Quotes from Robert M. Pirsig

The test of the machine is the satisfaction it gives you. There isn't any other test. If the machine produces tranquility it's right. If it disturbs you it's wrong until either the machine or your mind is changed.

The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of the mountain, or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha - which is to demean oneself.

It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top.

The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself.

The real purpose of the scientific method is to make sure nature hasn't misled you into thinking you know something you actually don't know.

You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It's easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally.

When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process.

And what is good, Phaedrus, And what is not good— Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?

I argued that physical discomfort is important only when the mood is wrong. Then you fasten on to whatever thing is uncomfortable and call that the cause. But if the mood is right, then physical discomfort doesn't mean much.

The doctrinal differences between Hinduism and Buddhism and Taoism are not anywhere near as important as doctrinal differences among Christianity and Islam and Judaism. Holy wars are not fought over them because verbalized statements about reality are never presumed to be reality itself.

Civilization, or "the system" or "society" or whatever you want to call it, is best served not by mules but by free men.

Communism and socialism, programs for intellectual control over society ... fascism, a program for the social control of intellect.

We have artists with no scientific knowledge and scientists with no artistic knowledge and both with no spiritual sense of gravity at all, and the result is not just bad, it is ghastly.

When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog to see the sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes. The dog has certain relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten.

The Buddha takes no position on gods, he suggests they may exist or they may not, but either way you can live a moral life.

The most moral activity of all is the creation of space for life to move around.

I think metaphysics is good if it improves everyday life; otherwise forget it.

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.'

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

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.

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

Quality is the Buddha.

What I am is a heretic who's recanted and, thereby, in everyone's eyes, saved his soul. Everyone's eyes but one, who knows deep down inside that all he has saved is his skin.

Making an art out of your technological life is the way to solve the problem of technology...Art is anything that you can do well. Anything that you can do with Quality.