Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" When somebody goes outside the cultural norms, the culture has to protect itself. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Outside
Norms
Goes
Related Quotes:
" The Buddha resides as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Cycle
He
Top
" The study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself. Working on a motorcycle, working well, caring, is to become part of a process, to achieve an inner peace of mind. The motorcycle is primarily a mental phenomenon. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Peace
Art
Caring
" Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best, 20 - 20 hindsight. It's good for seeing where you've been. It's good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can't tell you where you ought to go. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Know
You
Think
" The solutions all are simple - after you have arrived at them. But they're simple only when you know already what they are. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Know
You
Them
" The funny thing about insane people is that it is kind of the opposite of being a celebrity. Nobody envies you. "
Robert M. Pirsig
You
Funny
Kind
" It is a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, 'Go away, I'm looking for the truth,' and so it goes away. Puzzling. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Door
Go
Looking
" It's the dualistic ways of looking at things that produces the evil. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Things
Ways
Produces
" One geometry cannot be more true than another; it can only be more convenient. Geometry is not true, it is advantageous. "
Robert M. Pirsig
True
Geometry
Cannot
" I really don't mind dying because I figure I haven't wasted this life. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Wasted
Dying
Because
" Metaphysics is a restaurant where they give you a thirty thousand page menu, and no food. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Thirty
Restaurant
Page
" For me, a writer should be more like a lighthouse keeper, just out there by himself. He shouldn't get his ideas from other people all around him. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Me
More
People
" The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Up
You
Bring
" If you run from technology, it will chase you. "
Robert M. Pirsig
You
Run
Chase
" Boredom always precedes a period of great creativity. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Always
Great
Creativity
" Why, for example, should a group of simple, stable compounds of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen struggle for billions of years to organise themselves into a professor of chemistry? What's the motive? "
Robert M. Pirsig
Simple
Chemistry
Struggle
" There's no such thing as morality. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Morality
Thing
" To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Future
Goal
Top
" To live for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Top
Future
Goal
" The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there. "
Robert M. Pirsig
You
Bring
Find
" Quality is the Buddha. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Buddha
Quality
" Even in the presence of others he was completely alone. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Presence
Even
Alone
" The truth knocks on the door and you say, go away, I'm looking for the truth, and it goes away. Puzzling. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Say
Door
Go
" Up until my first book was published, I had all this potential, people would say, and I screwed up. After it, I could say: 'No, I didn't screw up.' "
Robert M. Pirsig
Say
Screwed
People
" What I am is a heretic who's recanted and, thereby, in everyone's eyes, saved his soul. Everyone's eyes but one, who knows deep down inside that all he has saved is his skin. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Skin
Soul
I Am
" The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Hands
World
Heart
" People are all at sixes and sevens with each other. They're always quarreling. They never somehow resolve anything. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Resolve
People
Always
" It is not good to talk about Zen, because Zen is nothingness... If you talk about it, you are always lying, and if you don't talk about it, no one knows it is there. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Because
Good
Lying
" We do need a return to individual integrity, self-reliance, and old-fashioned gumption. We really do. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Independence
Need
Integrity
" I have money, fame, a happy wife, our daughter Nell. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Wife
Fame
Daughter
" If you stare at a wall from four in the morning till nine at night, and you do that for a week, you are getting pretty close to nothingness. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Week
Wall
Pretty