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Squareness is such a uniquely intellectual disease.

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
Uniquely
Disease
Intellectual

More quotes by Robert M. Pirsig

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You've got to keep close to your spouse I think, which is a very hard thing to do in America, with everything always pulling you away. I would advise all married people to spend two hours talking to each other. That's my moral for the day.
Robert M. Pirsig
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(What makes his world so hard to see clearly is not its strangeness but its usualness).Familiarity can blind you too.
Robert M. Pirsig
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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
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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
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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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One of the most moral acts is to create a space in which life can move forward.
Robert M. Pirsig
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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
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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.
Robert M. Pirsig
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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
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We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with the emphasis on good rather than on time.
Robert M. Pirsig
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We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world.
Robert M. Pirsig
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The number of hypotheses available to explain any given phenomenon is infinite.
Robert M. Pirsig
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Talk about rationality can get very confusing unless the things with which rationality deals are also included.
Robert M. Pirsig
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There's so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.
Robert M. Pirsig
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From an endless beach of reality, we take a grain of sand and call it the world.
Robert M. Pirsig
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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
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One could almost define life as the organized disobedience of the law of gravity. One could show that the degree to which an organism disobeys this law is a measure of its degree of evolution.
Robert M. Pirsig
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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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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
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Good is a noun rather than an adjective.
Robert M. Pirsig