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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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Robert M. Pirsig
Age: 88 †
Born: 1928
Born: September 6
Died: 2017
Died: April 24
Autobiographer
Novelist
Philosopher
Writer
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Robert Maynard Pirsig
System
Principle
Law
Logic
Seems
Mathematics
Algebraic
Real
Laws
Substitution
Believe
Number
Ghosts
Seem
Thoroughly
Numbers
Ghost
Principles
Physics

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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.
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Physical distance between people has nothing to do with loneliness. It's psychic distance.
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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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Even though quality cannot be defined, you know what quality is.
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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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…the doctrinal differences between Hinduism and Buddhism and Taoism are not anywhere near as important as doctrinal differences among Christianity and Islam and Judaism. Holy wars are not fought over them because verbalized statements about reality are never presumed to be reality itself.
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The bones and flesh and legal statistics are the garments worn by the personality, not the other way around.
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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.
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Metaphysics is a restaurant where they give you a thirty thousand page menu, and no food.
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Quality isn't a thing. It is an event.
Robert M. Pirsig
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We’re in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it’s all gone.
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If your mind is truly, profoundly stuck, then it might be much better off than when it was loaded with ideas
Robert M. Pirsig
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Between the subject and the object lies the value.
Robert M. Pirsig
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Quality tends to fan out like waves. The Quality job he didn't think anyone was going to see was seen, and the person who feels it is a little bit better because of it, and is likely to pass that feeling onto others, and in that way the Quality tends to keep going.
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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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Any effort that has self-glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in disaster.
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 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
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Caring about what you are doing is considered either unimportant or taken for granted.
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