“Now we’ve a real intellectual impasse. Our reason, which is supposed to make things more intelligible, seems to be making them less… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
Talk about rationality can get very confusing unless the things with which rationality deals are also included. — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
Logic presumes a separation of subject from object; therefore logic is not final wisdom.This is Zen. This is my motorcycle maintenance. — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
Dialectic, which is the parent of logic, came itself from rhetoric. Rhetoric is in turn the child of the myths and poetry… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
The logic of science was infallible, and if the scientists were sometimes mistaken, this was assumed to be only from their mistaking… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
... the laws of physics and of logic ... the number system ... the principle of algebraic substitution. These are ghosts. We… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
“The real purpose of the scientific method is to make sure Nature hasn't misled you into thinking you know something you don't… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
Laws of nature are human inventions, like ghosts. Laws of logic, or mathematics are also human inventions, like ghosts. The whole blessed… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
“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… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share
“I started to roll over for more sleep but heard a rooster crowing and then became aware we are on vacation and there is… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share
The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share
I suppose philosophy is historically not a woman's game, though that is changing. — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share
Up until my first book was published, I had all this potential, people would say, and I screwed up. After it, I could say:… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share
There is a perennial classical question that asks which part of the motorcycle, which grain of sand in which pile, is the Buddha. Obviously… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share
“Of the value traps, the most widespread and pernicious is value rigidity. This is an inability to revalue what one sees because of commitment… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share
“Historically mystics have claimed that for a true understanding of reality metaphysics is too “scientific”. Metaphysics is not reality. Metaphysics is names about reality.… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share
“What’s emerging from the pattern of my own life is the for belief that the crisis is being caused by the inadequacy of existing… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share
To speak of certain government and establishment institutions as 'the system' is to speak correctly . . . They are sustained by structural relationships… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share
If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share
The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there. — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share
Only social patterns can control biological patterns, and the instrument of conversation between society and biology is not words. The instrument of conversation between… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share
