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The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself.

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
Cycle
Cycles
Philosophical
Called
Working
Real

More quotes by Robert M. Pirsig

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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
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Great minds struggle to cure diseases so that people may live longer, but only madmen ask why. One lives longer in order that he may live longer. There is no other purpose.
Robert M. Pirsig
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That which destroys the old mythos becomes the new mythos.
Robert M. Pirsig
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A thing that has no value does not exist.
Robert M. Pirsig
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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
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Who really can face the future? All you can do is project from the past, even when the past shows that such projections are often wrong. And who really can forget the past? What else is there to know?
Robert M. Pirsig
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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
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…the doctrinal differences between Hinduism and Buddhism and Taoism are not anywhere near as important as doctrinal differences among Christianity and Islam and Judaism. Holy wars are not fought over them because verbalized statements about reality are never presumed to be reality itself.
Robert M. Pirsig
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And what is good, Phaedrus, And what is not good— Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?
Robert M. Pirsig
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Man is not the source of all things, as the subjective idealists would say. Nor is he the passive observer of all things, as the objective idealists would say. The Quality which creates the world emerges as a relationship between man and his experience. He is a participant in the creation of all things. The measure of all things.
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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The funny thing about insane people is that it is kind of the opposite of being a celebrity. Nobody envies you.
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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Any effort that has self-glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in disaster.
Robert M. Pirsig
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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
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Is it hard?' Not if you have the right attitudes. Its having the right attitudes thats hard.
Robert M. Pirsig
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I think now the trace of egotism may have been the beginning of all his troubles
Robert M. Pirsig
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Education should not be fun. You are being brought up into society and society has a way of doing things. It may not be pleasant but sooner or later you are going to have to do it anyway.
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 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.
Robert M. Pirsig