“If you get careless or go romanticizing scientific information, giving it a flourish here and there, Nature will soon make a complete… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
“The easiest intellectual analogue of pure Quality that people in our environment can understand is that ‘Quality is the response of an… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
“I have seen these marshes a thousand times, yet each time they're new. It's wrong to call them benign. You could just… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
“A finely tempered nature longs to escape from his noisy cramped surroundings into the silence of the high mountains where the eye… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
“If you get careless or go romanticizing scientific information, giving it a flourish here and there, Nature will soon make a complete… — 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 actually… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
One thing about pioneers that you don't hear mentioned is that they are invariably, by their nature, mess-makers. They go forging ahead,… — 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
“Programs of a political nature are important end products of social quality that can be effective only if the underlying structure of… — 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 way to solve the conflict between human values and technology needs is not to run away from technology. That's impossible. The… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
I think present-day reason is an analogue of the flat earth of the medieval period. If you go too far beyond it… — 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 way to solve the conflict between human values and technological needs is not to run away from technology. That’s impossible. The… — 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
“The cause of our current social crises, he would have said, is a genetic defect within the nature of reason itself. And… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
“The law of gravity and gravity itself did not exist before Isaac Newton." ...and what that means is that that law of… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
“The nature of our culture is such that if you were to look for instruction in how to do any of these… — 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
