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fd4adb7
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Coastal people never really know what the ocean symbolizes to landlocked inland people--what a great distant dream it is, present but unseen in the deepest levels of subconsciousness, and when they arrive at the ocean and the conscious images are compared with the subconscious dream there is a sense of defeat at having come so far to be so stopped by the mystery that can never be fathomed. The source of it all.
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philosophy
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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1393d84
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Your common sense is nothing more than the voices of thousands and thousands of these ghosts from the past. Ghosts and more ghosts. Ghosts trying to find their place among the living.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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faf4477
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Waiting. For that missing seed crystal of thought that would suddenly solidify everything.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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9ec7f1b
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Any effort that has self-glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in disaster. Now we're paying the price. When you try to climb a mountain to prove how big you are, you almost never make it.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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9c00e2b
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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."
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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9237e5d
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But of course, without the top you can't have any sides. It's the top that defines the sides.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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8ab7cbf
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Samaia bol'shaia dvoistvennost', mezhdu nim i mnoi, tak i ostalas' neraskrytoi. Razdvoenie lichnosti. Kto zhe eto sdelal? Ne ia zhe. I nikak nel'zia ispravit' etogo...Ia vsio dumaiu, naskol'ko zhe gluboko dno u okeana...
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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215df68
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Like that timber wolf on the mountain he had a kind of animal courage. He went his own way with unconcern for consequences that sometimes stunned people, and stuns me now to hear about it. He did not often swerve to right or to left. I've discovered that. But this courage didn't arise from any idealistic idea of self-sacrifice, only from the intensity of his pursuit, and there was nothing noble about it.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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72d4987
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In proportion to his intelligence he was extremely isolated. There's no record of his having had close friends. He traveled alone. Always. Even in the presence of others he was completely alone. People sometimes felt this and felt rejected by it, and so did not like him, but their dislike was not important to him. His wife and family seem to have suffered the most. His wife says those who tried to go beyond the barriers of his reserve found..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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1495181
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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..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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ef6f039
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the idea that one person's mind is accessible to another's is just a conversational illusion, just a figure of speech, an assumption that makes some kind of exchange between basically alien creatures seem plausible, and that really the relationship of one person to another is ultimately unknowable.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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dc3b73a
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When one isn't dominated by feelings of separateness from what he's working on, then one can be said to "care" about what he's doing. That is what caring really is, a feeling of identification with what one's doing."
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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9f12eae
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Your mind was already thinking ahead to what you would do when the cover plate was off, and so it takes a little time to realize that this irritating minor annoyance of a torn screw slot isn't just irritating and minor. You're stuck. Stopped. Terminated. It's absolutely stopped you from fixing the motorcycle. This isn't a rare scene in science or technology. This is the commonest scene of all. Just plain stuck.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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5915f1f
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The best students always are flunking. Every good teacher knows that.
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teachers
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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97809d1
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That is impractical, but practicality isn't the whole thing with gloves or with anything else.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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a3f7def
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He then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experience, and thus to overcome it... He make this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life in order to find in this way the peace and serenity which he cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience...
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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d4c82e9
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All nature has is a potential for steel. There's nothing else there. But what's 'potential'? That's also in someone's mind!... Ghosts.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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52a81e0
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Can I have a motorcycle when I get old enough?" "If you take care of it." "What do you have to do?" "Lot's of things. You've been watching me." "Will you show me all of them?" "Sure." "Is it hard?" "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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8d51123
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Insanity on the other hand is an intellectual pattern. It may have biological causes but it has no physical or biological reality. No scientific instrument can be produced in court to show who is insane and who is sane. There's nothing about insanity that conforms to any scientific law of the universe. The scientific laws of the universe are invented by sanity. There's no way by which sanity, using the instruments of its own creation, can m..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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3066651
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the art of the work is just as dependent upon your own mind and spirit as it is upon the material of the machine. That's why you need the peace of mind.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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d46ea27
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It's the clothes that make them think you're not really there.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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6c834ac
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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.
