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.
art men art-is
Art is the Godhead as revealed in the works of man.
real mind artistic-creation
What is essential to understand at this point is that until now there was no such thing as mind and matter, subject and object, form and substance. Those divisions are just dialectical inventions that came later...They are just ghosts, immortal gods of the modern mythos which appear to us to be real because we are within that mythos. But in reality they are just as much an artistic creation as the anthropomorphic gods they replaced.
art creativity technology
Making an art out of your technological life is the way to solve the problem of technology...Art is anything that you can do well. Anything that you can do with Quality.
art law motorcycle
A motorcycle functions entirely in accordance with the laws of reason, and a study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself.
art children men
The mythos-over-logos argument points to the fact that each child is born as ignorant as any caveman. What keeps the world from reverting to the Neandertal with each generation is the continuing, ongoing mythos, transformed into logos but still mythos, the huge body of common knowledge that unites our minds as cells are united in the body of man. To feel that one is not so united, that one can accept or discard this mythos as one pleases, is not to understand what the mythos is.
art quality wells
Art is anything you can do well. Anything you can do with Quality.
spiritual artist scientist
We have artists with no scientific knowledge and scientists with no artistic knowledge and both with no spiritual sense of gravity at all, and the result is not just bad, it is ghastly.
tops
The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.
deep eyes heretic inside knows saved
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.
future mountain sides sustain
To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top.
independence individual return
We do need a return to individual integrity, self-reliance, and old-fashioned gumption. We really do.
goes knocks puzzling truth
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.
complete confidence dedicated people political religious rise shouting sun
You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know" it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths...