Quote

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.

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
People
Asks
Madmen
Purpose
Diseases
Lives
Cure
Order
Cures
May
Minds
Live
Disease
Great
Longer
Mind
Struggle

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Even though quality cannot be defined, you know what quality is.
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It's better not to see than to see wrongly.
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Science values static patterns.
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One of the most moral acts is to create a space in which life can move forward.
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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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If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government.
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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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And what is good, Phaedrus, And what is not good— Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?
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The only zen thoughts you can find on a mountain summit are those you brought yourself.
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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.
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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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It's so hard when contemplated in advance, and so easy when you do it.
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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.
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Programs of a political nature are important end products of social quality that can be effective only if the underlying structure of social values is right. The social values are right only if the individual values are right. The place to improve the world is first in one's heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.
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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.
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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.
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The Good was not a form of reality. It was reality itself, ever-changing, ultimately unknowable in any kind of fixed, rigid way.
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When somebody goes outside the cultural norms, the culture has to protect itself.
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Between the subject and the object lies the value.
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