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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

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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
Many
Nobody
Delusions
People
Involved
Superstitious
Knew
Mysticism
Called
Garbage
Dark
Delusion
Religious
Ages
Age
Insane
Anything
Intellectual
Vestige

More quotes by Robert M. Pirsig

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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
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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
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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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The solutions all are simple - after you have arrived at them. But they're simple only when you know already what they are.
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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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
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Data without generalization is just gossip.
Robert M. Pirsig
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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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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.
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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An egoless acceptance of stuckness is a key to an understanding of all Quality.
Robert M. Pirsig
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When you've got a Chautauqua in your head, it's extremely hard not to inflict it on innocent people.
Robert M. Pirsig
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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
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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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It's better not to see than to see wrongly.
Robert M. Pirsig
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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
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Reality is always the moment of vision before the intellectualization takes place. There is no other reality.
Robert M. Pirsig
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When somebody goes outside the cultural norms, the culture has to protect itself.
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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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