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
Only social patterns can control biological patterns, and the instrument of conversation between society and biology is not words. The instrument of… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
You look at where you're going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
What is seen now so much more clearly is that although the names keep changing and the bodies keep changing, the larger… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
Substance is a subspecies of value. When you reverse the containment process and define substance in terms of value the mystery disappears:… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
The only difference between causation and the value is that the word "cause" implies absolute certainty whereas the implied meaning of "value"… — 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
Within a Metaphysics of Quality, science is a set of static intellectual patterns describing this reality, but the patterns are not the… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
Morality is not a simple set of rules. It's a very complex struggle of conflicting patterns of values. This conflict is the… — 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
