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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
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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
Free
Best
Mules
Men
Served
Civilization
System
Call
Whatever
Society
More quotes by Robert M. Pirsig
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
We’re in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it’s all gone.
Robert M. Pirsig
We always condemn most in others, he thought, that which we most fear in ourselves.
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
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
For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses.
Robert M. Pirsig
If you run from technology, it will chase you.
Robert M. Pirsig
The Good was not a form of reality. It was reality itself, ever-changing, ultimately unknowable in any kind of fixed, rigid way.
Robert M. Pirsig
Talk about rationality can get very confusing unless the things with which rationality deals are also included.
Robert M. Pirsig
It is always good policy to tell the truth unless of course you are an exceptionally good liar. Jerome K. Jerome It is a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, go away, I'm looking for the truth. and so it goes away. Puzzling.
Robert M. Pirsig
It's so hard when contemplated in advance, and so easy when you do it.
Robert M. Pirsig
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
To an experienced Zen Buddhist, asking if one believes in Zen or one believes in the Buddha, sounds a little ludicrous, like asking if one believes in air or water. Similarly Quality is not something you believe in, Quality is something you experience.
Robert M. Pirsig
I think now the trace of egotism may have been the beginning of all his troubles
Robert M. Pirsig
Is it hard?' Not if you have the right attitudes. Its having the right attitudes thats hard.
Robert M. Pirsig
Squareness is such a uniquely intellectual disease.
Robert M. Pirsig
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
Stuckness shouldn't be avoided. It's the physic predecessor of all real understanding.
Robert M. Pirsig
It's nice to start journeys pleasantly, even when you know they won't end that way.
Robert M. Pirsig
You go up the mountaintop and all you're gonna get is a great big heavy stone tablet handed to you with a bunch of rules on it.
Robert M. Pirsig