Robert M. Pirsig Quotes

One deep breath makes me ready for the next one and then the next one and with each deep breath I feel a little readier until I jump out of bed and pull up the shade

People arrive at a factory and perform a totally meaningless task from eight to five without question because the structure demands that it be that way. There’s no villain, no mean guy who wants them...

Perhaps because of these changes the stream of national consciousness moves faster now, and is broader, but it seems to run less deep.

The classic style is straightforward, unadorned, unemotional, economical and carefully proportioned. Its purpose is not to inspire emotionally, but to bring order out of chaos and make the unknown kno...

The past cannot remember the past. The future can’t generate the future. The cutting edge of this instant right here and now is always nothing less than the totality of everything there is.

The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself.

The way to solve the conflict between human values and technological needs is not to run away from technology. That’s impossible. The way to resolve the conflict is to break down the barriers of duali...

The whole purpose of scientific method is to make valid distinctions between the false and the true in nature, to eliminate the subjective, unreal, imaginary elements from one’s work so as to obtain a...

Then one evening, contrary to his custom, he drank black coffee and couldn’t sleep. Ideas arose in crowds. He felt them collide until pairs interlocked, so to speak, making a stable combination.

There are as many routes as there are individual souls.

There’s kind of a glaring inconsistency here, that’s almost too obvious to dwell on. If they can’t stand physical discomfort and they can’t stand technology, they’ve got a little compromising to do. T...

These false images are deflated so rapidly and completely you’re bound to be very discouraged very soon if you’ve derived your gumption from ego rather than Quality.

They contain no matter, I continue, and have no energy and therefore, according to the laws of science, do not exist except in people’s minds.

This book offers another, more serious alternative to material success. It’s not so much an alternative as an expansion of the meaning of success to something larger than just getting a good job and s...

This condemnation of technology is ingratitude, that’s what it is. Blind

Waiting. For that missing seed crystal of thought that would suddenly solidify everything.

We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with emphasis on good rather than time and when you make that shift in emphasis the whole approach changes.

We’ve won it. It’s going to get better now. You can sort of tell these things.

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.

What makes his world so hard to see clearly is not its strangeness but its usualness. Familiarity can blind you too.