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If you don't generalize you don't philosophize.

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
Ideas
Philosophize
Generalize

More quotes by Robert M. Pirsig

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Only social patterns can control biological patterns, and the instrument of conversation between society and biology is not words. The instrument of conversation between society and biology has always been a policeman or a soldier and his gun.
Robert M. Pirsig
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Within a Metaphysics of Quality, science is a set of static intellectual patterns describing this reality, but the patterns are not the reality they describe.
Robert M. Pirsig
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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.
Robert M. Pirsig
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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
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Physical distance between people has nothing to do with loneliness. It's psychic distance.
Robert M. Pirsig
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Squareness is such a uniquely intellectual disease.
Robert M. Pirsig
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Quality isn't a thing. It is an event.
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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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.
Robert M. Pirsig
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Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual abstractions.
Robert M. Pirsig
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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
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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
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If you run from technology, it will chase you.
Robert M. Pirsig
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A culture that supports the dominance of social values over biological values is an absolutely superior culture to one that does not, and a culture that supports the dominance of intellectual values over social values is absolutely superior to one that does not.
Robert M. Pirsig
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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
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In the high country of the mind one has to become adjusted to the thinner air of uncertainty.
Robert M. Pirsig
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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?
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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It's so hard when contemplated in advance, and so easy when you do it.
Robert M. Pirsig
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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.
Robert M. Pirsig