Pirsig Zen Quotes & Sayings

Of course, we knew that the official reports were sketchy, if not falsified. But, in terms of information theory, this is precisely where the problem lay: How were we to reconstruct reality from incomplete or false reports? It is not true that virtually all news in a totalitarian state is false. On the contrary, most news is completely correct, albeit tendentiously slanded; it is just that certain information is suppressed. One can adjust for the political slanting of the news, but there is virtually no way to fill in the omissions. — Konrad Zuse

I like Catch-22, Gravity's Rainbow and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, for instance, because the authors of those three surrealistic novels - Joseph Heller, Thomas Pynchon and Robert Pirsig - invented their own rules, knowing that the old ones wouldn't do the job they had in mind. — William Zinsser

The more you look, the more you see. - Pirsig, Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance — Pirsig

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. — Robert M. Pirsig

But the ones who go posing as moralists are the worst. Cost-free morals. Full of great ways for others to improve without any expense to themselves. There's an ego thing in there, too. They use the morals to make someone else look inferior and that way look better themselves. It doesn't matter what the moral code is
religious morals, political morals, racist morals, capitalist morals, feminist morals, hippie morals
they're all the same. The moral codes change but the meanness and the egotism stay the same. — Robert M. Pirsig

Quinn shucked his jeans but left his boxers on as he crawled on the bed and covered her body - kissing her along the way. "I think one of us is still overdressed," he murmured.
She couldn't help but tease him. "I was wondering why you left your boxers on."
And then he rested his forehead against hers, closed his eyes, and smiled. "You're not going to make this easy, are you?"
She shook her head. "I was hoping to make it... hard. Very, very hard. — Samantha Chase

Logic presumes a separation of subject from object; therefore logic is not final wisdom.This is Zen. This is my motorcycle maintenance. — Robert M. Pirsig

Zen is the "spirit of the valley," not the mountaintop. — Robert M. Pirsig

However, it should in no way be associated with that great body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice. It's not very factual on motorcycles either. — Robert M. Pirsig

Robert M. Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: 'When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion. — Richard Dawkins

Actually I've never seen a cycle-maintenance problem complex enough really to require full-scale formal scientific method. Repair problems are not that hard. When I think of formal scientific method an image sometimes comes to mind of an enormous juggernaut, a huge bulldozer-slow, tedious, lumbering, laborious, but invincible. It takes twice as long, five times as long, maybe a dozen times as long as informal mechanic's techniques, but you know in the end you're going to get it. There's no fault isolation problem in motorcycle maintenance that can stand up to it. When you've hit a really tough one, tried everything, racked your brain and nothing works, and you know that this time Nature has really decided to be difficult, you say, "Okay, Nature, that's the end of the nice guy," and you crank up the formal scientific method. — Robert M. Pirsig

It was funny how you could go somewhere and your whole life could stretch out and then you could come home and have it all shrink back to the way it was before. It was funny that it didn't stay stretched. — Jodi Lynn Anderson

Hope is at once both simple and profound. It is hope that binds Heaven and earth. Hope is the bridge between Heaven and earth. — Sri Chinmoy

Oft when the white, still dawn lifted the skies and pushed the hills apart, I have felt it like a glory in my heart. — Edwin Markham

Sometimes you just know what you're placed on this earth to do. — Christina Aguilera

To doubt the literal meaning of the words of Jesus or Moses incurs hostility from most people, but it's just a fact that if Jesus or Moses were to appear today, unidentified, with the same message he spoke many years ago, his mental stability would be challenged. This isn't because what Jesus or Moses said was untrue or because modern society is in error but simply because the route they chose to reveal to others has lost relevance and comprehensibility. "Heaven above" fades from meaning when space-age consciousness asks, Where is "above"? But the fact that the old routes have tended, because of language rigidity, to lose their everyday meaning and become almost closed doesn't mean that the mountain is no longer there. It's there and will be there as long as consciousness exists. — Robert M. Pirsig

You've got to live right, too. It's the way you live that predisposes you to avoid the traps and see the right facts. You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It's easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally. That's the way all the experts do it. The making of a painting or the fixing of a motorcycle isn't separate from the rest of your existence. If you're a sloppy thinker the six days of the week you aren't working on your machine, what trap avoidance, what gimmicks, can make you all of a sudden sharp on the seventh? It all goes together ... The real cycle you're working in is a cycle called yourself. The machine that appears to be "out there" and the person that appears to be "in here" are not two separate things. They grow toward Qaulity or fall away from Qaulity together. — Robert M. Pirsig

It was reading Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance that did it. In it, the author explains that there are two types of people: the romantics (the Zen part of the title) and the classics (the motorcycle maintenance part of the title). Romantics are interested in the pleasure of riding a bike, while classics are interested in the pleasure of understanding how the bike works. — Michele Harrison

She was strangely unaware that she could look and see freshly for herself, as she wrote, without primary regard for what had been said before. — Robert M. Pirsig

Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. — Robert M. Pirsig

To an experienced Zen Buddhist, asking if one believes in Zen or one believes in the Buddha, sounds a little ludicrous, like asking if one believes in air or water. Similarly Quality is not something you believe in, Quality is something you experience. — Robert M. Pirsig

The only zen thoughts you can find on a mountain summit are those you brought yourself. — 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

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

The real ugliness lies in the relationship between people who produce the technology and the things they produce, which results in a similar relationship between the people who use the technology and the things they use. — Robert M. Pirsig

It's possible to search in vain for that point where your running feels "just right." As I considered the point of balance for myself, I was reminded of a quote from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. He wrote: "Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you're no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn't just a means to an end but a unique event in itself. — John "The Penguin" Bingham

It seems that if our species ever eradicates itself through war, it will not be because it was written in the stars but because it was written in our books; it is what we do with words like 'God' and 'paradise' and 'sin' in the present that will determine our future. — Sam Harris

The book from which you take your teaching, Dr. Halse, says that man shall not live by bread alone. These days you're asking men to live without even bread. — Winston Graham

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

If a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves ... There's so much talk about the system. And so little understanding. - ROBERT PIRSIG, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance — Donella H. Meadows

But until then, and right now, the sun is bright, the air is cool, my head is clear, there's a whole day ahead of us, we're almost to the mountains, it's a good day to be alive. It's this thinner air that does it. You always feel like this when you start getting into higher altitudes. — Robert M. Pirsig

Newton invented a new form of reason. He expanded reason to handle infinitesimal changes and I think what is needed now is a similar expansion of reason to handle technological ugliness. The trouble is that the expansion has to be made at the roots, not at the branches, and that's what makes it hard to see. — Robert M. Pirsig