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Quality isn't a thing. It is an event.
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
Quality
Thing
Event
Events
More quotes by Robert M. Pirsig
What keeps the world from reverting to the Neanderthal with each generation is the continuing, ongoing mythos... the huge body of common knowledge that unites our minds as cells are united in the body of man.
Robert M. Pirsig
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
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
It's paradoxical that where people are the most closely crowded, in the big coastal cities in the East and West, the loneliness is the greatest... The explanation, I suppose, is that the physical distance between people has nothing to do with loneliness. It's psychic distance...
Robert M. Pirsig
Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual abstractions.
Robert M. Pirsig
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.
Robert M. Pirsig
That which destroys the old mythos becomes the new mythos.
Robert M. Pirsig
Now, to take that which has caused us to create the world, and include it within the world we have created, is clearly impossible. This is why Quality cannot be defined. If we do define it, we are defining something less than Quality itself.
Robert M. Pirsig
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.
Robert M. Pirsig
The only zen thoughts you can find on a mountain summit are those you brought yourself.
Robert M. Pirsig
The most moral activity of all is the creation of space for life to move around.
Robert M. Pirsig
The more you look, the more you see.
Robert M. Pirsig
The truth knocks on the door and you say, go away, I'm looking for the truth, and it goes away. Puzzling.
Robert M. Pirsig
We keep passing unseen through little moments of other people's lives.
Robert M. Pirsig
... 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
Institutions such as schools, churches, governments and political organizations of every sort all tended to direct thought for ends other than truth, for the perpetuation of their own functions, and for the control of individuals in the service of these functions.
Robert M. Pirsig
Mental reflection is so much more interesting than TV it's a shame more people don't switch over to it.
Robert M. Pirsig
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
The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands.
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
