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96a5d0d
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You look at where you're going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you've been and a pattern seems to emerge. And if you project forward from that pattern, then sometimes you can come up with something.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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6d2438a
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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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ab1174e
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You don't count. You're not what they're looking for. You're not on TV.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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9728cb7
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The making of a painting or the fixing of a motorcycle isn't separate from the rest of your existence.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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acd0a95
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Mind has no matter or energy but they can't escape its predominance over everything they do. Logic exists in the mind. Numbers exist only in the mind.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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aa9dbdf
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Tate explained that James was able to achieve this magic through the use of the first-person narrator. Tate said that the first person is the most difficult form because the writer is locked inside the head of the narrator and can't get out. He can't say "meanwhile, back at the ranch" as a transition to another subject because he is imprisoned forever inside the narrator. But so is the reader! And that is the strength of the first-person na..
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writing
unreliable-narrator
villain
puzzle
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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37ef5a6
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physical discomfort is important only when the mood is wrong. Then you fasten on to whatever thing is uncomfortable and call that the cause. But if the mood is right, then physical discomfort doesn't mean much.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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91b94d3
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Cerchi di capire dove stai andando e dove sei, e ti sembra che la tua vita non abbia senso. Ma quando dai uno sguardo indietro si delineano delle costanti, e se ti proietti in avanti partendo da quelle, a volte ti capita di scoprire qualcosa.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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5f841db
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But what's "potential"? That's also in someone's mind!...Ghosts."
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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b86c79b
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It's sometimes argued that there's no real progress; that a civilization that kills multitudes in mass warfare, that pollutes the land and oceans with ever larger quantities of debris, that destroys the dignity of individuals by subjecting them to a forced mechanized existence can hardly be called an advance over the simpler hunting and gathering and agricultural existence of prehistoric times. But this argument, though romantically appeali..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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c9e099e
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And so in recent times we have seen a huge split develop between a classic culture and a romantic counterculture--two worlds growingly alienated and hateful toward each other with everyone wondering if it will always be this way, a house divided against itself. No one wants it really--despite what his antagonists in the other dimension might think.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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c10a3ee
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Yah-da, yah-da, yah-da, yah-da, yah, carburetor, gear ratio, compression, yah-da-yah, piston, plugs, intake, yah-da-yah, on and on and on. That is the romantic face of the classic mode.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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10ceed2
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Cromwell's statement, "No one ever travels so high as he who knows not where he is going,"
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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0e15054
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Yah-da, yah-da, yah-da, yah-da, yah, carburetor, gear ratio, compression, yah-da-yah, piston, plugs, intake, yah-da-yah, on and on and on. That is the romantic face of the classic mode. Dull, awkward and ugly. Few romantics get beyond that point.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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1ddf645
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It's not the technology that's scary. It's what it does to the relations between people,
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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80a630c
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I always feel like I'm in church when I do this...The
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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716567c
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On a cycle the frame is gone. You're completely in contact with it all. You're in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. 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 immedia..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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5b07c80
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An untrained observer will see only physical labor and often get the idea that physical labor is mainly what the mechanic does. Actually the physical labor is the smallest and easiest part of what the mechanic does. By far the greatest part of his work is careful observation and precise thinking. That is why mechanics sometimes seem so taciturn and withdrawn when performing tests. They don't like it when you talk to them because they are co..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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656195c
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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. His (Korean) friends nod and smile and eat the food they've taken from tins and say no pleasantly.
