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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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What keeps the world from reverting to the Neanderthal with each generation is the continuing, ongoing mythos... the huge body of common knowledge that unites our minds as cells are united in the body of man.
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Great minds struggle to cure diseases so that people may live longer, but only madmen ask why. One lives longer in order that he may live longer. There is no other purpose.
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Caring about what you are doing is considered either unimportant or taken for granted.
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New York has always been going to hell but somehow it never gets there.
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Socrates is not just expounding noble ideas in a vacuum. He is in the middle of a war between those who think truth is absolute and those who think truth is relative. He is fighting that war with everything he has.
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When you've got a Chautauqua in your head, it's extremely hard not to inflict it on innocent people.
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The thing to understand is that if you are going to reform society you don't start with cops. And if you are going to reform intellect you don't start with psychiatrists. If you don't like our present social system or intellectual system the best thing you can do with either cops or psychiatrists is stay out of their way. You leave them 'till last.
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A motorcycle functions entirely in accordance with the laws of reason, and a study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself.
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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.
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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.
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The real purpose of the scientific method is to make sure nature hasn’t misled you into thinking you know something you actually don’t know.
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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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It's nice to start journeys pleasantly, even when you know they won't end that way.
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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If someone's ungrateful and you tell him he's ungrateful, okay, you've called him a name. You haven't solved anything.
Robert M. Pirsig
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... the laws of physics and of logic ... the number system ... the principle of algebraic substitution. These are ghosts. We just believe in them so thoroughly they seem real.
Robert M. Pirsig
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It's better not to see than to see wrongly.
Robert M. Pirsig
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The real ugliness lies in the relationship between people who produce the technology and the things they produce, which results in a similar relationship between the people who use the technology and the things they use.
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.
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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.
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