Robert M. Pirsig Quotes

(What makes his world so hard to see clearly is not its strangeness but its usualness).Familiarity can blind you too.

"I've wondered why it took us so long to catch on. We saw it, and yet we didn't see it. Or rather we were trained not to see it. Conned perhaps into thinking that the real action was metropolitan and all this was just boring hinterland. It was 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."

Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. I think that what I have to say has more lasting value.

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.

Самая большая двойственность, между ним и мной, так и осталась нераскрытой. Раздвоение личности.
Кто же это сделал? Не я же. И никак нельзя исправить этого…Я всё думаю, насколько же глубоко дно у океана…
Я по существу раскаявшийся еретик, и поэтому в глазах всех спас свою душу. В глазах всех, кроме одного, который глубоко внутри знает, что спас он всего лишь шкуру.
Я существую теперь главным образом доставляя удовольствие другим. Так поступаешь, чтобы выбраться. Чтобы выбраться, надо сообразить, что они хотят от тебя услышать, затем произносишь всё как можно убедительнее и оригинальнее, и если убедил их, то тогда спасён.

Your common sense is nothing more than the voices of thousands and thousands of these ghosts from the past.

And what is good, Phaedrus,
And what is not good — Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?

Anxiety, the next gumption trap, is sort of the opposite of ego. You're so sure you'll do everything wrong you're afraid to do anything at all. Often this, rather than "laziness," is the real reason you find it hard to get started. This gumption trap of anxiety, which results from over-motivation, can lead to all kinds of errors of excessive fussiness. You fix things that don't need fixing, and chase after imaginary ailments. You jump to wild conclusions and build all kinds of errors into the machine because of your own nervousness. These errors, when made, tend to confirm your original underestimation of yourself. This leads to more errors, which lead to more underestimation, in a self-stoking cycle. The best way to break this cycle, I think, is to work out your anxieties on paper. Read every book and magazine you can on the subject. Your anxiety makes this easy and the more you read the more you calm down.

It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top.

Of course, the laws of science contain no matter and have no energy either and therefore do not exist except in people's minds. It's best to be completely scientific about the whole thing and refuse to believe in either ghosts or the laws of science. That way you're safe. That doesn't leave you very much to believe in, but that's scientific too.

She seems so depressed sometimes by the monotony and boredom of her city life, I thought maybe in this endless grass and wind she would see a thing that sometimes comes when monotony and boredom are accepted. It's here, but I have no names for it.

The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling.

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.

People arrive at a factory and perform a totally meaningless task from eight to five without question because the structure demands that it be that way. There’s no villain, 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. But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There’s so much talk about the system. And so little understanding

But if Quality or excellence is seen as the ultimate reality then it becomes possible for more than one set of truths to exist, Then one doesn’t seek the absolute “Truth.” One seeks instead the highest quality intellectual explanation of things with the knowledge that if the past is any guide to the future this explanation must be taken provisionally; as useful until something better comes along. One can then examine intellectual realities the same way he examines paintings in an art gallery, not with an effort to find out which one is the “real” painting, but simply to enjoy and keep those that are of value. There are many sets of intellectual reality in existence and we can perceive some to have more quality than others, but that we do so is, in part, the result of our history and current patterns of values.