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1db5f69
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I don't want to own these prairies, or photograph them, or change them, or even stop or even keep going.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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0368676
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Bill arrives with a grin about something. Sure, he's got some jets for my machine and knows right were they are. I'll have to wait a second though. He's got to close a deal out in back on some Harley parts. I go with him out in a shed in back and see he is selling a whole Harley machine in used parts, except for the frame, which the customer already has. He is selling them all for $125. Not a bad price at all. Coming back I comment, "He'll ..
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learning
motorcycle-mechanics
motorcycles
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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37ef0eb
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I survive mainly by pleasing others. You do that to get out. To get out you figure out what they want you to say and then you say it with as much skill and originality as possible and then, if they're convinced, you get out.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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a86cb42
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A very strong case can be made for the statement that science grows by its mu answers more than by its yes or no answers.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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3b6cbb9
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The orange turns to dull bronze light and continues to show what it has shown all day long, but now it seems to show it without enthusiasm. Across those dry hills, within those little houses in the distance are people who've been there all day long, going about the business of the day, who now find nothing unusual or different in this strange darkening landscape, as we do. If we were to come upon them early in the day they might be curious ..
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loneliness
desolation
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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883c498
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We've won it. It's going to get better now. You can sort of tell these things.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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ba3a6c1
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Here by far the most frustrating gumption trap is inadequate tools. Nothing's quite so demoralizing as a tool hang-up. Buy good tools as you can afford them and you'll never regret
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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c06889c
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For this you keep a lab notebook. Everything gets written down, formally, so that you know at all times where you are, where you've been, where you're going and where you want to get.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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a2d40b1
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Now we've a real intellectual impasse. Our reason, which is supposed to make things more intelligible, seems to be making them less intelligible, and when reason thus defeats its own purpose something has to be changed in the structure of our reason itself.
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reason
intelligence
philosophy
rationale
reasoning
thinking
logic
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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19b3ff3
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My own opinion is that the intellect of modern man isn't that superior. IQs aren't that much different. Those Indians and medieval men were just as intelligent as we are, but the context in which they thought was completely different. Within that context of thought, ghosts and spirits are quite as real as atoms, particles, photons and quarks are to a modern man. In that sense I believe in ghosts. Modern man has his ghosts and spirits too, y..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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efc4322
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Then one evening, contrary to his custom, he drank black coffee and couldn't sleep. Ideas arose in crowds. He felt them collide until pairs interlocked, so to speak, making a stable combination.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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9153c4c
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One lives longer in order that he may live longer. There is no other purpose. That is what the ghost says.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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f009458
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most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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52ed081
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When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process. That is fairly well understood, at least in the arts. Mark Twain's experience comes to mind, in which, after he had mastered the analytic knowledge needed to pilot the Mississippi River, he discovered the river had lost its beauty. Something is always killed. But what is less noticed in the arts--something is always created too. And instea..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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e79794e
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You never gain something but that you lose something.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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2c0b9bb
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He singled out aspects of Quality such as unity, vividness, authority, economy, sensitivity, clarity, emphasis, flow, suspense, brilliance, precision, proportion, depth and so on; kept each of these as poorly defined as Quality itself, but demonstrated them by the same class reading techniques. He showed how the aspect of Quality called unity, the hanging-togetherness of a story, could be improved with a technique called an outline. The aut..
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learning
outlines
what-is-quality
how-to-write
research
rhetoric
writing-craft
quality
writing-process
teaching
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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c749720
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Why should an irrational method work when rational methods were all so rotten? He had an intuitive feeling, growing rapidly, that what he had stumbled on was no small gimmick. It went far beyond. How far, he didn't know.
