|
96c8332
|
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called a Religion.
|
|
religion
god
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
c5e8900
|
The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.
|
|
inspirational
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
1b4b201
|
The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling.
|
|
truth
inspirational
zen
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
a52c301
|
The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling."
|
|
truth
zen
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
b8ff42c
|
You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.
|
|
doubt
faith
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
b987f05
|
You look at where you're going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you've been and a pattern seems to emerge.
|
|
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
b17c415
|
We're in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it's all gone.
|
|
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
17fe3f8
|
Sometimes it's a little better to travel than to arrive
|
|
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
68440e6
|
Is it hard?' Not if you have the right attitudes. Its having the right attitudes thats hard.
|
|
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
e4d320e
|
In a car you're always in a compartment, and because you're used to it you don't realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You're a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame. On a cycle the frame is gone. You're completely in contact with it all. You're the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming.
|
|
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
50697b1
|
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 |
|
b2d8798
|
For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses.
|
|
science
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
37401ff
|
Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all.
|
|
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
3970b21
|
But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that ratio..
|
|
|
Robert M Pirsig |
|
d94aeae
|
We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world.
|
|
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
5e6e53d
|
The law of gravity and gravity itself did not exist before Isaac Newton." ...and what that means is that that law of gravity exists nowhere except in people's heads! It 's a ghost!" Mind has no matter or energy but they can't escape its predominance over everything they do. Logic exists in the mind. numbers exist only in the mind. I don't get upset when scientists say that ghosts exist in the mind. it's that only that gets me. science is on..
|
|
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
b64b512
|
The test of the machine is the satisfaction it gives you. There isn't any other test. If the machine produces tranquility it's right. If it disturbs you it's wrong until either the machine or your mind is changed.
|
|
usability
technology
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
1dc7be6
|
The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of the mountain, or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha - which is to demean oneself.
|
|
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
fc5aa9d
|
It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top.
|
|
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
6151335
|
The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself.
|
|
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
cbe0038
|
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.
|
|
nature
science
mistake
knowledge
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
e6eed22
|
You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It's easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally.
|
|
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
4e4e2a9
|
When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process.
|
|
sacrifice
though
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
b93f0cf
|
To the untrained eye ego-climbing and selfless climbing may appear identical. Both kinds of climbers place one foot in front of the other. Both breathe in and out at the same rate. Both stop when tired. Both go forward when rested. But what a difference! The ego-climber is like an instrument that's out of adjustment. He puts his foot down an instant too soon or too late. He's likely to miss a beautiful passage of sunlight through the trees...
|
|
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
b2979ba
|
And what is good, Phaedrus, And what is not good-- Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?
|
|
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
df3359d
|
I argued that physical discomfort is important only when the mood is wrong. Then you fasten on to whatever thing is uncomfortable and call that the cause. But if the mood is right, then physical discomfort doesn't mean much.
|
|
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
1fba341
|
What makes his world so hard to see clearly is not its strangeness but its usualness).Familiarity can blind you too.
|
|
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
6a12ded
|
The doctrinal differences between Hinduism and Buddhism and Taoism are not anywhere near as important as doctrinal differences among Christianity and Islam and Judaism. Holy wars are not fought over them because verbalized statements about reality are never presumed to be reality itself.
|
|
war
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
0858a05
|
The pencil is mightier than the pen.
|
|
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
839a751
|
Who really can face the future? All you can do is project from the past, even when the past shows that such projections are often wrong. And who really can forget the past? What else is there to know?
|
|
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
317c994
|
We have artists with no scientific knowledge and scientists with no artistic knowledge and both with no spiritual sense of gravity at all, and the result is not just bad, it is ghastly.
|
|
science
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
a9d0176
|
Care and Quality are internal and external aspects of the same thing. A person who sees Quality and feels it as he works is a person who cares. A person who cares about what he sees and does is a person who's bound to have some characteristic of quality.
|
|
work
philosophy
quality
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
f66ebc5
|
As a result of his experiments he concluded that imitation was a real evil that had to be broken before real rhetoric teaching could begin. This imitation seemed to be an external compulsion. Little children didn't have it. It seemed to come later on, possibly as a result of school itself. That sounded right, and the more he thought about it the more right it sounded. Schools teach you to imitate. If you don't imitate what the teacher wants..
|
|
learning
grades
imitation
rhetoric
school
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
d0ace1e
|
Absence of Quality is the essence of squareness.
|
|
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
6b8cf94
|
The more you read, the more you calm down.
|
|
reading
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
b271754
|
You look at where you're going and where you are and it never makes much sense, but then you look back at where you've been and a pattern seems to emerge. And if you project forward from that pattern, then sometimes you can come up with something.
|
|
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
b9c905d
|
You've got to live right, too. It's the way you live that predisposes you to avoid the traps and see the right facts. You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It's easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally. That's the way all the experts do it. The making of a painting or the fixing of a motorcycle isn't separate from the rest of your existence. If you're a sloppy thinker the six days of the week you aren't working ..
|
|
quality
zen
perfect
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
44c86bf
|
To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow.
|
|
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
553b4d0
|
The TV scientist who mutters sadly, "The experiment is a failure; we have failed to achieve what we had hoped for," is suffering mainly from a bad script writer. An experiment is never a failure solely because it fails to achieve predicted results. An experiment is a failure only when it also fails adequately to test the hypothesis in question, when the data it produces don't prove anything one way or another."
|
|
science
hypothesis
scientific-method
results
failure
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
4fa4902
|
Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. I think that what I have to say has more lasting value.
|
|
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
0e24200
|
When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog to see the sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes. The dog has certain relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten.
|
|
relationships
shepherd
wolf
sport
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
e16de76
|
Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you're no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn't just a means to an end but a unique event in itself. This leaf has jagged edges. This rock loo..
|
|
how-to-climb-mountains
rocky-mountains
montana
hiking
outdoors
mountains
meditation
reflection
patience
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
6cd6042
|
When you want to hurry something, that means you no longer care about it and want to get on to other things.
|
|
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
3b3efa4
|
If your mind is truly, profoundly stuck, then it might be much better off than when it was loaded with ideas
|
|
|
Robert M. Pirsig |