“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… — 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… — Robert Pirsig Copy Share Image
“He felt that institutions such as schools, churches, governments and political organizations of every sort all tended to direct thought for ends other than… — Robert Pirsig Copy Share Image
“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… — Robert Pirsig Copy Share Image
“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… — Robert Pirsig Copy Share Image
“For three days and three nights, Phædrus stares at the wall of the bedroom, his thoughts moving neither forward nor backward, staying only at… — Robert Pirsig Copy Share Image
“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
“He studied scientific truths, then became upset even more by the apparent cause of their temporal condition. It looked as though the time spans… — Robert Pirsig Copy Share Image
“That's the way it is. The intelligence of the mind can't think of any reason to live, but it goes on anyway because the… — Robert Pirsig Copy Share Image
“Anxiety, the next gumption trap, is sort of the opposite of ego. You're so sure you'll do everything wrong you're afraid to do anything… — Robert Pirsig Copy Share Image
