In the high country of the mind one has to become adjusted to the thinner air of uncertainty. Robert M. Pirsig More Quotes by Robert M. Pirsig More Quotes From Robert M. Pirsig Analytic and romantic understanding should be united at a basic level. Reassimilate the passions from which the rational mind fled. Robert M. Pirsig passionunderstandingmind Logic presumes a separation of subject from object; therefore logic is not final wisdom.This is Zen. This is my motorcycle maintenance. Robert M. Pirsig motorcyclemaintenancefinals If your mind is truly, profoundly stuck, then it might be much better off than when it was loaded with ideas Robert M. Pirsig mindmightideas Stuckness shouldn't be avoided. It's the psychic predecessor of all real understanding. An egoless acceptance of stuckness is a key to an understanding of all Quality, in mechanical work as in other endeavors. Robert M. Pirsig keysrealacceptance 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 Science probes; it does not prove. Imagine Newton's reaction to an objector of his law of gravity who argued that he could not establish a universal law because he had not observed every falling apple, much less proved the law of gravity - there might, after all, be an apple that levitates! Why 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? Robert M. Pirsig simplestrugglefall There is a perennial classical question that asks which part of the motorcycle, which grain of sand in which pile, is the Buddha. Obviously to ask that question is to look in the wrong direction, for the Buddha is everywhere. But just as obviously to ask the question is to look in the right direction, for the Buddha is everwhere. Robert M. Pirsig sandmotorcyclelooks A thing that has no value does not exist. Robert M. Pirsig valuesdoe Substance is a subspecies of value. When you reverse the containment process and define substance in terms of value the mystery disappears: substance is a "stable pattern of inorganic values." The problem then disappears. The world of objects and the world of values is unified. Robert M. Pirsig patternssubstanceworld It's better to live with a sad truth than with all the happy progress talk you get up here in the North. Robert M. Pirsig sad-truthget-upprogress Only social patterns can control biological patterns, and the instrument of conversation between society and biology is not words. The instrument of conversation between society and biology has always been a policeman or a soldier and his gun. Robert M. Pirsig patternsgunsoldier The bones and flesh and legal statistics are the garments worn by the personality, not the other way around. Robert M. Pirsig statisticspersonalityflesh Objects are inorganic and biological values; subjects are social and intellectual values. Robert M. Pirsig subjectsintellectualsocial Rules of Order state that ... No minority has a right to block a majority from conducting the legal business of the organisation .... but No majority has a right to prevent a minority from peacefully attempting to become the majority. Robert M. Pirsig majorityblockorder It's paradoxical that where people are the most closely crowded, in the big coastal cities in the East and West, the loneliness is the greatest... The explanation, I suppose, is that the physical distance between people has nothing to do with loneliness. It's psychic distance... Robert M. Pirsig psychicsdistanceloneliness How are you going to teach virtue if you teach the relativity of all ethical ideas? Virtue, if it implies anything at all, implies an ethical absolute. A person whose idea of what is proper varies from day to day can be admired for his broadmindedness, but not for his virtue. Robert M. Pirsig ethicsvirtueideas I really don't mind dying because I figure I haven't wasted this life. 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. Robert M. Pirsig mindbookpeople What the Metaphysics of Quality would do is take this separate category, Quality, and show how it contains within itself both subjects and objects. The Metaphysics of Quality would show how things become enormously more coherent-fabulously more coherent-when you start with an assumption that Quality is the primary empirical reality of the world. . . . . . . but showing that, of course, was a very big job. . . . Robert M. Pirsig qualityjobsreality Now, to take that which has caused us to create the world, and include it within the world we have created, is clearly impossible. This is why Quality cannot be defined. If we do define it, we are defining something less than Quality itself. Robert M. Pirsig definingqualityworld We always condemn most in others, he thought, that which we most fear in ourselves. Robert M. Pirsig self-acceptanceacceptance
