Quotes by
Robert M. Pirsig |
1928-2017 , American writer
His published writing consists of two books. The better known, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, delves into Pirsig's exploration into the nature of quality. Ostensibly a first-person narrative based on a motorcycle trip he and his young son Chris had taken from Minneapolis to San Francisco, it is an exploration of the underlying metaphysics of Western culture. He also gives the reader a short summary of the history of philosophy. | 20 quotes | 920 visits |
Quotations
| • | Communism and socialism, programs for intellectual control over society. Fascism, a program for the social control of intellect. 6 |
| • | The only Zen you find on tops of mountains is the Zen you bring there. 5 |
| • | Is it hard? Not if you have the right attitudes. Its having the right attitudes thats hard. 4 |
| • | Art is anything you can do well. Anything you can do with quality. 3 |
| • | Metaphysics is a restaurant where they give you a thirty thousand page menu, and no food. 3 |
| • | The truth knocks on the door and you say, “Go away, I'm looking for the truth,” and so it goes away. Puzzling. |
| • | We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world. |
| • | The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands. |
| • | The past exists only in our memories, the future only in our plans. The present is our only reality. |
| • | In the high country of the mind one has to become adjusted to the thinner air of uncertainty. |
| • | If you have a high evaluation of yourself then your ability to recognize new facts is weakened. |
| • | The world comes to us in an endless stream of puzzle pieces that we would like to think all fit together somehow, but that in fact never do. |
| • | That which destroys the old mythos becomes the new mythos. |
| • | Religious mysticism is intellectual garbage. It’s a vestige of the old superstitious Dark Ages when nobody knew anything. It is one of those delusions that isn’t called insane only because there are so many people involved. |
| • | When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called a Religion. |
| • | You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. 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. |
| • | For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses. |
| • | You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It's easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally. |
| • | When you want to hurry something, that means you no longer care about it and want to get on to other things. |
| • | Familiarity can blind too. |
