Robert M. Pirsig
Robert M. Pirsig
Robert Maynard Pirsigis an American writer and philosopher, and the author of the philosophical novels Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Valuesand Lila: An Inquiry into Morals...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth6 September 1928
CountryUnited States of America
Robert M. Pirsig quotes about
pens pencils
The pencil is mightier than the pen.
ideas mind might
If your mind is truly, profoundly stuck, then it might be much better off than when it was loaded with ideas
life law degrees
One could almost define life as the organized disobedience of the law of gravity. One could show that the degree to which an organism disobeys this law is a measure of its degree of evolution.
running mind looks
That's the classical mind at work, runs fine inside but looks dingy on the surface.
answers knows ten
every answer one finds leads to ten more questions. The more we learn the less we know.
fun hippie offering
The hippies had in mind something that they wanted, and were calling it freedom, but in the final analysis freedom is a purely negative goal. It just says something is bad. Hippies weren't really offering any alternatives other than colorful short-term ones, and some of these were looking more and more like pure degeneracy. Degeneracy can be fun but it's hard to keep up as a serious lifetime occupation.
motorcycle finals maintenance
Logic presumes a separation of subject from object; therefore logic is not final wisdom.This is Zen. This is my motorcycle maintenance.
quality fans wave
Quality tends to fan out like waves.
logic sometimes scientist
The logic of science was infallible, and if the scientists were sometimes mistaken, this was assumed to be only from their mistaking its rules.
struggle simple patterns
Morality is not a simple set of rules. It's a very complex struggle of conflicting patterns of values. This conflict is the residue of evolution. As new patters evolve they come into conflict with old ones. Each stage of evolution creates in its wake a wash of problems.
running technology ifs
If you run from technology, it will chase you,
creativity boredom periods
Boredom always precedes a period of great creativity.
intellectual social subjects
Objects are inorganic and biological values; subjects are social and intellectual values.
differences world patterns
The only difference between causation and the value is that the word "cause" implies absolute certainty whereas the implied meaning of "value" is one of preference. In classical science it was supposed that the world always works in terms of absolute certainty and that "cause" is the more appropriate word to describe it. But in modern quantum physics all that is changed. Particles "prefer" to do what they do. An individual particle is not absolutely committed to one predictable behavior. What appears to be an absolute cause is just a very consistent pattern of preferences.