Robert M. Pirsig Quotes

If you stare at a wall from four in the morning till nine at night, and you do that for a week, you are getting pretty close to nothingness.

For me, a writer should be more like a lighthouse keeper, just out there by himself. He shouldn’t get his ideas from other people all around him.

We do need a return to individual integrity, self-reliance, and old-fashioned gumption. We really do.

We do need a return to individual integrity, self-reliance, and old-fashioned gumption. We really do.

It is not good to talk about Zen, because Zen is nothingness… If you talk about it, you are always lying, and if you don’t talk about it, no one knows it is there.

There’s no such thing as morality.

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

Boredom always precedes a period of great creativity.

Why, for example, should a group of simple, stable compounds of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen struggle for billions of years to organise themselves into a professor of chemistry? What’s the motive?

It’s the dualistic ways of looking at things that produces the evil.

The funny thing about insane people is that it is kind of the opposite of being a celebrity. Nobody envies you.

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

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

Quality is the Buddha.

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

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

The Buddha resides as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain.

Up until my first book was published, I had all this potential, people would say, and I screwed up. After it, I could say: ‘No, I didn’t screw up.’

People are all at sixes and sevens with each other. They’re always quarreling. They never somehow resolve anything.

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

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

The Buddha resides as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain.

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

The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.

Even in the presence of others he was completely alone.

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

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

Quality is the Buddha.

People are all at sixes and sevens with each other. They’re always quarreling. They never somehow resolve anything.

If you stare at a wall from four in the morning till nine at night, and you do that for a week, you are getting pretty close to nothingness.

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

The funny thing about insane people is that it is kind of the opposite of being a celebrity. Nobody envies you.

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

Boredom always precedes a period of great creativity.

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.

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

It is not good to talk about Zen, because Zen is nothingness… If you talk about it, you are always lying, and if you don’t talk about it, no one knows it is there.

It’s the dualistic ways of looking at things that produces the evil.

There’s no such thing as morality.

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

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

Even in the presence of others he was completely alone.

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.

What I am is a heretic who‘s recanted and, thereby, in everyone‘s eyes, saved his soul. Everyone’s eyes but one, who knows deep down inside that all he has saved is his skin.