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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
More quotes by Robert M. Pirsig
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
Mental reflection is so much more interesting than TV it's a shame more people don't switch over to it.
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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
When somebody goes outside the cultural norms, the culture has to protect itself.
Robert M. Pirsig
Sometimes it's a little better to travel than to arrive
Robert M. Pirsig
I really don't mind dying because I figure I haven't wasted this life.
Robert M. Pirsig
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
We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with the emphasis on good rather than on time.
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
The bones and flesh and legal statistics are the garments worn by the personality, not the other way around.
Robert M. Pirsig
Stuckness shouldn't be avoided. It's the psychic predecessor of all real understanding. An egoless acceptance of stuckness is a key to an understanding of all Quality, in mechanical work as in other endeavors.
Robert M. Pirsig
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
Reality is always the moment of vision before the intellectualization takes place. There is no other reality.
Robert M. Pirsig
Metaphysics is a restaurant where they give you a thirty thousand page menu, and no food.
Robert M. Pirsig
Substance is a subspecies of value. When you reverse the containment process and define substance in terms of value the mystery disappears: substance is a stable pattern of inorganic values. The problem then disappears. The world of objects and the world of values is unified.
Robert M. Pirsig
If you don't generalize you don't philosophize.
Robert M. Pirsig
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
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.
Robert M. Pirsig
Even though quality cannot be defined, you know what quality is.
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