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If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion.

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
Climbs
Slow
Winded
Speed
Restlessness
Mountain
Exhaustion
Running
Equilibrium
Become
Runners
Restless
Climb

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So round and round you go, spinning mental wheels and nowhere finding anyplace to get traction. What the hell...is it?
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No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow.
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For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses.
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The solutions all are simple - after you have arrived at them. But they're simple only when you know already what they are.
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A person who follows the dharma is unpredictable because the dharma is unpredictable.
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Quality tends to fan out like waves. The Quality job he didn't think anyone was going to see was seen, and the person who feels it is a little bit better because of it, and is likely to pass that feeling onto others, and in that way the Quality tends to keep going.
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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.
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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.
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Caring about what you are doing is considered either unimportant or taken for granted.
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Civilization, or the system or society or whatever you want to call it, is best served not by mules but by free men.
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The buddah can reside in the gears of a motorcycle as easily as in a flower on a mountaintop. To believe otherwise is to demean the buddah which is to demean one's self.
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The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself.
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What I am is a heretic who's recanted, and thereby in everyone's eyes saved his soul. Everyone's eyes but one, who knows deep down inside that all he has saved is his skin.
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A thing that has no value does not exist.
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I think now the trace of egotism may have been the beginning of all his troubles
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Stuckness shouldn't be avoided. It's the psychic predecessor of all real understanding. An egoless acceptance of stuckness is a key to an understanding of all Quality, in mechanical work as in other endeavors.
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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.
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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.
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I really am a recluse. I just enjoy watching the wind blow through the trees. In America someone who sits around and does that is at the bottom of the ladder, but in Japan, say, someone who goes up into the mountains is accorded great respect. I guess I am somewhere in between. I enjoy reclusion: it clears my mind.
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Cultures are not the source of all morals, only a limited set of morals. Cultures can be graded and judged morally according to their contribution to the evolution of life.
Robert M. Pirsig