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9aee066
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The predicted results of scientific enquiry and the actual results of scientific enquiry are diametrically opposed here, and no one seems to pay too much attention to the fact. The purpose of scientific method is to select a single truth from among many hypothetical truths. That, more than anything else, is what science is all about. But historically science has done exactly the opposite. Through multiplication upon multiplication of facts,..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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9b52711
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One student laid it wide open when she said with complete candor, "Of course you can't eliminate the degree and grading system. After all, that's what we're here for." She spoke the complete truth. The idea that the majority of students attend a university for an education independent of the degree and grades is a little hypocrisy everyone is happier not to expose."
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grading
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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f77c50b
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Is Euclidian geometry true or is Riemann geometry true? He answered, The question has no meaning. As well ask whether the metric system is true and the avoirdupois system is false; whether Cartesian coordinates are true and polar coordinates are false. One geometry can not be more true than another; it can only be more convenient. Geometry is not true, it is advantageous.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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b8e6aa0
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It's proper to begin with the regular facts, but after a rule is established beyond all doubt, the facts in conformity with it become dull because they no longer teach us anything new. Then it's the exception that becomes important. We seek not resemblances but differences, choose the most accentuated differences because they're the most striking and also the most instructive.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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57d50c0
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Normally screws are so cheap and small and simple you think of them as unimportant. But now, as your Quality awareness becomes stronger, you realize that this one, individual, particular screw is neither cheap nor small nor unimportant. Right now this screw is worth exactly the selling price of the whole motorcycle, because the motorcycle is actually valueless until you get the screw out. With this reevaluation of the screw comes a willingn..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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ab3962d
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Quality isn't a substance. Neither is it a method. It's outside of both. If one builds a house using the plumb-line and spirit-level methods he does so because a straight vertical wall is less likely to collapse and thus has higher Quality than a crooked one. Quality isn't method. It's the goal toward which method is aimed.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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11880c3
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The explanation, I suppose, is that the physical distance between people has nothing to do with loneliness. It's psychic distance, and in Montana and Idaho the physical distances are big but the psychic distances between people are small, and here it's reversed.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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00d1ff4
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The man who suffers a heart attack and is taken off the train at New Rochelle has had all his static patterns shattered, he can't find them, and in that moment only Dynamic Quality is available to him. That is why he gazes at his own hand with a sense of wonder and delight.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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4b25a5c
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Romantic Quality always correlated with instantaneous impressions. Square Quality always involved multiple considerations that extended over a period of time. Romantic Quality was the present, the here and now of things. Classic Quality was always concerned with more than just the present. The relation of the present to the past and future was always considered. If you conceived the past and future to be all contained in the present, why, t..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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cbc79f7
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In a sense, he said, it's the student's choice of Quality that defines him. People differ about Quality, not because Quality is different, but because people are different in terms of experience.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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930ba9c
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Quality isn't something you lay on top of subjects and objects like tinsel on a Christmas tree. Real Quality must be the source of the subjects and objects, the cone from which the tree must start.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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22e5b55
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His work was just barely passing by academic standards at this time, but this wasn't because he wasn't working or thinking. He was thinking too hard, and the harder you think in this high country of the mind the slower you go. Phaedrus read in a scientific way rather than a literary way, testing each sentence as he went along, noting doubts and questions to be resolved later, and I'm fortunate in having a whole trunkful of volumes of these ..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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8c067d1
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What is the truth and how do you know it when you have it?... How do we really know anything? Is there an "I" a "soul," which knows, or is this soul merely cells coordinating senses?... Is reality basically changing, or is it fixed and permanent?... When it's said that something means something, what's meant by that?"
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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42b155b
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What the classical formalists meant by the objection "Quality is just what you like" was that this subjective, undefined "quality" he was teaching was just romantic surface appeal. Classroom popularity contests could determine whether a composition had immediate appeal, all right, but was this Quality? Was Quality something that you "just see" or might it be something more subtle than that, so that you wouldn't see it at all immediately, bu..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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65dc8ed
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The way to solve the conflict between human values and technological needs is not to run away from technology. That's impossible. The way to resolve the conflict is to break down the barriers of dualistic thought that prevent a real understanding of what technology is--not an exploitation of nature, but a fusion of nature and the human spirit into a new kind of creation that transcends both.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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944c2d7
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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. That
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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5bb6252
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The 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.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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01025c6
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He became aware that the doctrinal differences among 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.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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109ac73
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The way to resolve the conflict is to break down the barriers of dualistic thought that prevent a real understanding of what technology is--not an exploitation of nature, but a fusion of nature and the human spirit into a new kind of creation that transcends both. When
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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51a023e
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The past exists only in our memories, the future only in our plans. The present is our only reality. The tree that you are aware of intellectually, because of that small time lag, is always in the past and therefore is always unreal. Any intellectually conceived object is always in the past and therefore unreal. Reality is always the moment of vision before the intellectualization takes place. There is no other reality. This preintellectual..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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b11fe95
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I feel happy to be here, and still a little sad to be here too. Sometimes it's a little better to travel than to arrive.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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93914ae
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stylized cars and stylized outboard motors and stylized typewriters and stylized clothes. Stylized refrigerators filled with stylized food in stylized kitchens in stylized houses. Plastic stylized toys for stylized children, who at Christmas and birthdays are in style with their stylish parents. You have to be awfully stylish yourself not to get sick of it once in a while. It's the style that gets you; technological ugliness syruped over wi..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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a241e1f
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I want to talk about another kind of high country now in the world of thought, which in some ways, for me at least, seems to parallel or produce feelings similar to this, and call it the high country of the mind. If all of human knowledge, everything that's known, is believed to be an enormous hierarchic structure, then the high country of the mind is found at the uppermost reaches of this structure in the most general, the most abstract co..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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7548065
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There are as many routes as there are individual souls.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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a7fc015
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DeWeese asks, 'Does this tie in with what you were doing on "Quality?"' 'It's the direct result of it,' I say. I remember something and look at DeWeese. 'Didn't you advise me to drop it?' 'I said no one had ever succeeded in doing what you were trying to do.' 'Do you think it's possible?' 'I don't know. Who knows?' His expression is really concerned. 'A lot of people are listening better these days. Particularly the kids. They're really lis..
