That's the classical mind at work, runs fine inside but looks dingy on the surface. — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
“To all appearances he was just drifting. In actuality he was just drifting.” — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
I really don't mind dying because I figure I haven't wasted this life. — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
My favorite piece of technical writing: Assembly of Japanese bicycle require great peace of mind. — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
If your mind is truly, profoundly stuck, then it might be much better off than when it was loaded with ideas — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
In the high country of the mind one has to become adjusted to the thinner air of uncertainty... — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
Cultivate peace of mind which does not separate one's self from one's surroundings. When that is done successfully, then everything else follows… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
Great minds struggle to cure diseases so that people may live longer, but only madmen ask why. One lives longer in order… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
The test of the machine is the satisfaction it gives you. There isn't any other test. If the machine produces tranquility it's… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
Analytic and romantic understanding should be united at a basic level. Reassimilate the passions from which the rational mind fled. — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
I really don't mind dying because I figure I haven't wasted this life. Up until my first book was published I had… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
“What keeps the world from reverting to the Neanderthal with each generation is the continuing, ongoing mythos... the huge body of common… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
The way to see what looks good and understand the reasons it looks good, and to be at one with this goodness… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
The intelligence of the mind can't think of any reason to live, but it goes on anyway because the intelligence of the… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
Anxiety is sort of the opposite of ego. You're so sure you'll do everything wrong you're afraid to do anything at all.… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
I really am a recluse. I just enjoy watching the wind blow through the trees. In America someone who sits around and… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
The real University... has no specific location. It owns no property, pays no salaries, and receives no material dues... The real University… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
Of course, the laws of science contain no matter and have no energy either and therefore do not exist except in people's… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
The study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself. Working on a… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
What is essential to understand at this point is that until now there was no such thing as mind and matter, subject… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
The hippies had in mind something that they wanted, and were calling it freedom, but in the final analysis freedom is a… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
It was the ghost of rationality itself ... This is the ghost of normal everyday assumptions which declares that the ultimate purpose… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
Mental patterns do not originate out of inorganic nature. They originate out of society, which originates out of inorganic nature. And, as… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
The mythos-over-logos argument points to the fact that each child is born as ignorant as any caveman. What keeps the world from… — 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
