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Robert M. Pirsig

Robert M. Pirsig Quotes

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Famous Robert M. Pirsig Quotes

“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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“…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.”

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Author:Robert M. Pirsig
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“The past exists only in our memories, the future only in our plans. The present is our only reality. The tree that you are aware of intellectually, because of that small time lag, is always in the past and therefore is always unreal. Any intellectually conceived object is always in the past and therefore unreal. Reality is always the moment of vision before the intellectualization takes place. There is no other reality.”

MomentsRealityPastMemoriesVisionPlansTreeObjectsRealismOur MemoriesUnrealLag
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“Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you're no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn't just a means to an end but a unique event in itself. To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountains which sustain life, not the top.”

IfsThinkingShouldMeanLittlesEndsRealityDesireSidesGoalEffortEventsMountainUniqueDetermineSpeedClimbsShallowSlow DownRestlessFootstepsEquilibriumExhaustionRestlessnessMeans To An EndZen Motorcycle MaintenanceThinking AheadFuture Goals
Author:Robert M. Pirsig
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“What the Metaphysics of Quality would do is take this separate category, Quality, and show how it contains within itself both subjects and objects. The Metaphysics of Quality would show how things become enormously more coherent-fabulously more coherent-when you start with an assumption that Quality is the primary empirical reality of the world. . . . . . . but showing that, of course, was a very big job. . . .”

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Book:LILA An Inquriry into Morals
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