The best students always are flunking. Every good teacher knows that. — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
That's all the motorcycle is, a system of concepts worked out in steel. — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
Any effort that has self-glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in disaster. — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow. — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
An egoless acceptance of stuckness is a key to an understanding of all Quality. — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
Talk about rationality can get very confusing unless the things with which rationality deals are also included. — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
In the temple of science are many mansions ... and various indeed are they that dwell therein and the motives that have… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
My favorite piece of technical writing: Assembly of Japanese bicycle require great peace of mind. — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
Civilization, or "the system" or "society" or whatever you want to call it, is best served not by mules but by free… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
A person isn't considered insane if there are a number of people who believe the same way. Insanity isn't supposed to be… — 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
What's wrong with technology is that it's not connected in any real way with matters of the spirit and of the heart.… — 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
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
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
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
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
“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
The idea that the majority of students attend a university for an education independent of the degree and grades is a hypocrisy… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
“In a car you're always in a compartment, and because you're used to it you don't realize that through that car window… — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
Any philosophic explanation of Quality is going to be both false and true precisely because it is a philosophic explanation. The process… — 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… — 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
There's so much talk about the system. And so little understanding. — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
So round and round you go, spinning mental wheels and nowhere finding anyplace to get traction. What the hell...is it? — Robert M. Pirsig Copy Share Image
The real University... has no specific location. It owns no property, pays no salaries, and receives no material dues... The real University… — 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
What we think of as reality is a continuous synthesis of elements from a fixed hierarchy of a priori concepts and the… — 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
