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Robert M. Pirsig Quotes

Philosopher

Robert M. Pirsig was an American philosopher and author best known for his groundbreaking work *Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance*, which explores the intersection of philosophy, technology, and quality. His philosophy, often blending Eastern and Western thought, delves into the nature of quality and the importance of understanding and appreciating life through a balance of rational and intuitive thinking. The following quotes offer a glimpse into his reflections on how we perceive and interact with the world, the pursuit of meaning, and the search for inner peace.

The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
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Like those in the valley behind us, most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships.
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Care and Quality are internal and external aspects of the same thing. A person who sees Quality and feels it as he works is a person who cares. A person who cares about what he sees and does is a person who’s bound to have some characteristic of quality.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
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There is a perennial classical question that asks which part of the motorcycle, which grain of sand in which pile, is the Buddha. Obviously to ask that question is to look in the wrong direction, for the Buddha is everywhere. But just as obviously to ask the question is to look in the right direction, for the Buddha is everwhere.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
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The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
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What’s emerging from the pattern of my own life is the for belief that the crisis is being caused by the inadequacy of existing forms of thought to cope with the situation. It can’t be solved by rational means because the rationality itself is the source of the problem. The only ones who’re solving it are solving it at a personal level by abandoning ‘square’ rationality altogether and going by feelings alone. Like John and Sylvia here. And millions of others like them. And that seems like a wrong direction too. So I guess what I’m trying to say is that the solution to the problem isn’t that you abandon rationality but that you expand the nature of rationality so that it’s capable of coming up with a solution.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
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During periods of root expansion things have always looked as confused and topsy-turvy and purposeless as they do now. The whole Renaissance is supposed to have resulted from the topsy-turvy feeling caused by Columbus’ discovery of a new world. It just shook people up. The topsy-turviness of that time is recorded everywhere. There was nothing in the flat-earth views of the Old and New Testaments that predicted it. Yet people couldn’t deny it. The only way they could assimilate it was to abandon the entire medieval outlook and enter into a new expansion of reason.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
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Now we’ve a real intellectual impasse. Our reason, which is supposed to make things more intelligible, seems to be making them less intelligible, and when reason thus defeats its own purpose something has to be changed in the structure of our reason itself.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
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In the high country of the mind one has to become adjusted to the thinner air of uncertainty...
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To all appearances he was just drifting. In actuality he was just drifting.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
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The cause of our current social crises, he would have said, is a genetic defect within the nature of reason itself. And until this genetic defect is cleared, the crises will continue. Our current modes of rationality are not moving society forward into a better world. They are taking it further and further from that better world. Since the Renaissance these modes have worked. As long as the need for food, clothing and shelter is dominant they will continue to work. But now that for huge masses of people these needs no longer overwhelm everything else, the whole structure of reason, handed down to us from ancient times, is no longer adequate. It begins to be seen for what it really is…emotionally hollow, esthetically meaningless and spiritually empty.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
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When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called a Religion.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
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The doctrinal differences between Hinduism and Buddhism and Taoism are not anywhere near as important as doctrinal differences among Christianity and Islam and Judaism. Holy wars are not fought over them because verbalized statements about reality are never presumed to be reality itself.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
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To some extent the romantic condemnation of rationality stems from the very effectiveness of rationality in uplifting men from primitive conditions.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
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If I hold my head to the left and look down at the handle grips and front wheel and map carrier and gas tank I get one pattern of sense data. If I move my head to the right I get another slightly different pattern of sense data. The two views are different. The angles of the planes and curves of the metal are different. The sunlight strikes them differently. If there's no logical basis for substance then there's no logical basis for concluding that what's produced these two views is the same motorcycle.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
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..."and what that means is that the law of gravity exists nowhere except in people's heads! It's a ghost! We are all of us very arrogant and conceited about running down other people's ghosts but just as ignorant and barbaric and superstitious about our own.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert M Pirsig
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The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Like those in the valley behind us, most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Care and Quality are internal and external aspects of the same thing. A person who sees Quality and feels it as he works is a person who cares. A person who cares about what he sees and does is a person who’s bound to have some characteristic of quality.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There is a perennial classical question that asks which part of the motorcycle, which grain of sand in which pile, is the Buddha. Obviously to ask that question is to look in the wrong direction, for the Buddha is everywhere. But just as obviously to ask the question is to look in the right direction, for the Buddha is everwhere.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
What’s emerging from the pattern of my own life is the for belief that the crisis is being caused by the inadequacy of existing forms of thought to cope with the situation. It can’t be solved by rational means because the rationality itself is the source of the problem. The only ones who’re solving it are solving it at a personal level by abandoning ‘square’ rationality altogether and going by feelings alone. Like John and Sylvia here. And millions of others like them. And that seems like a wrong direction too. So I guess what I’m trying to say is that the solution to the problem isn’t that you abandon rationality but that you expand the nature of rationality so that it’s capable of coming up with a solution.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
