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
people innocent hard
When you've got a Chautauqua in your head, it's extremely hard not to inflict it on innocent people.
nature real thinking
The real purpose of the scientific method is to make sure nature hasn’t misled you into thinking you know something you actually don’t know.
mean important causes
I argued that physical discomfort is important only when the mood is wrong. Then you fasten on to whatever thing is uncomfortable and call that the cause. But if the mood is right, then physical discomfort doesn't mean much.
friendship people littles
We keep passing unseen through little moments of other people's lives.
data suffering tests
The TV scientist who mutters sadly, "The experiment is a failure; we have failed to achieve what we had hoped for," is suffering mainly from a bad script writer. An experiment is never a failure solely because it fails to achieve predicted results. An experiment is a failure only when it also fails adequately to test the hypothesis in question, when the data it produces don't prove anything one way or another.
goal noble garbage
One thing about pioneers that you don't hear mentioned is that they are invariably, by their nature, mess-makers. They go forging ahead, seeing only their noble, distant goal, and never notice any of the crud and debris they leave behind them.
essence quality absence
Absence of Quality is the essence of squareness.
peace writing mind
My favorite piece of technical writing: Assembly of Japanese bicycle require great peace of mind.
running mountain speed
If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion.
heart hands social-values
Programs of a political nature are important end products of social quality that can be effective only if the underlying structure of social values is right. The social values are right only if the individual values are right. The place to improve the world is first in one's heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.
perfect want painting
You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It's easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally.
sorry years gone
We’re in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it’s all gone.
flower thinking mountain
The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of the mountain, or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha - which is to demean oneself.
struggle simple oxygen
Why, for example, should a group of simple, stable compounds of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen struggle for billions of years to organize themselves into a professor of chemistry? What's the motive?