Zen Motorcycle Maintenance Quotes:

The more you look, the more you will see.

- Roger Tory Peterson

source: Sarah Landry, Roger Tory Peterson (1998). “Peterson First Guide to Urban Wildlife”, p.3, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

topic: Nature, Looks, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance

The more you look, the more you see.

- Robert M. Pirsig

topic: Looks, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance

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

- Robert M. Pirsig

source: "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, April 1, 1974.

topic: Needs, Asks, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance

Quality... you know what it is, yet you don't know what it is.

- Robert M. Pirsig

topic: Understanding, Quality, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance

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

- Robert M. Pirsig

source: "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (ZAMM)". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, 1974.

topic: Real, Philosophical, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance, Cycles

There's so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.

- Robert M. Pirsig

source: "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, 1974.

topic: Understanding, Littles, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance

The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands.

- Robert M. Pirsig

source: "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, 1974.

topic: Change, Success, Leadership, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance, Head And Heart

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

- Robert M. Pirsig

topic: Encouraging, Wisdom, Mountain, Meditation Mindfulness, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance

A person isn't considered insane if there are a number of people who believe the same way. Insanity isn't supposed to be a communicable disease. If one other person starts to believe him, or maybe two or three, then it's a religion.

- Robert M. Pirsig

source: "Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals". Book by Robert Pirsig, 1991.

topic: God, Atheist, People, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance, Anti God

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.

- Robert M. Pirsig

topic: Patterns, Looks, Where You Are, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance

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

- Robert M. Pirsig

topic: Inspirational, Travel, Littles, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance

If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government.

- Robert M. Pirsig

topic: Government, Systematic, Succeed, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance

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.

- Robert M. Pirsig

topic: Nature, Real, Thinking, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance

In a car you're always in a compartment, and because you're used to it you don't realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You're a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame. On a cycle the frame is gone. You're completely in contact with it all. You're in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming.

- Robert M. Pirsig

source: "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, 1974.

topic: Moving, Car, Gone, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance

If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion.

- Robert M. Pirsig

topic: Running, Mountain, Speed, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance, Exhaustion

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

- Robert M. Pirsig

source: "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, 1974.

topic: Mean, Unique, Reality, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance, Exhaustion

A motorcycle functions entirely in accordance with the laws of reason, and a study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself.

- Robert M. Pirsig

topic: Art, Law, Motorcycle, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance, Miniatures

We’re in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it’s all gone.

- Robert M. Pirsig

source: Robert M. Pirsig (2009). “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values”, p.8, Harper Collins

topic: Sorry, Years, Gone, Monotony, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance

I think present-day reason is an analogue of the flat earth of the medieval period. If you go too far beyond it you're presumed to fall off, into insanity. And people are very much afraid of that. I think this fear of insanity is comparable to the fear people once had of falling off the edge of the world. Or the fear of heretics. There's a very close analogue there.

- Robert M. Pirsig

source: "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, 1974.

topic: Fall, Thinking, People, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance, Edge Of The World

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

- Robert M. Pirsig

source: "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, 1974.

topic: Truth, Simple, Rationality, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance

Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all.

- Robert M. Pirsig

topic: Reflection, Serenity, Mind, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance, Peace And Serenity

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.

- Robert M. Pirsig

topic: Distance, People, Today, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance, Specialization

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.

- Robert M. Pirsig

topic: Technology, Giving, Mind, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance

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.

- Robert M. Pirsig

topic: Destiny, Thinking, People, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance

Any effort that has self-glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in disaster.

- Robert M. Pirsig

topic: Failure, Self, Effort, Glorification, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance

The best students always are flunking. Every good teacher knows that.

- Robert M. Pirsig

topic: Teacher, Students, Very Good, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance, Flunking

What's wrong with technology is that it's not connected in any real way with matters of the spirit and of the heart. And so it does blind, ugly things quite by accident and gets hated for that.

- Robert M. Pirsig

topic: Real, Heart, Technology, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance

You are never dedicated to do something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kind of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.

- Robert M. Pirsig

source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance pt. 2, ch. 13 (1974)

topic: Religious, Knowledge, People, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance

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.

