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"The title of this Chautauqua is 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,' not 'Zen and the Art of Mountain Climbing,' and there are no motorcycles on the tops of mountains, and in my opinion very little Zen. Zen is the 'spirit of the valley,' not the mountaintop. The only Zen you fin on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there."
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"Every aspect of your life will be enlivened when you start to think and communicate with your heart and mind in cohesive coordinated harmony."
"Think about yourself because no one has time to think about you. Everyone is busy thinking about themselves."
"I don't claim to know everything, Wally. I only claim that everything can eventually be known."
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Explore more quotes by Robert M. Pirsig
"Not everyone understands what a completely rational process this is, this maintenance of a motorcycle. They think it's some kind of 'knack' or some kind of 'affinity for machines' in operation. They are right, but the knack is almost purely a process of reason, and most of the troubles are caused by what old time radio men called a 'short between the earphones,' failures to use the head properly. 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."
"This larger goal wouldn't be the imitation of education in Universities today, glossed over and concealed by grades and degrees that give the appearance of something happening when, in fact, almost nothing is going on. It would be the real thing."
"I don't know why-it's just that-I don't know-they're not kin.'-Surprising word, I think to myself never used it before. Not of kin-sounds like hillbilly talk-not of a kind-same root-kindness, too-they can't have real kindness toward him, they're not his kin -- . That's exactly the feeling. Old word, so ancient it's almost drowned out. What a change through the centuries. Now anybody can be 'kind.' And everybody's supposed to be. Except that long ago it was something you were born into and couldn't help. Now it's just a faked-up attitude half the time, like teachers the first day of class. But what do they really know about kindness who are not kin."
"She was strangely unaware that she could look and see freshly for herself, as she wrote, without primary regard for what had been said before."
"But the biggest clue seemed to be their expressions. They were hard to explain. Good-natured, friendly, easygoing...and uninvolved. They were like spectators. You had the feeling they had just wandered in there themselves and somebody had handed them a wrench. There was no identification with the job. No saying, 'I am a mechanic.' At 5 P.M. or whenever their eight hours were in, you knew they would cut it off and not have another thought about their work. They were already trying not to have any thoughts about their work on the job."
"What he's looking for, what he wants, is all around him, but he doesn't want that because it is all around him. Every step's an effort, both physically and spiritually, because he imagines his goal to be external and distant."
"Can I have a motorcycle when I get old enough?'If you take care of it.'What do you have to do?'Lot's of things. You've been watching me.'Will you show me all of them?'Sure.'Is it hard?'Not if you have the right attitudes. It's having the right attitudes that's hard.'Oh.'After a while I see he is sitting down again. Then he says, 'Dad?'What?'Will I have the right attitudes?'I think so,' I say. 'I don't think that will be any problem at all."
"People spend their entire lives at those lower altitudes without any awareness that this high country exists."
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