During periods of root expansion things have always looked as confused and topsy-turvy and purposeless as they do now. The whole Renaissance is supposed to have resulted from the topsy-turvy feeling caused by Columbus’ discovery of a new world. It just shook people up. The topsy-turviness of that time is recorded everywhere. There was nothing in the flat-earth views of the Old and New Testaments that predicted it. Yet people couldn’t deny it. The only way they could assimilate it was to abandon the entire medieval outlook and enter into a new expansion of reason.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Now we’ve a real intellectual impasse. Our reason, which is supposed to make things more intelligible, seems to be making them less intelligible, and when reason thus defeats its own purpose something has to be changed in the structure of our reason itself.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
In the high country of the mind one has to become adjusted to the thinner air of uncertainty...
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
To all appearances he was just drifting. In actuality he was just drifting.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The cause of our current social crises, he would have said, is a genetic defect within the nature of reason itself. And until this genetic defect is cleared, the crises will continue. Our current modes of rationality are not moving society forward into a better world. They are taking it further and further from that better world. Since the Renaissance these modes have worked. As long as the need for food, clothing and shelter is dominant they will continue to work. But now that for huge masses of people these needs no longer overwhelm everything else, the whole structure of reason, handed down to us from ancient times, is no longer adequate. It begins to be seen for what it really is…emotionally hollow, esthetically meaningless and spiritually empty.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called a Religion.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The doctrinal differences between Hinduism and Buddhism and Taoism are not anywhere near as important as doctrinal differences among Christianity and Islam and Judaism. Holy wars are not fought over them because verbalized statements about reality are never presumed to be reality itself.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
To some extent the romantic condemnation of rationality stems from the very effectiveness of rationality in uplifting men from primitive conditions.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If I hold my head to the left and look down at the handle grips and front wheel and map carrier and gas tank I get one pattern of sense data. If I move my head to the right I get another slightly different pattern of sense data. The two views are different. The angles of the planes and curves of the metal are different. The sunlight strikes them differently. If there's no logical basis for substance then there's no logical basis for concluding that what's produced these two views is the same motorcycle.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
..."and what that means is that the law of gravity exists nowhere except in people's heads! It's a ghost! We are all of us very arrogant and conceited about running down other people's ghosts but just as ignorant and barbaric and superstitious about our own.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert M Pirsig
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Like those in the valley behind us, most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Care and Quality are internal and external aspects of the same thing. A person who sees Quality and feels it as he works is a person who cares. A person who cares about what he sees and does is a person who’s bound to have some characteristic of quality.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There is a perennial classical question that asks which part of the motorcycle, which grain of sand in which pile, is the Buddha. Obviously to ask that question is to look in the wrong direction, for the Buddha is everywhere. But just as obviously to ask the question is to look in the right direction, for the Buddha is everwhere.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
What’s emerging from the pattern of my own life is the for belief that the crisis is being caused by the inadequacy of existing forms of thought to cope with the situation. It can’t be solved by rational means because the rationality itself is the source of the problem. The only ones who’re solving it are solving it at a personal level by abandoning ‘square’ rationality altogether and going by feelings alone. Like John and Sylvia here. And millions of others like them. And that seems like a wrong direction too. So I guess what I’m trying to say is that the solution to the problem isn’t that you abandon rationality but that you expand the nature of rationality so that it’s capable of coming up with a solution.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
During periods of root expansion things have always looked as confused and topsy-turvy and purposeless as they do now. The whole Renaissance is supposed to have resulted from the topsy-turvy feeling caused by Columbus’ discovery of a new world. It just shook people up. The topsy-turviness of that time is recorded everywhere. There was nothing in the flat-earth views of the Old and New Testaments that predicted it. Yet people couldn’t deny it. The only way they could assimilate it was to abandon the entire medieval outlook and enter into a new expansion of reason.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Now we’ve a real intellectual impasse. Our reason, which is supposed to make things more intelligible, seems to be making them less intelligible, and when reason thus defeats its own purpose something has to be changed in the structure of our reason itself.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
In the high country of the mind one has to become adjusted to the thinner air of uncertainty...
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
To all appearances he was just drifting. In actuality he was just drifting.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The cause of our current social crises, he would have said, is a genetic defect within the nature of reason itself. And until this genetic defect is cleared, the crises will continue. Our current modes of rationality are not moving society forward into a better world. They are taking it further and further from that better world. Since the Renaissance these modes have worked. As long as the need for food, clothing and shelter is dominant they will continue to work. But now that for huge masses of people these needs no longer overwhelm everything else, the whole structure of reason, handed down to us from ancient times, is no longer adequate. It begins to be seen for what it really is…emotionally hollow, esthetically meaningless and spiritually empty.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called a Religion.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The doctrinal differences between Hinduism and Buddhism and Taoism are not anywhere near as important as doctrinal differences among Christianity and Islam and Judaism. Holy wars are not fought over them because verbalized statements about reality are never presumed to be reality itself.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
To some extent the romantic condemnation of rationality stems from the very effectiveness of rationality in uplifting men from primitive conditions.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If I hold my head to the left and look down at the handle grips and front wheel and map carrier and gas tank I get one pattern of sense data. If I move my head to the right I get another slightly different pattern of sense data. The two views are different. The angles of the planes and curves of the metal are different. The sunlight strikes them differently. If there's no logical basis for substance then there's no logical basis for concluding that what's produced these two views is the same motorcycle.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
..."and what that means is that the law of gravity exists nowhere except in people's heads! It's a ghost! We are all of us very arrogant and conceited about running down other people's ghosts but just as ignorant and barbaric and superstitious about our own.
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert M Pirsig
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote