flunking. Every good teacher knows that.
— Robert M. Pirsig
A person who follows the dharma is unpredictable because the dharma is unpredictable.
— Robert M. Pirsig
Art is the Godhead as revealed in the works of man.
— Robert M. Pirsig