Robert M. Pirsig's Quotes

Even in the presence of others he was completely alone.

The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.

It is a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, 'Go away, I'm looking for the truth,' and so it goes away. Puzzling.

To live for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top.

The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands.

We keep passing unseen through little moments of other people's lives.

The truth knocks on the door and you say, go away, I'm looking for the truth, and it goes away. Puzzling.

Metaphysics is a restaurant where they give you a thirty thousand page menu, and no food.

The solutions all are simple - after you have arrived at them. But they're simple only when you know already what they are.

When somebody goes outside the cultural norms, the culture has to protect itself.

Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best, 20 - 20 hindsight. It's good for seeing where you've been. It's good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can't tell you where you ought to go.

To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top.

I have money, fame, a happy wife, our daughter Nell.

I really don't mind dying because I figure I haven't wasted this life.

One geometry cannot be more true than another; it can only be more convenient. Geometry is not true, it is advantageous.

Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual abstractions.

The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.

Just as women's bodies are softer than men's, so their understanding is sharper.

I don't get how it's okay to keep someone alive once they're sick - but not okay to stop them getting sick. I just don't get that.

I think if we can prevent a fatal disease, we should.