If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
To an experienced Zen Buddhist, asking if one believes in Zen or one believes in the Buddha, sounds a little ludicrous, like… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
Schools teach you to imitate. If you don't imitate what the teacher wants you get a bad grade. Here, in college, it… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
The thing to understand is that if you are going to reform society you don't start with cops. And if you are… — 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 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
Quality is better seen up at the timberline than here obscured by smoky windows and oceans of words, and he sees that… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
If you are following the dharma no matter what you do it is moral. — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
The ultimate test's always your own serenity. If you don't have this when you start and maintain it while you're working you're… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
A person filled with gumption doesn’t sit about stewing about things. He’s at the front of the train of his own awareness,… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
If there were only one person in the world, is there any way he could be insane? — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
The logic of science was infallible, and if the scientists were sometimes mistaken, this was assumed to be only from their mistaking… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
Now, to take that which has caused us to create the world, and include it within the world we have created, is… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
How are you going to teach virtue if you teach the relativity of all ethical ideas? Virtue, if it implies anything at… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
I think metaphysics is good if it improves everyday life; otherwise forget it. — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
What I mean (and everybody else means) by the word 'quality' cannot be broken down into subjects and predicates. This is not… — 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… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
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 Image
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
