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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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Robert M. Pirsig
Age: 88 †
Born: 1928
Born: September 6
Died: 2017
Died: April 24
Autobiographer
Novelist
Philosopher
Writer
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Robert Maynard Pirsig
Talk
Also
Things
Rationality
Included
Confusing
Unless
Deals

More quotes by Robert M. Pirsig

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There is an evil tendency underlying all our technology - the tendency to do what is reasonable even when it isn't any good.
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One thing about pioneers that you don't hear mentioned is that they are invariably, by their nature, mess-makers. They go forging ahead, seeing only their noble, distant goal, and never notice any of the crud and debris they leave behind them.
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Stuckness shouldn't be avoided. It's the physic predecessor of all real understanding.
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Quality isn't a thing. It is an event.
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Great minds struggle to cure diseases so that people may live longer, but only madmen ask why. One lives longer in order that he may live longer. There is no other purpose.
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Sanity is not truth. Sanity is conformity to what is socially expected. Truth is sometimes in conformity, sometimes not.
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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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Civilization, or the system or society or whatever you want to call it, is best served not by mules but by free men.
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If you don't generalize you don't philosophize.
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Science values static patterns.
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The more you read, the more you calm down.
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Education should not be fun. You are being brought up into society and society has a way of doing things. It may not be pleasant but sooner or later you are going to have to do it anyway.
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Squareness is such a uniquely intellectual disease.
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We keep passing unseen through little moments of other people's lives.
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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.
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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.
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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 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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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
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To an experienced Zen Buddhist, asking if one believes in Zen or one believes in the Buddha, sounds a little ludicrous, like asking if one believes in air or water. Similarly Quality is not something you believe in, Quality is something you experience.
Robert M. Pirsig