Robert M. Pirsig
Robert M. Pirsig
Robert Maynard Pirsigis an American writer and philosopher, and the author of the philosophical novels Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Valuesand Lila: An Inquiry into Morals...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth6 September 1928
CountryUnited States of America
fall thinking people
I think present-day reason is an analogue of the flat earth of the medieval period. If you go too far beyond it youre presumed to fall off, into insanity. And people are very much afraid of that. I think this fear of insanity is comparable to the fear people once had of falling off the edge of the world. Or the fear of heretics. Theres a very close analogue there.
personality flesh statistics
The bones and flesh and legal statistics are the garments worn by the personality, not the other way around.
real philosophical cycles
The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself.
giving atheism pages
Metaphysics is a restaurant where they give you a thirty thousand page menu, and no food.
distance people today
The range of human knowledge today is so great that we're all specialists and the distance between specializations has become so great that anyone who seeks to wander freely between them almost has to forego closeness with the people around him.
momentum purpose common
Now the stream of our common consciousness seems to be obliterating its own banks, losing its central direction and purpose, flooding the lowlands, disconnecting and isolating the highlands and to no particular purpose other than the wasteful fulfillment of its own internal momentum
ideas ifs
If you don't generalize you don't philosophize.
stones tablets bunch
You go up the mountaintop and all you're gonna get is a great big heavy stone tablet handed to you with a bunch of rules on it.
reflection interesting people
Mental reflection is so much more interesting than TV it's a shame more people don't switch over to it.
understanding quality knows
Quality... you know what it is, yet you don't know what it is.
hippie simple people
Cliches and stereotypes such as "beatnik" or "hippie" have been invented for the antitechnologists, the antisystem people, and will continue to be. But one does not convert individuals into mass people with the simple coining of a mass term.
morning wall night
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.
science geometry convenient
One geometry cannot be more true than another; it can only be more convenient. Geometry is not true, it is advantageous.
acceptance self-acceptance
We always condemn most in others that which we most fear in ourselves.