Quotes from Robert Pirsig

The past exists only in our memories, the future only in our plans. The present is our only reality. The tree that you are aware of intellectually, because of that small time lag, is always in the past and therefore is always unreal. Any intellectually conceived object is always in the past and therefore unreal. Reality is always the moment of vision before the intellectualization takes place. There is no other reality.

One of the most moral acts is to create a space in which life can move forward.

This inner peace of mind occurs on three levels of understanding. Physical quietness seems the easiest to achieve, although there are levels and levels of this too, as attested by the ability of Hindu mystics to live buried alive for many days. Mental quietness, in which one has no wandering thoughts at all, seems more difficult, but can be achieved. But value quietness, in which one has no wandering desires at all but simply performs the acts of his life without desire, that seems the hardest.

I've wondered why it took us so long to catch on. We saw it, and yet we didn't see it. Or rather we were trained not to see it. Conned perhaps into thinking that the real action was metropolitan and all this was just boring hinterland. It was 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.

Stuckness shouldn't be avoided. It's the physic predecessor of all real understanding.

He felt that institutions such as schools, churches, governments and political organizations of every sort all tended to direct thought for ends other than truth, for the perpetuation of their own functions, and for the control of individuals in the service of these functions. He came to see his early failure as a lucky break, an accidental escape from a trap that had been set for him, and he was very trap-wary about institutional truths for the remainder of his time.

If you eliminate suffering from this world you eliminate life. There's no evolution. Those species that don't suffer don't survive. Sometimes the insane and the contrarians and the ones who are the closest to suicide are the most valuable people society has. They may be the precursors of social change. They've taken the burdens of the culture onto themselves and in their struggle to solve their own problems they're solving problems for the culture as well

I think now the trace of egotism may have been the beginning of all his troubles

He felt that institutions such as schools, churches, governments and political organizations of every sort all tended to direct thought for ends other than truth, for the perpetuation of their own functions, and for the control of individuals in the service of these functions.

Morals can't function normally because morals have been declared intellectually illegal by the subject object metaphysics that dominates present social thought

That's the way it is. The intelligence of the mind can't think of any reason to live, but it goes on anyway because the intelligence of the cells can't think of any reason to die

The past exists only in our memories, the future only in our plans. The present is our only reality.

An evolutionary morality argues that The North was right in pursuing that war because a nation is a higher form of evolution than a human body and the principle of human equality is an even higher form than a nation

When you try to climb a mountain to prove how big you are, you almost never make it. And even if you do it's a hollow victory. In order to sustain the victory you have to prove yourself again and again in some other way, and again and again and again, driven forever to fill a false image, haunted by the fear that the image is not true and someone will find out.

The past cannot remember the past. The future cannot 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 world has no existence whatsoever outside of the human imagination.

How can I love all this so much and be insane?

Anxiety, the next gumption trap, is sort of the opposite of ego. You're so sure that you'll do everything wrong you're afraid to do anything at all…You fix things that don't need fixing, and chase after imaginary ailments. You jump to wild conclusions and build all kinds of errors into the machine because of your own nervousness. These errors, when made, tend to confirm your original underestimation of yourself.

I go living, more from force of habit than anything else.

And because without objects there can be no subject-- because the objects create the subject's awareness of himself-- quality is the event at which awareness of both subjects and objects is made possible.

But what;s happening is that each year our old flat earth of conventional reason becomes less and less adequate to handle the experiences we have and this is creating widespread feelings of topsy turviness. As a result we're getting more and more people in irrational areas of thought-- occultism, mysticism, drug changes and the like-- because they feel the inadequacy of classical reason to handle what they know are real experiences.

At times we seem to move in parallel rather than in combination, then at odd moments collide.

But what's happening is that each year our old flat earth of conventional reason becomes less and less adequate to handle the experiences we have and this is creating widespread feelings of topsy turviness. As a result we're getting more and more people in irrational areas of thought-- occultism, mysticism, drug changes and the like-- because they feel the inadequacy of classical reason to handle what they know are real experiences.

ÄŒlovÄ›k se dívá tam, kam jde a kde je, a v?bec tomu nerozumí. Pak se ale oto?í, podívá se, kde už byl, a za?ne se mu vynoÃ…â"¢ovat jistý vzorec. A pokud ten vzorec promítne do budoucna, m?že pak ob?as na nÄ›co zajímavého pÃ…â"¢ijít.