Quote

The more you read, the more you calm down.

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
Reading
Read
Calm

More quotes by Robert M. Pirsig

Image
In the high country of the mind one has to become adjusted to the thinner air of uncertainty.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
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
Image
Mental reflection is so much more interesting than TV it's a shame more people don't switch over to it.
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
The most moral activity of all is the creation of space for life to move around.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The intelligence of the mind can't think of any reason to live, but it goes on anyway because the intelligence of the cells can't think of any reason to die.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
The bones and flesh and legal statistics are the garments worn by the personality, not the other way around.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
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
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 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
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
Image
…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
Image
The thing to understand is that if you are going to reform society you don't start with cops. And if you are going to reform intellect you don't start with psychiatrists. If you don't like our present social system or intellectual system the best thing you can do with either cops or psychiatrists is stay out of their way. You leave them 'till last.
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
If you run from technology, it will chase you.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
Talk about rationality can get very confusing unless the things with which rationality deals are also included.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
It's so hard when contemplated in advance, and so easy when you do it.
Robert M. Pirsig