“We see much more of this loneliness now. It's paradoxical that that where people are the most closely crowded in the big coastal cities in the East and West, the loneliness is greatest. Back where people are so spread out… — Robert Pirsig Copy Share Image
“I like the word ‘gumption’ because it’s so homely and so forlorn and so out of style it looks as if it needs a friend and isn’t likely to reject anyone who comes along. I like it also because it describes exactly what happens to someone who connects with Quality. He gets filled with gumption. “A person filled with gumption… — Robert Pirsig Copy Share
“He felt that institutions such as schools, churches, governments and political organizations of every sort all tended to direct thought for ends other than truth, for the perpetuation of their own functions, and for the control of individuals in the service of these functions. He came to see his early failure as a lucky break, an accidental escape from a… — Robert Pirsig Copy Share
“If you eliminate suffering from this world you eliminate life. There's no evolution. Those species that don't suffer don't survive. Sometimes the insane and the contrarians and the ones who are the closest to suicide are the most valuable people society has. They may be the precursors of social change. They've taken the burdens of the culture onto themselves and… — Robert Pirsig Copy Share
“At first he found it amusing. He coined a law intended to have the humor of a Parkinson’s law that "The number of rational hypotheses that can explain any given phenomenon is infinite." It pleased him never to run out of hypotheses. Even when his experimental work seemed dead-end in every conceivable way, he knew that if he just sat… — Robert Pirsig Copy Share
“For three days and three nights, Phædrus stares at the wall of the bedroom, his thoughts moving neither forward nor backward, staying only at the instant. His wife asks if he is sick, and he does not answer. His wife becomes angry, but Phædrus listens without responding. He is aware of what she says but is no longer able to… — Robert Pirsig Copy Share
“Unusual behavior tends to produce estrangement in others which tends to further the unusual behavior and thus the estrangement in self-stoking cycles until some… — Robert Pirsig Copy Share Image
“It made the kids at camp much more enthusiastic and cooperative when they had ego goals to fulfill, I'm sure, but ultimately that kind… — Robert Pirsig Copy Share Image
“Morals can't function normally because morals have been declared intellectually illegal by the subject object metaphysics that dominates present social thought” — Robert Pirsig Copy Share Image
“We see much more of this loneliness now. It's paradoxical that that where people are the most closely crowded in the big coastal cities… — Robert Pirsig Copy Share Image
“...there is a sense of defeat at having come so far to be stopped by a mystery that can never be fathomed.” — Robert Pirsig Copy Share Image
When one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity; when many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion. - Robert… — Robert Pirsig Copy Share Image
“The result is rather typical of modern technology, an overall dullness of appearance so depressing that it must be overlaid with a veneer of… — Robert Pirsig Copy Share Image