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creative-writing
zen
writing-process
writers
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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940643a
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You don't have to go fishing, of course, to fix your motorcycle.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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d537fe7
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a ghost which calls itself rationality but whose appearance is that of incoherence and meaninglessness, which causes the most normal of everyday acts to seem slightly mad because of their irrelevance to anything else.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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2577891
|
What we have here is a conflict of visions of reality. The world as you see it right here, right now, is reality, regardless of what the scientists say it might be. That's the way John sees it. But the world as revealed by its scientific discoveries is also reality, regardless of how it may appear,
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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a09e254
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Il Buddha, il Divino, dimora nel circuito di un calcolatore o negli ingranaggi del cambio di una moto con lo stesso agio che in cima a una montagna o nei petali di un fiore.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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456d974
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Le strade migliori non collegano mai niente con nient'altro e c'e sempre un'altra strada che ti ci porta piu in fretta
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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743d27e
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It's been necessary since before the time of Socrates to reject the passions, the emotions, in order to free the rational mind for an understanding of nature's order which was as yet unknown. Now it's time to further an understanding of nature's order by reassimilating those passions which were originally fled from.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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5f284df
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The passions, the emotions, the affective domain of man's consciousness, are a part of nature's order too. The central part.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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9a02870
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and he sees that what he is talking about can never really be accepted here because to see it one has to be free from social authority and this is an institution of social authority.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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91c76fd
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the reality of the Good, represented by the Sophists, and the reality of the True, represented by the dialecticians, were engaged in a huge struggle for the future mind of man. Truth won, the Good lost, and that is why today we have so little difficulty accepting the reality of truth and so much difficulty accepting the reality of Quality, even though there is no more agreement in one area than in the other.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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2d53c0b
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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. He goes on when the sloppiness of his step shows he's tired. He rests at odd times. He looks up the trail trying to see what's ahead even when he knows what's ahead because he just looked a second before. He goes too fast or too slow for the conditions a..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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040c57a
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It's all right," Phaedrus said. "We just accidentally stumbled over a genuine question, and the shock is hard to recover from."
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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a31e925
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Drifting is what one does
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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ecf49b3
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We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with emphasis on "good" rather than "time" and when you make that shift in emphasis the whole approach changes."
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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371f235
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And from time to time you find your "county road" takes you onto a two-rutter and then a single rutter and then into a pasture and stops, or else it takes you into some farmer's backyard."
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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9619885
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You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. 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.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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6a5e67e
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the thing to do when working on a motorcycle, as in any other task, is to cultivate the peace of mind which does not separate one's self from one's surroundings. When that is done successfully then everything else follows naturally. 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..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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cb239bf
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It's not the motorcycle maintenance, not the faucet. It's all of technology they can't take. And then all sorts of things started tumbling into place and I knew that was it. Sylvia's irritation at a friend who thought computer programming was 'creative.' All their drawings and paintings and photographs without a technological thing in them. Of course she's not going to get mad at that faucet, I thought. You always suppress momentary anger a..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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e54f223
|
To doubt the literal meaning of the words of Jesus or Moses incurs hostility from most people, but it's just a fact that if Jesus or Moses were to appear today, unidentified, with the same message he spoke many years ago, his mental stability would be challenged. This isn't because what Jesus or Moses said was untrue or because modern society is in error but simply because the route they chose to reveal to others has lost relevance and comp..
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words
meaning
philosophy
zen
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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7d8e4a5
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So we navigate mostly by dead reckoning, and deduction from what clues we find. I keep a compass in one pocket for overcast days when the sun doesn't show directions and have the map mounted in a special carrier on top of the gas tank where I can keep track of miles from the last junction and know what to look for. With those tools and a lack of pressure to 'get somewhere' it works out fine and we just about have America all to ourselves.
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travel
inspirational
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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fbd8c5d
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He comments on how amazing it is that everything in the universe can be described by the twenty-six written characters with which they have been working.
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wonder
observations
english
language
insight
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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c9538e7
|
These were the underdogs, the outsiders, the pariahs, the sinners of his system. But the reason he was so concerned about them was that he felt the quality and strength of his entire system of organization depended on how he treated them. If he treated the pariahs well he would have a good system. If he treated them badly he would have a weak one.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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f6d729a
|
What is in mind is a sort of Chautauqua...that's the only name I can think of for it...like the traveling tent-show Chautauquas that used to move across America, this America, the one that we are now in, an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer. The Chautauquas were pushed aside by faster-paced radio, movies and TV, and it..
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enlightenment
philosophy
chautauqua
american-history
entertainment
consciousness
awareness
media
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Robert M. Pirsig |