Quotes from Robert M. Pirsig

There is an evil tendency underlying all our technology - the tendency to do what is reasonable even when it isn't any good.

One could almost define life as the organized disobedience of the law of gravity. One could show that the degree to which an organism disobeys this law is a measure of its degree of evolution.

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

Cultures are not the source of all morals, only a limited set of morals. Cultures can be graded and judged morally according to their contribution to the evolution of life.

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

The study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself. Working on a motorcycle, working well, caring, is to become part of a process, to achieve an inner peace of mind. The motorcycle is primarily a mental phenomenon.

We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with the emphasis on "good" rather than on "time".

Sometimes it's a little better to travel than to arrive

The truth knocks on the door and you say, go away, I'm looking for the truth, and it goes away. Puzzling.

Why, for example, should a group of simple, stable compounds of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen struggle for billions of years to organise themselves into a professor of chemistry? What's the motive?

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 Buddha resides as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain.

Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. I think that what I have to say has more lasting value.

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

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

It is not good to talk about Zen, because Zen is nothingness... If you talk about it, you are always lying, and if you don't talk about it, no one knows it is there.

There's no such thing as morality.

Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you're no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn't just a means to an end, but a unique event in itself.

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

I did not want to write one of those sequels that famous first-book authors get into where everybody says, 'Oh yeah.'

We do need a return to individual integrity, self-reliance, and old-fashioned gumption. We really do.

The funny thing about insane people is that it is kind of the opposite of being a celebrity. Nobody envies you.