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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 0db2143 | I know what it is! We've arrived at the West Coast! We're all strangers again! Folks, I just forgot the biggest gumption trap of all. The funeral procession! The one everybody's in, this hyped-up, fuck-you, supermodern, ego style of life that thinks it owns this country. | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| 4e2aa16 | Because he'd given up, the surface of life was comfortable for him. He worked reasonably hard, was easy to get along with and, except for an occasional glimpse of inner emptiness shown in some short stories he wrote at the time, his days passed quite usually. | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| 899fade | The major producer of the social chaos, the indeterminacy of thought and values that rational knowledge is supposed to eliminate, is none other than science itself. And what Phaedrus saw in the isolation of his own laboratory work years ago is now seen everywhere in the technological world today. Scientifically produced antiscience--chaos. | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| 90e8112 | We are all of us very arrogant and conceited about running down other people's ghosts but just as ignorant and barbaric and superstitious about our own. | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| 009efba | The statement "To travel is better than to arrive" comes back to mind again and stays. We have been traveling and now we will arrive. For me a period of depression comes on when I reach a temporary goal like this and have to reorient myself toward another one." | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| 575da08 | I have seen these marshes a thousand times, yet each time they're new. It's wrong to call them benign. You could just as well call them cruel and senseless, they are all of those things, but the reality of them overwhelms halfway conceptions. | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| c7376d0 | The logical statements entered into the notebook are broken down into six categories: (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. This is not different from the formal arrangement of many college and high-school lab notebo.. | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| 491aaf4 | A copy of Thoreau's Walden... which Chris has never heard and which can be read a hundred times without exhaustion. I try always to pick a book far over his head and read it as a basis for questions and answers, rather than without interruption. 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. They must be written this way. Som.. | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| 27f85d9 | I told her that until he had a real felt need he was just going to resent help, so we went over and sat in the shade and waited. | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| 932df81 | A man conducting a gee-whiz science show with fifty thousand dollars' worth of Frankenstein equipment is not doing anything scientific if he knows beforehand what the results of his efforts are going to be. A motorcycle mechanic, on the other hand, who honks the horn to see if the battery works is informally conducting a true scientific experiment. He is testing a hypothesis by putting the question to nature. | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| ec3ccbb | What I am is a heretic who's recanted, and thereby in everyone's eyes saved his soul. Everyone's eyes but one, who knows deep down inside that all he has saved is his skin. | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| abee3cb | When she first came here she used to think there was somebody up in those big buildings who knows what's going on here. They would never come down and talk to her. After a while she found out nobody knows what's going on. | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| f65964a | Walk into any of a hundred thousand classrooms today and hear the teachers divide and subdivide and interrelate and establish "principles" and study "methods" and what you will hear is the ghost of Aristotle speaking down through the centuries--the desiccating lifeless voice of dualistic reason." | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| df1c6cd | You, sir, what are the three kinds of particular rhetoric according to subject matter discussed?" But Phaedrus is prepared. "Forensic, deliberative and epideictic," he answers calmly. "What are the epideictic techniques?" "The technique of identifying likenesses, the technique of praise, that of encomium and that of amplification." | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| 7efa1cb | The machine itself receives some of the same feelings. With over 27,000 on it it's getting to be something of a high-miler, and old-timer, although there are plenty of older ones running. But over the miles, and I think most cyclists will agree with this, you pick up certain feelings about an individual machine that are unique for that one individual machine and no other. A friend who owns a cycle of the same make, model and even same year .. | differences mechanics motorcycle philosophy | Robert M. Pirsig | |
| 4cf7785 | 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. | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| 1db5f69 | I don't want to own these prairies, or photograph them, or change them, or even stop or even keep going. | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| 67159d3 | I am inclined to follow Robert M. Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: 'When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion. | Richard Dawkins | ||
| 0368676 | 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 .. | learning motorcycle-mechanics motorcycles | Robert M. Pirsig | |
| 37ef0eb | 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. | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| a86cb42 | 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. | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| 3b6cbb9 | 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 .. | desolation loneliness | Robert M. Pirsig | |
| 883c498 | We've won it. It's going to get better now. You can sort of tell these things. | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| ba3a6c1 | 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 | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| c06889c | 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. | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| a2d40b1 | 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. | intelligence logic philosophy rationale reason reasoning thinking | Robert M. Pirsig | |
| 19b3ff3 | 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.. | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| efc4322 | 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. | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| 9153c4c | One lives longer in order that he may live longer. There is no other purpose. That is what the ghost says. | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| f009458 | 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. | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| 52ed081 | 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.. | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| e79794e | You never gain something but that you lose something. | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| 2c0b9bb | 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.. | how-to-write learning outlines quality research rhetoric teaching what-is-quality writing-craft writing-process | Robert M. Pirsig | |
| c749720 | 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. | methodology questions | Robert M. Pirsig | |
| c406952 | 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.. | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| 00b91c1 | 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. | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| 23d10fb | Between the lines Phaedrus read no doubts, no sense of awe, only the eternal smugness of the professional academician. | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| 70bd779 | 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. | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| 0a6e66f | 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.. | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| e6abf27 | 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. | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| 83c00a0 | 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. | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| bd6c9a9 | The mythos that says the forms of this world are real but the Quality of this world is unreal, that is insane! | Robert M. Pirsig | ||
| 71d90fe | 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. | education how-teaching-kills-creativity schooling schools teaching university | Robert M. Pirsig | |
| 31adf83 | 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.. | getting-stuck-in-your-head philosophy thinking-process | Robert M. Pirsig |