Quotes By Robert M. Pirsig

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

Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual abstractions.

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

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

Even in the presence of others he was completely alone.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands.