Sanity is not truth. Sanity is conformity to what is socially expected. Truth is sometimes in conformity, sometimes not. Robert M. Pirsig More Quotes by Robert M. Pirsig More Quotes From Robert M. Pirsig The real ugliness lies in the relationship between people who produce the technology and the things they produce, which results in a similar relationship between the people who use the technology and the things they use. Robert M. Pirsig technologyreallying Even in the presence of others he was completely alone. Robert M. Pirsig loneliness 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. Robert M. Pirsig datarealitythinking The most moral activity of all is the creation of space for life to move around. Robert M. Pirsig spacehumilitymoving 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. Robert M. Pirsig essentialsrealmind Dialectic, which is the parent of logic, came itself from rhetoric. Rhetoric is in turn the child of the myths and poetry of ancient Greece. That is so historically, and that is so by any application of common sense. The poetry and myths are the response of a prehistoric people to the Universe around them made on the basis of Quality. It is Quality, not dialectic, which is the generator of everything we know. Robert M. Pirsig common-sensechildrenpeople Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best, 20 - 20 hindsight. It's good for seeing where you've been. It's good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can't tell you where you ought to go. Robert M. Pirsig scienceknowledgethinking Quality... you know what it is, yet you don't know what it is. Robert M. Pirsig zen-motorcycle-maintenancequalityunderstanding What is seen now so much more clearly is that although the names keep changing and the bodies keep changing, the larger pattern that holds us all together goes on and on. Robert M. Pirsig unitynamestogether Physical distance between people has nothing to do with loneliness. It's psychic distance. Robert M. Pirsig psychicsdistanceloneliness One could almost define life as the organized disobedience of the law of gravity. One could show that the degree to which an organism disobeys this law is a measure of its degree of evolution. Robert M. Pirsig degreeslawlife What's new?" is an interesting and broadening eternal question, but one which, if pursued exclusively, results only in an endless parade of trivia and fashion, the silt of tomorrow. Robert M. Pirsig triviafashioninteresting There's so much talk about the system. And so little understanding. Robert M. Pirsig zen-motorcycle-maintenanceunderstandinglittles "When are we going to get going?" Chris says. "What's your hurry?" I ask. "I just want to get going." "There's nothing up ahead that's any better than it is right here." Robert M. Pirsig askswant The logic of science was infallible, and if the scientists were sometimes mistaken, this was assumed to be only from their mistaking its rules. Robert M. Pirsig scientistlogicsometimes When somebody goes outside the cultural norms, the culture has to protect itself. Robert M. Pirsig normprotectculture Art is the Godhead as revealed in the works of man. Robert M. Pirsig art-ismenart The real evil isn't the objects of technology but the tendency of technology to isolate people into lonely attitudes of objectivity. It's the objectivity, the dualistic way of looking at things underlying technology, that produces the evil. Robert M. Pirsig lonelyrealattitude Quality tends to fan out like waves. Robert M. Pirsig wavequalityfans Any person of any philosophic persuasion who sits on a hot stove will verify without any intellectual argument whatsoever that he is in an undeniably low-quality situation: that the value of his predicament is negative. This low quality is not just a vague, woolly-headed, crypto-religious, metaphysical abstraction. It is an experience. It is not a judgment about an experience. It is not a description of experience. The value itself is an experience. As such it is completely predictable. It is verifiable by anyone who cares to do so. Robert M. Pirsig qualityintellectualreligious