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methodology
questions
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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c406952
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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. 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 tha..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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00b91c1
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The trouble is that essays always have to sound like God talking for eternity, and that isn't the way it ever is. People should see that it's never anything other than just one person talking from one place in time and space and circumstance. It's never been anything else, ever, but you can't get that across in an essay.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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23d10fb
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Between the lines Phaedrus read no doubts, no sense of awe, only the eternal smugness of the professional academician.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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70bd779
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Quality is a characteristic of thought and statement that is recognized by a nonthinking process. Because definitions are a product of rigid, formal thinking, quality cannot be defined.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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0a6e66f
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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. On a cycle the frame is gone. You're completely in contact with it all. You're in the scene, not just watching it anym..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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e6abf27
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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.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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83c00a0
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The classic style is straightforward, unadorned, unemotional, economical and carefully proportioned. Its purpose is not to inspire emotionally, but to bring order out of chaos and make the unknown known. It is not an esthetically free and natural style. It is esthetically restrained. Everything is under control. Its value is measured in terms of the skill with which this control is maintained.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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bd6c9a9
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The mythos that says the forms of this world are real but the Quality of this world is unreal, that is insane!
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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71d90fe
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When spontaneity and individuality and really good original stuff occurred in a classroom it was in spite of the instruction, not because of it. This seemed to make sense. He was ready to resign. Teaching dull conformity to hateful students wasn't what he wanted to do.
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education
how-teaching-kills-creativity
schools
schooling
teaching
university
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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31adf83
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If your mind is truly, profoundly stuck, then you may be much better off than when it was loaded with ideas. The solution to the problem often at first seems unimportant or undesirable, but the state of stuckness allows it, in time, to assumes its true importance. It seemed small because our previous rigid evaluation which led to the stuckness made it small. But now consider the fact that no matter how hard you try to hang on to it, this st..
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philosophy
getting-stuck-in-your-head
thinking-process
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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a95a274
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You follow these little discrepancies long enough and they sometimes open up into huge revelations.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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f2ef1a7
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And the definition of that person, when he has rejected the mythos, Phaedrus said, is "insane." To"
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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195c2f4
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Perhaps because of these changes the stream of national consciousness moves faster now, and is broader, but it seems to run less deep.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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3b7f70b
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huge body of common knowledge that unites our minds as cells are united in the body of man.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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4f35ed5
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But apart from a personality what is there? Some bones and flesh. A collection of legal statistics, perhaps, but surely no person.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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b29e1ac
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Sometimes it's a little better to travel than to arrive.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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67fb69d
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There is no evidence anywhere that he ever thought of his expulsion from the university as a failure, just an enigma. The explanation I've come to arises from the discrepancy between his lack of faith in scientific reason in the laboratory and his fanatic faith expressed in the Church of Reason lecture. I was thinking about the discrepancy one day and it suddenly came to me that it wasn't a discrepancy at all. His lack of faith in reason wa..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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af04e0a
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Quality...you know what it is, yet you don't know what it is. But that's self-contradictory. But some things are better than others, that is, they have more quality. But when you try to say what the quality is, apart from the things that have it, it all goes There's nothing to talk about. But if you can't say what Quality is, how do you know what it is, or how do you know that it even exists? If no one knows what it is, then for all pract..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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bae1331
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Schools teach you to imitate. If you don't imitate what the teacher wants you get a bad grade.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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ec78d3f
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Stuckness shouldn't be avoided. It's the psychic predecessor of all real understanding.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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ae14368
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He's here but he's not here. He rejects the here, is unhappy with it, wants to be farther up the trail but when he gets there will be just as unhappy because then will be here.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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76458be
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He was insane. And when you look directly at an insane man all you see is a reflection of your own knowledge that he's insane, which is not to see him at all.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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d3e2e13
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Actually, a root word of technology, , originally meant "art". The ancient Greeks never separated art from manufacture in their minds, and so never developed separate words for them."
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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f83cb9f
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What makes his world so hard to see clearly is not its strangeness but its usualness. Familiarity can blind you too.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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a99a165
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Quality is just the focal point around which a lot of intellectual furniture is getting rearranged.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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5aa6fbb
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The Church of Reason, like all institutions of the System, is based not on individual strength but upon individual weakness.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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9221ca0
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the track of Quality preselects what data we're going to be conscious of, and it makes this selection in such a way as to best harmonize what we are with what we are becoming.
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Robert M. Pirsig |