Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Around
Take
World
Handful
Sand
Landscape
Endless
Awareness
Call
More quotes by Robert M. Pirsig
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
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
From an endless beach of reality, we take a grain of sand and call it the world.
Robert M. Pirsig
A motorcycle functions entirely in accordance with the laws of reason, and a study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself.
Robert M. Pirsig
The most moral activity of all is the creation of space for life to move around.
Robert M. Pirsig
Between the subject and the object lies the value.
Robert M. Pirsig
Substance is a subspecies of value. When you reverse the containment process and define substance in terms of value the mystery disappears: substance is a stable pattern of inorganic values. The problem then disappears. The world of objects and the world of values is unified.
Robert M. Pirsig
If your mind is truly, profoundly stuck, then it might be much better off than when it was loaded with ideas
Robert M. Pirsig
In the temple of science are many mansions ... and various indeed are they that dwell therein and the motives that have led them thither.
Robert M. Pirsig
No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow.
Robert M. Pirsig
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
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
If you stare at a wall from four in the morning till nine at night and you do that for a week, you are getting pretty close to nothingness.
Robert M. Pirsig
You look at where you're going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you've been and a pattern seems to emerge.
Robert M. Pirsig
I think now the trace of egotism may have been the beginning of all his troubles
Robert M. Pirsig
The way to see what looks good and understand the reasons it looks good, and to be at one with this goodness as the work proceeds, is to cultivate an inner quietness, a peace of mind so that goodness can shine through.
Robert M. Pirsig
The funny thing about insane people is that it is kind of the opposite of being a celebrity. Nobody envies you.
Robert M. Pirsig
…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
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
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