Definitions are the foundation of reason. You can't reason without them. Robert M. Pirsig More Quotes by Robert M. Pirsig More Quotes From Robert M. Pirsig 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. Robert M. Pirsig gonesorryyears Civilization, or "the system" or "society" or whatever you want to call it, is best served not by mules but by free men. Robert M. Pirsig wantmencivilization A person filled with gumption doesn’t sit about stewing about things. He’s at the front of the train of his own awareness, watching to see what’s up the track and meeting it when it comes. That’s gumption. If you’re going to repair a motorcycle, an adequate supply of gumption is the first and most important tool. If you haven’t got that you might as well gather up all the other tools and put them away, because they won’t do you any good. Robert M. Pirsig motorcycletrackimportant The buddah can reside in the gears of a motorcycle as easily as in a flower on a mountaintop. To believe otherwise is to demean the buddah; which is to demean one's self. Robert M. Pirsig flowerselfbelieve 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. Robert M. Pirsig social-valueshearthands 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? Robert M. Pirsig oxygensimplestruggle The truth knocks on the door and you say, go away, I'm looking for the truth, and it goes away. Puzzling. Robert M. Pirsig truthdiscoveryscience When you look directly at an insane man all you see is a reflection of your own knowledge that he's insane, which is not to see him at all. Robert M. Pirsig reflectiondepressionmen We keep passing unseen through little moments of other people's lives. Robert M. Pirsig littlesfriendshippeople It's better not to see than to see wrongly. Robert M. Pirsig aweseeingvision The past exists only in our memories, the future only in our plans. The present is our only reality. The tree that you are aware of intellectually, because of that small time lag, is always in the past and therefore is always unreal. Any intellectually conceived object is always in the past and therefore unreal. Reality is always the moment of vision before the intellectualization takes place. There is no other reality. Robert M. Pirsig memoriesrealitypast If you run from technology, it will chase you. Robert M. Pirsig technologyifsrunning Man is not the source of all things, as the subjective idealists would say. Nor is he the passive observer of all things, as the objective idealists would say. The Quality which creates the world emerges as a relationship between man and his experience. He is a participant in the creation of all things. The measure of all things. Robert M. Pirsig unityqualitymen 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. Robert M. Pirsig brokensimplemean That which destroys the old mythos becomes the new mythos. Robert M. Pirsig One geometry cannot be more true than another; it can only be more convenient. Geometry is not true, it is advantageous. Robert M. Pirsig convenientgeometryscience If someone's ungrateful and you tell him he's ungrateful, okay, you've called him a name. You haven't solved anything. Robert M. Pirsig ungratefulokaynames Like those in the valley behind us, most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships. Robert M. Pirsig spiritualsightpeople 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. Robert M. Pirsig naturerealthinking 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. Robert M. Pirsig menchildrenart