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success
thinking
thought
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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e45b031
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You can't really think hard about what you're doing and listen to the radio at the same time.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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7286a3d
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What you have to do, if you get caught in this gumption trap of value rigidity, is slow down - you're going to have to slow down anyway whether you want to or not - but slow down deliberately and go over ground that you've been over before to see if the things you thought were important were really important and to . . . well . . . just stare at the machine. There's nothing wrong with that. Just live with it for a while. Watch it the way yo..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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203f645
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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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a9928b4
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Squareness may be succinctly and yet thoroughly defined as an inability to see quality before it's been intellectually defined,
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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03c97df
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I walk up the long main street in the gathering dusk and feel the presence of the mountains even though we talk about other things. I feel happy to be here, and still a little sad to be here too. Sometimes it's a little better to travel than to arrive.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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166fd0f
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Peace of mind isn't at all superficial, really," I expound. "It's the whole thing. That which produces it is good maintenance; that which disturbs it is poor maintenance. What we call workability of the machine is just an objectification of this peace of mind. The ultimate test's 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 your personal problems right into the m..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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aa8bbec
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Mountains like these and travelers in the mountains and events that happen to them here are found not only in Zen literature but in the tales of every major religion. The allegory of
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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ba654ba
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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.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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f37fe22
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They are sustained by structural relationships even when they have lost all other meaning and purpose. People arrive at a factory and perform a totally meaningless task from eight to five without question because the structure demands that it be that way. There's no villain, no "mean guy" who wants them to live meaningless lives, it's just that the structure, the system demands it and no one is willing to take on the formidable task of chan..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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c5c7ce8
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Aristotelian ethics, Aristotelian definitions, Aristotelian logic, Aristotelian forms, Aristotelian substances, Aristotelian rhetoric, Aristotelian laughter...ha-ha, ha-ha. And the bones of the Sophists long ago turned to dust and what they said turned to dust with them and the dust was buried under the rubble of declining Athens through its fall and Macedonia through its decline and fall. Through the decline and death of ancient Rome and B..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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5d67abf
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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. That was what it was about that wall in Korea. It was a material reflection of a spiritual reality.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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71e0a43
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O verdadeiro sistema e a atual construcao do pensamento sistematico em si, da racionalidade em si; e, se uma fabrica for destruida mas a racionalidade que a produziu continuar de pe, essa racionalidade simplesmente produzira outra fabrica. Se uma revolucao destruir um governo sistematico, mas os esquemas sistematicos de pensamento que produziram esse governo continuarem intactos, esses esquemas repetir-se-ao no governo seguinte. Fala-se mui..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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298c20c
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A finely tempered nature longs to escape from his noisy cramped surroundings into the silence of the high mountains where the eye ranges freely through the still pure air and fondly traces out the restful contours apparently built for eternity. The passage is from a 1918 speech by a young German scientist named Albert Einstein.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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f26727e
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Sonunda kendini yuceltmeyi amac edinen her caba felaketle sonlanmaya yazgilidir. Bir daga, ne kadar buyuk oldugunuzu kanitlamak icin tirmaniyorsaniz, hemen hemen hicbir zaman saglayamazsiniz bunu. Tirmansaniz bile ici bos bir zafer olur bu. zaferi surdurmek icin kendinizi tekrar tekrar baska yollarla kanitlamak, sahte bir imaji tekrar tekrar olusturmak; pesinizde bu imajin dogru olmadigi ve birinin bunu anlayacagi korkusuyla sonsuza dek bu ..
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motosiklet
yol
hayat
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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1c2e8ed
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motorcycle functions entirely in accordance with the laws of reason, and a study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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b6c0650
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That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on, it's right there, so blurred you can't focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it anytime, and the whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate consciousness
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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b44740c
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Certainly no one could have predicted what has happened. Back then, after 121 others had turned this book down, one lone editor offered a standard $3,000 advance. He said the book forced him to decide what he was in publishing for, and added that although this was almost certainly the last payment, I shouldn't be discouraged. Money wasn't the point with a book like this.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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c4f0282
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the incredible contrasts of the best and worst...both exist here in such terrific intensity because New York's never been committed to any preservation of its static patterns. It's always ready to change. Whether you are or not. That is what creates its horror and that is what creates its power. Its strength is its looseness. It's the freedom to be so awful that gives it the freedom to be so good. And so things keep happening here all the t..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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7601c80
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It's this understanding of Quality as revealed by stuckness which so often makes self-taught mechanics so superior to institute-trained men who have learned how to handle everything except a new situation.
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Robert M. Pirsig |