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b641560
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The difference between a good mechanic and a bad one, like the difference between a good mathematician and a bad one, is precisely this ability to select the good facts from the bad ones on the basis of quality.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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8f58175
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If you want to build a factory, or fix a motorcycle, or set a nation right without getting stuck, then classical, structured, dualistic subject-object knowledge, although necessary, isn't enough. You have to have some feeling for the quality of the work.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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c2c8e23
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If you want to build a factory, or fix a motorcycle, or set a nation right without getting stuck, then classical, structured, dualistic subject-object knowledge, although necessary, isn't enough. You have to have some feeling for the quality of the work. You have to have a sense of what's good.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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6f2e42d
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Sometimes just the act of writing down the problems straightens out your head as to what they really are. The
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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d94a82a
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1) statement of the problem, (2) hypotheses as to the cause of the problem, (3) experiments designed to test each hypothesis, (4) predicted results of the experiments, (5) observed results of the experiments and (6) conclusions from the results of the experiments.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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dbe5ae8
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Now the stream of our common consciousness seems to be obliterating its own banks, losing its central direction and purpose, flooding the lowlands, disconnecting and isolating the highlands and to no particular purpose other than the wasteful fulfillment of its own internal momentum. Some channel deepening seems called for.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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06891c4
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After a while you may find that the nibbles you get are more interesting than your original purpose of fixing the machine.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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3b4ced9
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They were living in some kind of movie projected by this intellectual, electromechanical machine that had been created for their happiness, saying: PARADISE PARADISE PARADISE but which had inadvertently shut them out from direct experience of life itself--and from each other.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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0852bbd
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Se fai le vacanze in motocicletta le cose assumono un aspetto completamente diverso. In macchina sei sempre in un abitacolo; ci sei abituato e non ti rendi conto che tutto quello che vedi da quel finestrino non e che una dose supplementare di tv. Sei un osservatore passivo e il paesaggio ti scorre accanto noiosissimo dentro una cornice. In moto la cornice non c'e piu. Hai un contatto completo con ogni cosa. Non sei piu uno spettatore, sei n..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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61abac3
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I talked yesterday about caring, I care about these moldy old riding gloves. I smile at them flying through the breeze beside me because they have been there for so many years and are so old and so tired and so rotten there is something kind of humorous about them. They have become filled with oil and sweat and dirt and spattered bugs and now when I set them down flat on a table, even when they are not cold, they won't stay flat. They've go..
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motorcycles
riding
nostalgia
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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42ebe02
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Arete implies a respect for the wholeness or oneness of life, and a consequent dislike of specialization. It implies a contempt for efficiency--or rather a much higher idea of efficiency, an efficiency which exists not in one department of life but in life itself.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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84759dc
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The title of this Chautauqua is "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," not "Zen and the Art of Mountain Climbing," and there are no motorcycles on the tops of mountains, and in my opinion very little Zen. Zen is the "spirit of the valley," not the mountaintop. The only Zen you fin on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there."
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mountain-climbing
spiritual-journey
spiritualism
mountains
zen
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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1605349
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Quality is the continuing stimulus which causes us to create the world in which we live. All of it. Every last bit of it." Religion isn't invented by man. Men are invented by religion. Men invent responses to Quality, and among these responses is an understanding of what they themselves are."
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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5e320c3
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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 rationality will simply produce another factory. 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 s..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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a762c9a
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Impatience is close to boredom but always results from one cause: an underestimation of the amount of time the job will take.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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9fa2704
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Impatience is best handled by allowing an indefinite time for the job, particularly new jobs that require unfamiliar techniques; by doubling the allotted time when circumstances force time planning;
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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96398cc
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Perhaps the best single thing to learn is to recognize a value trap when you're in it and work on that before you continue on the machine.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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d3467d9
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we don't usually see that there's a third possible logical term equal to yes and no which is capable of expanding our understanding in an unrecognized direction. We don't even have a term for it, so I'll have to use the Japanese mu.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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1eea6e2
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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."
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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f77d4c0
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Any computer-electronics technician knows otherwise. Try to find a voltage representing one or zero when the power is off! The circuits are in a mu state.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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e3a1c04
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The dualistic mind tends to think of mu occurrences in nature as a kind of contextual cheating, or irrelevance, but mu is found throughout all scientific investigation, and nature doesn't cheat,
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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5dd0c80
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It is as though two old friends, a Catholic and Protestant, were sitting drinking beer, enjoying life, and the subject of birth control somehow came up. Big freeze-out.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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61c9e30
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He is not stubborn, not narrow-minded, not lazy, not stupid. There was just no easy explanation. So it was left up in the air, a kind of mystery that one gives up on because there is no sense in just going round and round and round looking for an answer that's not there.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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6787fec
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If you have a high evaluation of yourself then your ability to recognize new facts is weakened. Your ego isolates you from the Quality reality. When the facts show that you've just goofed, you're not as likely to admit it. When false information makes you look good, you're likely to believe it. On any mechanical repair job ego comes in for rough treatment. You're always being fooled, you're always making mistakes, and a mechanic who has a b..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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27714c3
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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."
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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6d0d36d
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The dictum that Science and its offspring, technology, are "value free," that is, "quality free," has got to go."
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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1b6b1a6
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Technology is blamed for a lot of this loneliness, since the loneliness is certainly associated with the newer technological devices--TV, jets, freeways and so on--but I hope it's been made plain that the real evil isn't the objects of technology but the tendency of technology to isolate people into lonely attitudes of objectivity. It's the objectivity, the dualistic way of looking at things underlying technology, that produces the evil.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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d16558f
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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.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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17d6d49
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The world has no existence whatsoever outside the human imagination. It's all a ghost, and in antiquity was so recognized as a ghost, the whole blessed world we live in. It's run by ghosts. We see what we see because these ghosts show it to us, ghosts of Moses and Christ and the Buddha, and Plato, and Descartes, and Rousseau and Jefferson and Lincoln, on and on and on. Isaac Newton is a very good ghost. One of the best. Your common sense is..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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2e1859a
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But the ones who go posing as moralists are the worst. Cost-free morals. Full of great ways for others to improve without any expense to themselves. There's an ego thing in there, too. They use the morals to make someone else look inferior and that way look better themselves. It doesn't matter what the moral code is -- religious morals, political morals, racist morals, capitalist morals, feminist morals, hippie morals -- they're all the sam..
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philosophy
zen
psychology
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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b11e3d6
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When you try to climb a mountain to prove how big you are, you almost never make it. And even if you do it's a hollow victory. In order to sustain the victory you have to prove yourself again and again in some other way, and again and again and again, driven forever to fill a false image, haunted by the fear that the image is not true and someone will find out. That's never the way.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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a624b9f
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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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64f5ef1
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The easiest intellectual analogue of pure Quality that people in our environment can understand is that 'Quality is the response of an organism to its environment' [he
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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9670824
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Buy good tools as you can afford them and you'll never regret it.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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3e2e6ab
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One lives longer in order that he may live longer. There is no other purpose.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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22375b7
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What you need is an hypothesis for how you're going to get that slotless screw out of there and scientific method doesn't provide any of these hypotheses. It operates only after they're around. This is the zero moment of consciousness. Stuck. No answer. Honked. Kaput. It's a miserable experience emotionally. You're losing time. You're incompetent. You don't know what you're doing. You should be ashamed of yourself.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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9fb4ea7
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These false images are deflated so rapidly and completely you're bound to be very discouraged very soon if you've derived your gumption from ego rather than Quality.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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dd5229f
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Now there was an alternative explanation: people disagreed about Quality because some just used their immediate emotions whereas others applied their overall knowledge.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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5b91b0f
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Not if you have the right attitudes. It's having the right attitudes that's hard.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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8389046
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He noted that although normally you associate Quality with objects, feelings of Quality sometimes occur without any object at all. This is what led him at first to think that maybe Quality is all subjective. But subjective pleasure wasn't what he meant by Quality either. Quality decreases subjectivity. Quality takes you out of yourself, makes you aware of the world around you. Quality is opposed to subjectivity.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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4e9784d
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The mechanics in their attitude toward the machine were really taking no different attitude from the manual's toward the machine, or from the attitude I had when I brought it in there. We were all spectators. And it occurred to me there is no manual that deals with the real business of motorcycle maintenance, the most important aspect of all. Caring about what you are doing is considered either unimportant or taken for granted.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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cc9baa4
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that Quality was the effect of subjects and objects. It was not! He brought out his knife. "The sun of quality," he wrote, "does not revolve around the subjects and objects of our existence. It does not just passively illuminate them. It is not subordinate to them in any way. It has created them. They are subordinate to it!"
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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6a9a684
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There's kind of a glaring inconsistency here, that's almost too obvious to dwell on. If they can't stand physical discomfort and they can't stand technology, they've got a little compromising to do. They depend on technology and condemn it at the same time. I'm sure they know that and that just contributes to their dislike of the whole situation. They're not presenting a logical thesis, they're just reporting how it is. But three farmers ar..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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2f87471
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Steel can be any shape you want if you are skilled enough, and any shape but the one you want if you are not.
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Robert M. Pirsig |