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Robert M. Pirsig

Robert M. Pirsig Quotes

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Famous Robert M. Pirsig Quotes

“Not everyone understands what a completely rational process this is, this maintenance of a motorcycle. They think it's some kind of "knack" or some kind of "affinity for machines" in operation. They are right, but the knack is almost purely a process of reason, and most of the troubles are caused by what old time radio men called a "short between the earphones," failures to use the head properly. A motorcycle functions entirely in accordance with the laws of reason, and a study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself.”

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Book:Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
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“I think this fear of insanity is comparable to the fear people once had of falling off the edge of the world. Or the fear of heretics...What's happening is that each year our old flat earth of conventional reason becomes less and less adequate to handle the experiences we have and this is creating wide-spread feelings of topsy-turviness. As a result we're getting more and more people in irrational areas of thought...occultism, mysticism, drug changes and the like...because they feel an inadequacy in classical reason to handle what they know are real experiences.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsWorldFeelsYearsRealReasonFeelingsEarthFallResultsDrugCreatingHappeningsAreasEdgesSpreadWideHandleInsanityMysticismFlatsConventionalIrrationalRationalityAdequateHereticInadequacyFalling OffZen Motorcycle MaintenanceEdge Of The World
Author:Robert M. Pirsig
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“What is essential to understand at this point is that until now there was no such thing as mind and matter, subject and object, form and substance. Those divisions are just dialectical inventions that came later...They are just ghosts, immortal gods of the modern mythos which appear to us to be real because we are within that mythos. But in reality they are just as much an artistic creation as the anthropomorphic gods they replaced.”

MindRealMatterRealityFormModernSubjectsCreationObjectsEssentialsGhostInventionArtisticSubstanceImmortalDivisionBeing RealReplacedRationalityMind And MatterArtistic CreationForm And Substance
Author:Robert M. Pirsig
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“Dialectic, which is the parent of logic, came itself from rhetoric. Rhetoric is in turn the child of the myths and poetry of ancient Greece. That is so historically, and that is so by any application of common sense. The poetry and myths are the response of a prehistoric people to the Universe around them made on the basis of Quality. It is Quality, not dialectic, which is the generator of everything we know.”

PeopleKnowsChildrenMadeTurnsUniverseParentCommonQualityLogicBasesResponseAncientMythCommon SenseApplicationRhetoricRationalityGreeceDialecticsAncient GreecePrehistoricGenerator
Author:Robert M. Pirsig
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“It was the ghost of rationality itself ... This is the ghost of normal everyday assumptions which declares that the ultimate purpose of life, which is to keep alive, is impossible, but that this is the ultimate purpose of life anyway, so that 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. That is what the ghost says.”

PeopleMindMayPurposeOrderAsksStruggleAliveImpossibleDiseaseNormalUltimateEverydayGhostCuresAssumptionPurpose Of LifeRationalityMadmenGreat Minds
Author:Robert M. Pirsig
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