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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
Physical distance between people has nothing to do with loneliness. It's psychic distance.
Robert M. Pirsig
Stuckness shouldn't be avoided. It's the physic predecessor of all real understanding.
Robert M. Pirsig
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
The more you read, the more you calm down.
Robert M. Pirsig
Man is not the source of all things, as the subjective idealists would say. Nor is he the passive observer of all things, as the objective idealists would say. The Quality which creates the world emerges as a relationship between man and his experience. He is a participant in the creation of all things. The measure of all things.
Robert M. Pirsig
It's paradoxical that where people are the most closely crowded, in the big coastal cities in the East and West, the loneliness is the greatest... The explanation, I suppose, is that the physical distance between people has nothing to do with loneliness. It's psychic distance...
Robert M. Pirsig
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
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
Even though quality cannot be defined, you know what quality is.
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
The real University... has no specific location. It owns no property, pays no salaries, and receives no material dues... The real University is a state of mind. It is that great heritage of rational thought that has been brought down to us through the centuries.
Robert M. Pirsig
The truth knocks on the door and you say, go away, I'm looking for the truth, and it goes away. Puzzling.
Robert M. Pirsig
The funny thing about insane people is that it is kind of the opposite of being a celebrity. Nobody envies you.
Robert M. Pirsig
Quality... you know what it is, yet you don't know what it is.
Robert M. Pirsig
What's new? is an interesting and broadening eternal question, but one which, if pursued exclusively, results only in an endless parade of trivia and fashion, the silt of tomorrow.
Robert M. Pirsig
What I mean (and everybody else means) by the word 'quality' cannot be broken down into subjects and predicates. This is not because Quality is so mysterious but because Quality is so simple, immediate and direct.
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
Cultivate peace of mind which does not separate one's self from one's surroundings. When that is done successfully, then everything else follows naturally.
Robert M. Pirsig
... 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
Now the stream of our common consciousness seems to be obliterating its own banks, losing its central direction and purpose, flooding the lowlands, disconnecting and isolating the highlands and to no particular purpose other than the wasteful fulfillment of its own internal momentum
Robert M. Pirsig