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Robert M. Pirsig Quote

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.

Robert M. Pirsig

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.

Tags: motorcycle, motorcycle maintenance, philosophy, rationality, reason

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About Robert M. Pirsig

Robert Maynard Pirsig (; September 6, 1928 – April 24, 2017) was an American writer and philosopher. He is the author of the philosophical novels Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (1974) and Lila: An Inquiry into Morals (1991), and he co-authored On Quality: An Inquiry Into Excellence: Selected and Unpublished Writings (2022) along with his wife and editor, Wendy Pirsig.