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Within a Metaphysics of Quality, science is a set of static intellectual patterns describing this reality, but the patterns are not the reality they describe.

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
Reality
Static
Describing
Describe
Patterns
Intellectual
Quality
Within
Science
Metaphysics

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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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The Church of Reason, like all institutions of the System, is based not on individual strength but upon individual weakness. What's really demanded in the Church of Reason is not ability, but inability. Then you are considered teachable. A truly able person is always a threat.
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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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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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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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I think now the trace of egotism may have been the beginning of all his troubles
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Is it hard?' Not if you have the right attitudes. Its having the right attitudes thats hard.
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Why, for example, should a group of simple, stable compounds of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen struggle for billions of years to organize themselves into a professor of chemistry? What's the motive?
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Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best, 20 - 20 hindsight. It's good for seeing where you've been. It's good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can't tell you where you ought to go.
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Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual abstractions.
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I think metaphysics is good if it improves everyday life otherwise forget it.
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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.
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That which destroys the old mythos becomes the new mythos.
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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
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In the temple of science are many mansions ... and various indeed are they that dwell therein and the motives that have led them thither.
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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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Boredom always precedes a period of great creativity.
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Caring about what you are doing is considered either unimportant or taken for granted.
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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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When you've got a Chautauqua in your head, it's extremely hard not to inflict it on innocent people.
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