Quote

Mental reflection is so much more interesting than TV it's a shame more people don't switch over to it.

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
Mental
Shame
Interesting
Much
People
Switch
Reflection

More quotes by Robert M. Pirsig

Image
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
Image
Any effort that has self-glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in disaster.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
Science values static patterns.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
Between the subject and the object lies the value.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
The sun of quality does not revolve around the subjects and objects of our existence. It does not just passively illuminate them. It is not subordinate to them in any way. It has CREATED them. They are subordinate to IT.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
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
Image
Metaphysics is a restaurant where they give you a thirty thousand page menu, and no food.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
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
Image
The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
The major producer of the social chaos, the indeterminacy of thought and values that rational knowledge is supposed to eliminate, is none other than science itself.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
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
Image
Caring about what you are doing is considered either unimportant or taken for granted.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
For me, a writer should be more like a lighthouse keeper, just out there by himself. He shouldn't get his ideas from other people all around him.
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
Religious mysticism is intellectual garbage. It’s a vestige of the old superstitious Dark Ages when nobody knew anything...It is one of those delusions that isn’t called insane only because there are so many people involved.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
An evolutionary morality argues that The North was right in pursuing that war because a nation is a higher form of evolution than a human body and the principle of human equality is an even higher form than a nation
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
Morality is not a simple set of rules. It's a very complex struggle of conflicting patterns of values. This conflict is the residue of evolution. As new patters evolve they come into conflict with old ones. Each stage of evolution creates in its wake a wash of problems.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
It's nice to start journeys pleasantly, even when you know they won't end that way.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
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.
Robert M. Pirsig
Image
Is it hard?' Not if you have the right attitudes. Its having the right attitudes thats hard.
Robert M. Pirsig