537 Quotes by Robert M. Pirsig

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.

Your mind was already thinking ahead to what you would do when the cover plate was off, and so it takes a little time to realize that this irritating minor annoyance of a torn screw slot isn’t just irritating and minor. You’re stuck. Stopped. Terminated. It’s absolutely stopped you from fixing the motorcycle. This isn’t a rare scene in science or technology. This is the commonest scene of all. Just plain stuck.

99 per cent of your life recognises things without definition, a baby recognises its mother’s face without having it defined. It’s just an arbitrary rule this rule of definition that Socrates set down.

Walk into any of a hundred thousand classrooms today and hear the teachers divide and subdivide and interrelate and establish “principles” and study “methods” and what you will hear is the ghost of Aristotle speaking down through the centuries – the desiccating lifeless voice of dualistic reason.

Gumption is the psychic gasoline that keeps the whole thing going.

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.

The romantic mode is primarily inspirational, imaginative, creative, intuitive. Feelings rather than facts predominate. “Art” when it is opposed to “Science” is often romantic. It does not proceed by reason or by laws. It proceeds by feeling, intuition and esthetic conscience.

When you’ve got a Chautauqua in your head, it’s extremely hard not to inflict it on innocent people.

The making of a painting or the fixing of a motorcycle isn’t separate from the rest of your existence.