Quote

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.

Robert M. Pirsig

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Robert M. Pirsig
Age: 88 †
Born: 1928
Born: September 6
Died: 2017
Died: April 24
Autobiographer
Novelist
Philosopher
Writer
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Robert Maynard Pirsig
Thing
Course
Except
Much
Law
Exist
Ghosts
Mind
Energy
Therefore
Contain
Believe
Science
Completely
Ghost
Way
Doesn
Safe
Scientific
People
Best
Leave
Refuse
Matter
Either
Minds
Whole
Courses
Laws

More quotes by Robert M. Pirsig

Image
It's so hard when contemplated in advance, and so easy when you do it.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
Morality is not a simple set of rules. It's a very complex struggle of conflicting patterns of values. This conflict is the residue of evolution. As new patters evolve they come into conflict with old ones. Each stage of evolution creates in its wake a wash of problems.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
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
Image
Cliches and stereotypes such as beatnik or hippie have been invented for the antitechnologists, the antisystem people, and will continue to be. But one does not convert individuals into mass people with the simple coining of a mass term.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
(What makes his world so hard to see clearly is not its strangeness but its usualness).Familiarity can blind you too.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
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
Image
A person who follows the dharma is unpredictable because the dharma is unpredictable.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
If you don't generalize you don't philosophize.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
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
Image
Between the subject and the object lies the value.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
The most moral activity of all is the creation of space for life to move around.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
Care and Quality are internal and external aspects of the same thing. A person who sees Quality and feels it as he works is a person who cares. A person who cares about what he sees and does is a person who’s bound to have some characteristic of quality.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
It's better not to see than to see wrongly.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
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
Image
The test of the machine is the satisfaction it gives you. There isn't any other test. If the machine produces tranquility it's right. If it disturbs you it's wrong until either the machine or your mind is changed.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
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
Image
The world comes to us in an endless stream of puzzle pieces that we would like to think all fit together somehow, but that in fact never do.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
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
Image
We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with the emphasis on good rather than on time.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
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