Talk about rationality can get very confusing unless the things with which rationality deals are also included. — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
The number of hypotheses available to explain any given phenomenon is infinite. — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
“If Quality were dropped, only rationality would remain unchanged.” — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
A motorcycle functions entirely in accordance with the laws of reason, and a study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
“To some extent the romantic condemnation of rationality stems from the very effectiveness of rationality in uplifting men from primitive conditions.” — 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
The Church of Reason, like all institutions of the System, is based not on individual strength but upon individual weakness. What's really… — 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 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
I think this fear of insanity is comparable to the fear people once had of falling off the edge of the world.… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
“What’s emerging from the pattern of my own life is the for belief that the crisis is being caused by the inadequacy… — 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
