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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

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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
Experience
Objectives
Emerges
Things
Creates
Idealist
Unity
Observer
Would
Measure
Participants
Men
Creation
Observers
World
Source
Subjective
Relationship
Passive
Idealists
Quality
Objective
Participant

More quotes by 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.
Robert M. Pirsig
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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.
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 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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There's so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.
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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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.
Robert M. Pirsig
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What is seen now so much more clearly is that although the names keep changing and the bodies keep changing, the larger pattern that holds us all together goes on and on.
Robert M. Pirsig
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If you run from technology, it will chase you.
Robert M. Pirsig
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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
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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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Squareness is such a uniquely intellectual disease.
Robert M. Pirsig
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Institutions such as schools, churches, governments and political organizations of every sort all tended to direct thought for ends other than truth, for the perpetuation of their own functions, and for the control of individuals in the service of these functions.
Robert M. Pirsig
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The only zen thoughts you can find on a mountain summit are those you brought yourself.
Robert M. Pirsig
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Quality isn't a thing. It is an event.
Robert M. Pirsig
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Even though quality cannot be defined, you know what quality is.
Robert M. Pirsig
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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
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Quality... you know what it is, yet you don't know what it is.
Robert M. Pirsig
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When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog to see the sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes. The dog has certain relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten.
Robert M. Pirsig
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Who really can face the future? All you can do is project from the past, even when the past shows that such projections are often wrong. And who really can forget the past? What else is there to know?
Robert M. Pirsig