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Quotes from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance — Robert M. Pirsig

1928–2017 United States

← All quotes by Robert M. Pirsig

91 quotes

Although motorcycle riding is romantic, motorcycle maintenance is purely classic.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)

Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)

It is the little, pathetic attempts at Quality that kill.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)

No one sees it yet, but they will soon enough.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)

Phædrus knows the Professor of Philosophy now. But the Professor of Philosophy doesn't know Phædrus.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)

Zen is the "spirit of the valley." The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)

These shapes are all out of someone's mind. That's important to see.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)

Poor rhetoric, once "learning" itself, now becomes reduced to the teaching of mannerisms and forms, Aristotelian forms, for writing, as if these mattered.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)

Those first teachers of the Western world were teaching Quality, and the medium they had chosen was that of rhetoric.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)

The Good was not a form of reality. It was reality itself, ever changing, ultimately unknowable in any kind of fixed, rigid way.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)

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.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)

I am Phædrus, that is who I am, and they are going to destroy me for speaking the Truth.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)

Plato is the essential Buddha-seeker who appears again and again in each generation, moving onward and upward toward the "one." Aristotle is the eternal motorcycle mechanic who prefers the "many."

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)

He doesn't understand from where the shot has come. He has never confronted a living Sophist. Only dead ones.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)

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

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)

He strives after that which we translate 'virtue' but is in Greek aretê, 'excellence' …

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)

To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)

The mythos is a building of analogues upon analogues upon analogues. These fill the collective consciousness of all communicating mankind. Every last bit of it.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)

Socrates is not just expounding noble ideas in a vacuum. He is in the middle of a war between those who think truth is absolute and those who think truth is relative. He is fighting that war with everything he has.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)

Quality is the continuing stimulus which our environment puts upon us to create the world in which we live. All of it. Every last bit of it.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Robert M. Pirsig (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.