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
achieve art inner mental motorcycle peace primarily study
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.
fun may way
Education should not be fun. You are being brought up into society and society has a way of doing things. It may not be pleasant but sooner or later you are going to have to do it anyway.
kids bully scared
The kid who is scared is the one the bullies go after. I used to get beat up pretty badly.
dharma unpredictable persons
A person who follows the dharma is unpredictable because the dharma is unpredictable.
mother baby definitions
99 per cent of your life recognises things without definition, a baby recognises its mother's face without having it defined. It's just an arbitrary rule this rule of definition that Socrates set down.
people facts patient
People say mental hospitals are for the patients, in fact they are to protect society from them. They are justified in doing that. Society has to do what is best for itself.
people insane remember
You have to remember, that insane people can do some horrors themselves. I had committed no crime, though. I hadn't shot anybody. Yet.
philosophy games
I suppose philosophy is historically not a woman's game, though that is changing.
matter moral dharma
If you are following the dharma no matter what you do it is moral.
may way moral
The Buddha takes no position on gods, he suggests they may exist or they may not, but either way you can live a moral life.
running real technology
The way to solve the conflict between human values and technology needs is not to run away from technology. That's impossible. The way to resolve the conflict is to break down the barriers of dualistic thought that prevent a real understanding of what technology is--not an exploitation of nature, but a fusion of nature and the human spirit into a new kind of creation that transcends both.
reality thinking data
What we think of as reality is a continuous synthesis of elements from a fixed hierarchy of a priori concepts and the ever changing data of the senses.
distance loneliness psychics
Physical distance between people has nothing to do with loneliness. It's psychic distance.
independent discovery quality
The birth of a new fact is always a wonderful thing to experience. It's dualistically called a "discovery" because of the presumption that it has an existence independent of anyone's awareness of it. When it comes along, it always has, at first, a low value. Then, depending on the value-looseness of the observer and the potential quality of the fact, its value increases, either slowly or rapidly, or the value wanes and the fact disappears.