- Robert M. Pirsig

topic: Flower, Thinking, Mountain, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance, Circuits

To an experienced Zen Buddhist, asking if one believes in Zen or one believes in the Buddha, sounds a little ludicrous, like asking if one believes in air or water. Similarly Quality is not something you believe in, Quality is something you experience.

- Robert M. Pirsig

topic: Buddhist, Believe, Air, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance, Zen Buddhist

Mental reflection is so much more interesting than TV it's a shame more people don't switch over to it.

- Robert M. Pirsig

topic: Reflection, People, Interesting, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance

That's all the motorcycle is, a system of concepts worked out in steel.

- Robert M. Pirsig

topic: Motorcycle, Steel, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance

Programs of a political nature are important end products of social quality that can be effective only if the underlying structure of social values is right. The social values are right only if the individual values are right. The place to improve the world is first in one's heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.

- Robert M. Pirsig

source: "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, Ch. 25, 1974.

topic: Heart, Social Values, Hands, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance, Head And Heart

Now, to take that which has caused us to create the world, and include it within the world we have created, is clearly impossible. This is why Quality cannot be defined. If we do define it, we are defining something less than Quality itself.

- Robert M. Pirsig

source: "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, 1974.

topic: Quality, World, Defining, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance

Who really can face the future? All you can do is project from the past, even when the past shows that such projections are often wrong. And who really can forget the past? What else is there to know?

- Robert M. Pirsig

topic: Past, Faces, Forget, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance

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

- Robert M. Pirsig

source: Robert M. Pirsig (2009). “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values”, p.6, Harper Collins

topic: Truth, Science, Discovery, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance, Questioning Beliefs

Absence of Quality is the essence of squareness.

- Robert M. Pirsig

topic: Essence, Quality, Absence, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance

The ultimate test's always your own serenity. If you don't have this when you start and maintain it while you're working you're likely to build your personal problems right into the machine itself.

- Robert M. Pirsig

topic: Serenity, Machines, Tests, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance, Personal Problems

Talk about rationality can get very confusing unless the things with which rationality deals are also included.

- Robert M. Pirsig

source: "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, 1974.

topic: Confusing, Deals, Rationality, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance

We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world.

- Robert M. Pirsig

topic: Landscape, World, Awareness, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance

Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions.

- Mark Richardson

topic: Peace, Mind, Action, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance, Right Action

An egoless acceptance of stuckness is a key to an understanding of all Quality.

- Robert M. Pirsig

topic: Acceptance, Keys, Understanding, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance

Any philosophic explanation of Quality is going to be both false and true precisely because it is a philosophic explanation. The process of philosophic explanation is an analytic process, a process of breaking something down into subjects and predicates. What I mean (and everybody else means) by the word 'quality' cannot be broken down into subjects and predicates. This is not because Quality is so mysterious but because Quality is so simple, immediate and direct.

- Robert M. Pirsig

source: "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, 1974.

topic: Mean, Simple, Broken, Analytics, Philosophic

If someone's ungrateful and you tell him he's ungrateful, okay, you've called him a name. You haven't solved anything.

- Robert M. Pirsig

topic: Names, Ungrateful, Okay, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance

When you live in the shadow of insanity, the appearance of another mind that thinks and talks as yours does is something close to a blessed event.

- Robert M. Pirsig

topic: Blessed, Thinking, Insanity, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance

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

- Robert M. Pirsig

topic: Perfect, Want, Painting, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance

To speak of certain government and establishment institutions as 'the system' is to speak correctly . . . They are sustained by structural relationships even when they have lost all other meaning and purpose. People arrive at a factory and perform a totally meaningless task from eight to five without question because the structure demands it be that way. There's no villian, no 'mean guy' who wants them to live meaningless lives, it's just that the structure, the system demands it and no one is willing to take on the formidable task of changing the structure just because it is meaningless.

- Robert M. Pirsig

topic: Mean, Eight, Government, Meaningless Life, Mean Guy

…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.

- Robert M. Pirsig

topic: War, Buddhism, Reality, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance, Hinduism And Buddhism

If you have a high evaluation of yourself then your ability to recognize new facts is weakened.

- Robert M. Pirsig

topic: Evaluation, Facts, Ability, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance

For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses.

- Robert M. Pirsig

topic: Science, Infinity, Facts, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance, Scientific Facts