I think this fear of insanity is comparable to the fear people once had of falling off the edge of the world. Or the fear of heretics...What's happening is that each year our old flat earth of conventional reason becomes… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share
I think present-day reason is an analogue of the flat earth of the medieval period. If you go too far beyond it you're presumed to fall off, into insanity. And people are very much afraid of that. I think this… — 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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
I suppose philosophy is historically not a woman's game, though that is changing. — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 forms of thought to cope with the situation. It can’t be solved by rational means because the rationality itself is the source of the problem. The only ones who’re solving it are solving it at a… — 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 even when they have lost all other meaning and purpose. People arrive at a factory and perform a totally meaningless task from eight to five without question because the structure demands it be that way. There's… — 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 Image
