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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

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Robert M. Pirsig
Age: 88 †
Born: 1928
Born: September 6
Died: 2017
Died: April 24
Autobiographer
Novelist
Philosopher
Writer
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Robert Maynard Pirsig
Stand
Spirituality
Spiritual
Avoid
Hardships
Lives
Thus
Valley
Others
Mountain
Hardship
Never
Sight
Valleys
Like
Behinds
Mountains
People
Listen
Enter
Behind
Content

More quotes by Robert M. Pirsig

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Talk about rationality can get very confusing unless the things with which rationality deals are also included.
Robert M. Pirsig
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There is an evil tendency underlying all our technology - the tendency to do what is reasonable even when it isn't any good.
Robert M. Pirsig
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The more you look, the more you see.
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Squareness is such a uniquely intellectual disease.
Robert M. Pirsig
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We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world.
Robert M. Pirsig
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Any effort that has self-glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in disaster.
Robert M. Pirsig
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Institutions such as schools, churches, governments and political organizations of every sort all tended to direct thought for ends other than truth, for the perpetuation of their own functions, and for the control of individuals in the service of these functions.
Robert M. Pirsig
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... the laws of physics and of logic ... the number system ... the principle of algebraic substitution. These are ghosts. We just believe in them so thoroughly they seem real.
Robert M. Pirsig
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When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog to see the sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes. The dog has certain relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten.
Robert M. Pirsig
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From an endless beach of reality, we take a grain of sand and call it the world.
Robert M. Pirsig
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The real University... has no specific location. It owns no property, pays no salaries, and receives no material dues... The real University is a state of mind. It is that great heritage of rational thought that has been brought down to us through the centuries.
Robert M. Pirsig
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The best students always are flunking. Every good teacher knows that.
Robert M. Pirsig
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A thing that has no value does not exist.
Robert M. Pirsig
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One thing about pioneers that you don't hear mentioned is that they are invariably, by their nature, mess-makers. They go forging ahead, seeing only their noble, distant goal, and never notice any of the crud and debris they leave behind them.
Robert M. Pirsig
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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
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There's so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.
Robert M. Pirsig
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For me, a writer should be more like a lighthouse keeper, just out there by himself. He shouldn't get his ideas from other people all around him.
Robert M. Pirsig
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The Church of Reason, like all institutions of the System, is based not on individual strength but upon individual weakness. What's really demanded in the Church of Reason is not ability, but inability. Then you are considered teachable. A truly able person is always a threat.
Robert M. Pirsig
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The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite 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 or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha - which is to demean oneself.
Robert M. Pirsig
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You've got to keep close to your spouse I think, which is a very hard thing to do in America, with everything always pulling you away. I would advise all married people to spend two hours talking to each other. That's my moral for the day.
Robert M. Pirsig