“Now we’ve a real intellectual impasse. Our reason, which is supposed to make things more intelligible, seems to be making them less… — 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
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
The intelligence of the mind can't think of any reason to live, but it goes on anyway because the intelligence of the… — 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
Definitions are the foundation of reason. You can't reason without them. — 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
The way to see what looks good and understand the reasons it looks good, and to be at one with this goodness… — 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
