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
mean simple broken
What if there were no such thing as a hypothetical situation? What I mean (and everybody else means) by the word QUALITY cannot be broken down into subjects and predicates. This is not because Quality is so mysterious but because Quality is so simple, immediate, and direct.
mean challenges want
When you want to hurry something, that means you no longer care about it and want to get on to other things.
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.
mean simple broken
Any philosophic explanation of Quality is going to be both false and true precisely because it is a philosophic explanation. The process of philosophic explanation is an analytic process, a process of breaking something down into subjects and predicates. What I mean (and everybody else means) by the word 'quality' cannot be broken down into subjects and predicates. This is not because Quality is so mysterious but because Quality is so simple, immediate and direct.
mean eight government
To speak of certain government and establishment institutions as 'the system' is to speak correctly . . . They are sustained by structural relationships even when they have lost all other meaning and purpose. People arrive at a factory and perform a totally meaningless task from eight to five without question because the structure demands it be that way. There's no villian, no 'mean guy' who wants them to live meaningless lives, it's just that the structure, the system demands it and no one is willing to take on the formidable task of changing the structure just because it is meaningless.
mean unique reality
Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you're no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn't just a means to an end but a unique event in itself.To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountains which sustain life, not the top.
arrived simple solutions
The solutions all are simple -- after you have arrived at them. But they're simple only when you know already what they are.
people
People are all at sixes and sevens with each other. They're always quarreling. They never somehow resolve anything.
produces
It's the dualistic ways of looking at things that produces the evil.
buddha circuits computer cycle gears resides
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.
people until
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.'
authors everybody famous
I did not want to write one of those sequels that famous first-book authors get into where everybody says, 'Oh yeah.'
head improve outward work
The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.
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...