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Robert M. Pirsig Biography

Robert M. Pirsig

Robert Maynard Pirsig (September 6, 1928 – April 24, 2017) was an American writer and philosopher. He was 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).

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Robert M. Pirsig Quotes

The purpose of scientific method is to select a single truth from among many hypothetical truths. That, more than anything else, is what science is all about. But historically science has done exactly the opposite. Through multiplication upon multiplication of facts, information, theories and hypotheses, it is science itself that is leading mankind from single absolute truths to multiple indeterminate, relative ones.

Exactly, Facts, Method, Opposites, Purpose, Scientific

Data without generalization is just gossip.

Data, Generalization, Gossip

Of course, the laws of science contain no matter and have no energy either and therefore do not exist except in people's minds. It's best to be completely scientific about the whole thing and refuse to believe in either ghosts or the laws of science. That way you're safe. That doesn't leave you very much to believe in, but that's scientific too.

Believe, Completely, Law, Matter, People, Whole

Morality is not a simple set of rules. It's a very complex struggle of conflicting patterns of values. This conflict is the residue of evolution. As new patters evolve they come into conflict with old ones. Each stage of evolution creates in its wake a wash of problems.

Conflict, Old, Ones, Patterns, Simple, Struggle

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

Climbing, Mountain, Summit, Thoughts, Zen

The way to solve the conflict between human values and technology needs is not to run away from technology. That's impossible. The way to resolve the conflict is to break down the barriers of dualistic thought that prevent a real understanding of what technology is--not an exploitation of nature, but a fusion of nature and the human spirit into a new kind of creation that transcends both.

Break, Conflict, Real, Running, Spirit, Technology

The way to see what looks good and understand the reasons it looks good, and to be at one with this goodness as the work proceeds, is to cultivate an inner quietness, a peace of mind so that goodness can shine through.

Cultivate, Inner, Looks, Mind, Shining, Work

A thing that has no value does not exist.

Doe, Exist, Thing, Value, Values

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

Bring, Encouraging, Hiking, Tops, Wisdom, Zen

The bones and flesh and legal statistics are the garments worn by the personality, not the other way around.

Flesh, Garments, Personality, Statistics, Worn

What keeps the world from reverting to the Neanderthal with each generation is the continuing, ongoing mythos. . . the huge body of common knowledge that unites our minds as cells are united in the body of man.

Body, Cells, Men, Mind, Ongoing, Reverting

Today we are living in an intellectual and technological paradise and a moral and social nightmare because the intellectual level of evolution, in its struggle to become free of the social level, has ignored the social level's role in keeping the biological level under control.

Intellectual, Keeping, Roles, Struggle, Under

If you are following the dharma no matter what you do it is moral.

Dharma, Following, Matter, Moral

You look at where you're going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you've been and a pattern seems to emerge.

Back, Looks, Pattern, Patterns, Sense, Where You Are

The range of human knowledge today is so great that we're all specialists and the distance between specializations has become so great that anyone who seeks to wander freely between them almost has to forego closeness with the people around him.

Distance, People, Seeks, Specializations, Today

The more you look, the more you see.

Look, Looks, See, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance

You have to remember, that insane people can do some horrors themselves. I had committed no crime, though. I hadn't shot anybody. Yet.

Crime, Insane, People, Remember, Though

The Good was not a form of reality. It was reality itself, ever-changing, ultimately unknowable in any kind of fixed, rigid way.

Fixed, Kind, Reality, Unity, Way

The mythos-over-logos argument points to the fact that each child is born as ignorant as any caveman. What keeps the world from reverting to the Neandertal with each generation is the continuing, ongoing mythos, transformed into logos but still mythos, the huge body of common knowledge that unites our minds as cells are united in the body of man. To feel that one is not so united, that one can accept or discard this mythos as one pleases, is not to understand what the mythos is.

Art, Body, Children, Generation, Ignorant, Men

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

Book, Mind, People, Published, Screw

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