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86e7783
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Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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0fde10c
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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 know 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.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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93c2fcb
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If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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1669007
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Phaedrus wrote a letter from India about a pilgrimage to holy Mount Kailas, the source of the Ganges and the abode of Shiva, high in the Himalayas, in the company of a holy man and his adherents. He never reached the mountain. After the third day he gave up, exhausted, and the pilgrimage went on without him. He said he had the physical strength but that physical strength wasn't enough. He had the intellectual motivation but that wasn't enou..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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ee86016
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Mu becomes appropriate when the context of the question becomes too small for the truth of the answer.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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033162c
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People entered the park and became polite and cozy and fakey to each other because the atmosphere of the park made them that way. In the entire time he had lived within a hundred miles of it he had visited it only once or twice.
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travel
observations-on-humanity
wild-west
yellowstone
tourism
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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f4fba48
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That's extremely important to understand. He had given up. Because he'd given up, the surface of life was comfortable for him. He worked reasonably hard, was easy to get along with and, except for an occasional glimpse of inner emptiness shown in some short stories he wrote at the time, his days passed quite usually.
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give-up
grow-up
move-on
let-go
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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3b1023e
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I suppose you could call that a personality. Each machine has its own, unique personality which probably could be defined as the intuitive sum total of everything you know and feel about it. This personality constantly changes, usually for the worse, but sometimes surprisingly for the better, and it is this personality that is the real object of motorcycle maintenance.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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9760295
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This is the source of the trouble. Persons tend to think and feel exclusively in one mode or the other and in doing so tend to misunderstand and underestimate what the other mode is all about. But no one is willing to give up the truth as he sees it, and as far as I know, no one now living has any real reconciliation of these truths or modes. There is no point at which these visions of reality are unified. And
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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22ab642
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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.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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42160a1
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The student's biggest problem was a slave mentality which had been built into him by years of carrot-and- whip grading, a mule mentality which said, "If you don't whip me, I won't work." He didn't get whipped. He didn't work. And the cart of civilization, which he supposedly was being trained to pull, was just going to have to creak along a little slower without him. This is a tragedy, however, only if you presume that the cart of civiliza..
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free-will
free-man
mentality
schooling
status-quo
students
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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17440d7
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The fact that they were there as students presumed they did not know what was good or bad. That was his job as instructor...to tell them what was good or bad. The whole idea of individual creativity and expression in the classroom was really basically opposed to the whole idea of the University.
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learning
education
schools
self-expression
teaching
university
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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19c5486
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He'd no longer be a grade-motivated person. He'd be a knowledge-motivated person. He would need no external pushing to learn. His push would come from inside. He'd be a free man. He wouldn't need a lot of discipline to shape him up. In fact, if the instructors assigned him were slacking on the job he would be likely to shape them up by asking rude questions. He'd be there to learn something, would be paying to learn something and they'd bet..
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learning
motivation
students
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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d19887f
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This larger goal wouldn't be the imitation of education in Universities today, glossed over and concealed by grades and degrees that give the appearance of something happening when, in fact, almost nothing is going on. It would be the real thing.
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education
higher-learning
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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4c0c4e3
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No da se unishchozhi edna fabrika ili da se v'stane sreshchu edno pravitelstvo, ili da ne se popravi edin mototsiklet, zashchoto e sistema, oznachava da se atakuvat sledstviiata, a ne prichinite; i dokato borbata e sreshchu sledstviiata, nikakva promiana ne e v'zmozhna.
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philosophy
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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aaa7931
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This divorce of art from technology is completely unnatural. It's just that it's gone on so long you have to be an archeologist to find out where the two separated. Rotisserie assembly is actually a long-lost branch of sculpture, so divorced from its roots by centuries of intellectual wrong turns that just to associate the two sounds ludicrous." They're"
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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b775d44
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This book offers another, more serious alternative to material success. It's not so much an alternative as an expansion of the meaning of "success" to something larger than just getting a good job and staying out of trouble. And also something larger than mere freedom. It gives a positive goal to work toward that does not confine."
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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a54939e
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What I would like to do is use the time that is coming now to talk about some things that have come to mind. 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.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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2d09eca
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Newton invented a new form of reason. He expanded reason to handle infinitesimal changes and I think what is needed now is a similar expansion of reason to handle technological ugliness. The trouble is that the expansion has to be made at the roots, not at the branches, and that's what makes it hard to see.
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strike-at-the-root
zen
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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8478231
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We're living in topsy-turvy times, and I think that what causes the topsy-turvy feeling is inadequacy of old forms of thought to deal with new experiences. I've heard it said that the only real learning results from hang-ups, where instead of expanding the branches of what you already know, you have to stop and drift laterally for a while until you come across something that allows you to expand the roots of what you already know. Everyone'..
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evolution
philosophy
expansion
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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78e357a
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This condemnation of technology is ingratitude, that's what it is. Blind
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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20931dd
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Perche, ad esempio, un gruppo di composti semplici e stabili di carbonio, idrogeno, ossigeno e azoto avrebbero dovuto lottare per miliardi di anni allo scopo di organizzarsi, mettiamo, in un professore di chimica? Che cosa li ha spinti? Se questo professore noi lo lasciamo esposto su uno scoglio al sole per un tempo sufficientemente lungo, le forze della natura lo ridurranno a una serie di composti di carbonio, ossigeno, idrogeno e azoto, p..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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b53b71b
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Cuando una persona sufre espejismos, eso se denomina locura. Cuando muchas personas sufren espejismos, se denomina religion.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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23c2760
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The ultimate test is always your own serenity. If you don't have this when you start and maintain it while you're working you're likely to build our personal problems right into the machine.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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e873de7
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He discovered that the science he'd once thought of as the whole world of knowledge is only a branch of philosophy, which is far broader and far more general. The questions he had asked about infinite hypotheses hadn't been of interest to science because they weren't scientific questions. Science cannot study scientific method without getting into a bootstrap problem that destroys the validity of its answers. The questions he'd asked were a..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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f383a7b
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What's wrong with technology is that it's not connected in any real way with matters of the spirit and of the heart. And so it does blind, ugly things quite by accident and gets hated for that. People haven't paid much attention to this before because the big concern has been with food, clothing and shelter for everyone and technology has provided these. "But now where these are assured, the ugliness is being noticed more and more and peopl..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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2e39932
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However, it should in no way be associated with that great body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice. It's not very factual on motorcycles either.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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0704b16
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The motorcycle is a system. A real system.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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cd5e33c
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To speak of certain government and establishment institutions as "the system" is to speak correctly, since these organizations are founded upon the same structural conceptual relationships as a motorcycle."
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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828a16e
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Art is the Godhead as revealed in the works of man.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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99739d9
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as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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d32c650
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In this Chautauqua I would like not to cut any new channels of consciousness but simply dig deeper into old ones that have become silted in with the debris of thoughts grown stale and platitudes too often repeated. "What's new?" is an interesting and broadening eternal question, but one which, if pursued exclusively, results only in an endless parade of trivia and fashion, the silt of tomorrow. I would like, instead, to be concerned with th..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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c8d10de
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words are more for strangers, for hospitals, not kin. Little emotional Band-Aids like that aren't what he needs or what's sought.... I don't know what he needs, or what's sought.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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d84827e
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I had been seeing that shim in a kind of intellectual, rational, cerebral way in which the scientific properties of the metal were all that counted. John was going at it immediately and intuitively, grooving on it. I was going at it in terms of underlying form. He was going at it in terms of immediate appearance. I was seeing what the shim meant. He was seeing what the shim was.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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eecdd00
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the struggle of the noble, free-thinking
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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296639f
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From all this awareness we must select, and what we select and call consciousness is never the same as the awareness because the process of selection mutates it.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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0c6ab77
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The famous University of Chicago Great Books program and the reorganization of the University structure along Aristotelian lines and the establishment of the "College," in which a reading of classics was initiated in fifteen-year-old students, were some of the results."
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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fd836d0
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I spit on my glove tips, touch it and can see the sizzle. Not good.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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b6a858f
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In all of the Oriental religions great value is placed on the Sanskrit doctrine of Tat tvam asi, "Thou art that," which asserts that everything you think you are and everything you think you perceive are undivided. To realize fully this lack of division is to become enlightened."
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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0071ba4
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Mythos is the sum total of the early historic and prehistoric myths which preceded the logos. The mythos includes not only the Greek myths but the Old Testament, the Vedic Hymns and the early legends of all cultures which have contributed to our present world understanding.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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c201a5b
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An egoless acceptance of stuckness is a key to an understanding of all Quality.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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88cd8db
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The ideas, the things I was saying about science and ghosts, and even that idea this afternoon about caring and technology--they are not my own. I haven't really had a new idea in years.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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b962664
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I think it was Coleridge who said everyone is either a Platonist or an Aristotelian. People who can't stand Aristotle's endless specificity of detail are natural lovers of Plato's soaring generalities. People who can't stand the eternal lofty idealism of Plato welcome the down-to-earth facts of Aristotle.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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31e8f5b
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The altitude!
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Robert M. Pirsig |