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"32 Robert M. Pirsig Quotes & Sayings

      American     /     View profile
Born: 6 September 1928. Died: 24 April 2017 | Philosopher | Writer |

If you stare at a wall from four in the morning till nine at night, and you do that for a week, you are getting pretty close to nothingness.

Close Four Getting Morning
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Boredom always precedes a period of great creativity.

Always Boredom Creativity Great
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If you run from technology, it will chase you.

Chase Run Technology Will
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People are all at sixes and sevens with each other. They're always quarreling. They never somehow resolve anything.

Always Anything Each Never
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There's no such thing as morality.

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

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

Individual Lntegrity Need Old-Fashioned
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The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.

First Hands Heat Heart
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It's the dualistic ways of looking at things that produces the evil.

Evil Looking Produces Things
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Quality is the Buddha.

Buddha Quality
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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?

Billions Carbon Chemistry Compounds
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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.

Buddha Comfortably Computer Cycle
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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.'

After Book Could First
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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.

Am Deep Deep Down Down
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For me, a writer should be more like a lighthouse keeper, just out there by himself. He shouldn't get his ideas from other people all around him.

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

About Being Celebrity Funny
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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.

Away Door Go Go Away
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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.

About Always Because Good Knows
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The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.

Bring Find Mountains Only
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I really don't mind dying because I figure I haven't wasted this life.

Because Dying Figure Life
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I have money, fame, a happy wife, our daughter Nell.

Daughter Fame Happy Money
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When somebody goes outside the cultural norms, the culture has to protect itself.

Cultural Culture Goes Itself
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We keep passing unseen through little moments of other people's lives.

Keep Little Lives Moments
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One geometry cannot be more true than another; it can only be more convenient. Geometry is not true, it is advantageous.

Another Cannot Convenient Geometry
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To live for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top.
Future Goal Life Live
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Even in the presence of others he was completely alone.

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

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

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

After Arrived Know Only
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Metaphysics is a restaurant where they give you a thirty thousand page menu, and no food.

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

Future Goal Life Live
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Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual abstractions.

Abstraction Direct Direct Experience Experience
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Robert M. Pirsig Quotes & Sayings