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ideographs
yes-and-no
language
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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fa6e0d5
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The past cannot remember the past. The future can't generate the future.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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77e1b33
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Real science and real philosophy are not guided by preconceptions of what subjects are important to consider. That
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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d1d8477
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Dialectic, which is the parent of logic, came itself from rhetoric. Rhetoric is in turn the child of the myths and poetry of ancient Greece. That is so historically, and that is so by any application of common sense. The poetry and the myths are the response of a prehistoric people to the universe around them made on the basis of Quality. It is Quality, not dialectic, which is the generator of everything we know. The
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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fb9378f
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classically as well as romantically ugly because it means the cylinder is getting too much gas and not enough air.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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47cdd9d
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the competence of a speaker has no relevance to the truth
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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51f0344
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Fedro era molto isolato. Non mi risulta che avesse amici intimi. Viaggiava da solo. Sempre. Era solo anche in mezzo agli altri. La gente a volte se ne accorgeva e si sentiva respinta, per cui non provava simpatia per lui, ma questo non lo toccava. I suoi familiari furono i primi a soffrire per il suo carattere. Sua moglie dice che chi cercasse di vincere il suo riserbo si trovava di fronte un muro. La mia impressione e che la sua famiglia f..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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f6abc65
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In laboratorio, quando tutte le ipotesi si sfasciano e risultati inattesi ti impediscono di andare sia avanti sia indietro, incominci a guardare ai lati. In seguito Fedro uso l'espressione 'collaterale' per descrivere una crescita del sapere che non procede in avanti come una freccia in volo, ma si espande lateralmente, come una freccia che si allargasse in volo. O come l'arciere che ha colpito il bersaglio e vinto il premio, ma scopre di a..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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8095507
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Dato che non ci siamo abituati, di solito non ci accorgiamo che esiste un terzo termine logico possibile equivalente al si e al no, il quale e in grado di espandere la nostra conoscenza in una direzione non riconosciuta. Non esiste nemmeno il termine per indicarlo, per cui dovro usare la parola giapponese mu. Mu significa <>. Come <>, mu punta il dito fuori dal processo di discriminazione dualistica, dicendo semplicem..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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7492be0
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You look at where you're going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you've been and a pattern seems to emerge. And if you project forward from that pattern, then sometimes you can come up with something. "All" --
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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c2fc9a7
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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. We are just moving down the empty road. 5
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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e5ff2ae
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I started to roll over for more sleep but heard a rooster crowing and then became aware we are on vacation and there is no point in sleeping.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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ad00fc6
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I read a sentence or two, wait for him to come up with his usual barrage of questions, answer them, then read another sentence or two. Classics read well this way.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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3eda0bb
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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.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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39ab080
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Usually, I say, your mind gets stuck when you're trying to do too many things at once. What you have to do is try not to force words to come. That just gets you more stuck. What you have to do now is separate out the things and do them one at a time. You're trying to think of what to say and what to say first at the same time and that's too hard. So separate them out. Just make a list of all the things you want to say in any old order. Then..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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6798e1b
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Stuckness. That's what I want to talk about today. Back
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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6dcec47
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but it can't tell you where you ought to go, unless where you ought to go is a continuation of where you were going in the past. Creativity, originality, inventiveness, intuition, imagination--"unstuckness," in other words--are completely outside its domain. We"
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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03676a6
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The range of human knowledge today is so great that we're all specialists and the distance between specializations has become so great that anyone who seeks to wander freely among them almost has to forego closeness with the people around him.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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ee1b17e
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It's an old split. Like the one between art and art history. One does it and the other talks about how it's done and the talk about how it's done never seems to match how one does it. DeWeese
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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8877e49
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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. 11
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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ed8ee79
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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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00d129a
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What has become an urgent necessity is a way of looking at the world that does violence to neither of these two kinds of understanding and unites them into one.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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f12341b
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When you want to hurry something, that means you no longer care about it and want to get on to other things. I just want to get at it slowly, but carefully and thoroughly, with the same attitude I remember was present just before I found that sheared pin. It was that attitude that found it, nothing else.
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don-t-hurry
don-t-rush
slow-and-steady
take-it-easy
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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0d8c0c1
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The nature of our culture is such that if you were to look for instruction in how to do any of these jobs, the instruction would always give only one understanding of Quality, the classic. It would tell you how to hold the blade when sharpening the knife, or how to use a sewing machine, or how to mix and apply glue with the presumption that once these underlying methods were applied, "good" would naturally follow. The ability to see directl..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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36add77
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institutions such as schools, churches, governments and political organizations of every sort all tended to direct thought for ends other than truth, for the perpetuation of their own functions, and for the control of individuals in the service of these functions.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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64b9ed7
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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.
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Robert M. Pirsig |