quotes by Robert M. Pirsig

"The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling."
— Robert M. Pirsig

"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."
— Robert M. Pirsig

"The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there."
— Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values)

"The only Zen you find on tops of mountains is the Zen you bring there."
— Robert M. Pirsig

"'Is it hard?'
'Not if you have the right attitudes. Its having the right attitudes thats hard.'"
— Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values)

"For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses. "
— Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values)

"If someone's ungrateful and you tell him he's ungrateful, okay, you've called him a name. You haven't solved anything."
— Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values)

"Programs of a political nature are important end products of social quality that can be effective only if the underlying structure of social values is right. The social values are right only if the individual values are right. The place to improve the world is first in one's heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there. "
— Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values)

"When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called a Religion."
— Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values)

"You look at where you're going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you've been and a pattern seems to emerge.
"
— Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values)

""The law of gravity and gravity itself did not exist before Isaac Newton."
"...and what that means is that that law of gravity exists nowhere except in people's heads! It 's a ghost!"
Mind has no matter or energy but they cant escape its predominance over everyhting they do. Logic exist in the mind. numbers exist only in the mind. Idont get upset when scientists say that ghosts exist in the mind. its that only that gets me. science is nly in your mind too, it s just that that dosent make it bad. or ghosts either."
"Laws of nature are human inventions, like ghosts. Law of logic, of mathematics are also human inventions, like ghosts."
"...we see what we see because these ghosts show it to us, ghosts of Moses and Christ and the Buddha, and Plato, and Descartes, and Rousseau and Jefferson and Lincoln, on and on and on. Isac Newton is a very good ghost. One of the best. Your common sence is nothing more than the voices of thousands and thousands of these gjosts from the past.""
— Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values)

"In the high country of the mind one has to become adjusted to the thinner air of uncertainty..."
— Robert M. Pirsig

"Who really can face the future? All you can do is project from the past, even when the past shows that such projections are often wrong. And who really can forget the past? What else is there to know?"
— Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values)

"Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. I think that what I have to say has more lasting value."
— Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values)