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"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."
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"Plurality should not be posited without necessity."

"Here at Wisconsin we didn't get an undergraduate course in mathematical logic until the '60s."

"It is always easy to be logical. It is almost impossible to be logical to the bitter end."

"When speculation has done its worst two and two still make four."

"2 + 2 equal 4... so far I don't think it will change to 5 or 6, it's near to fact, but the probability of the ability... equals not a fact!"

"Logic is the art of non-contradictory identification. A contradiction cannot exist. No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the total sum of his knowledge. To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one's thinking, to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one's mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality."

"A narrow hallway is all that separates rational from irrational, creativity from insanity, and intelligence from stupidity."
Explore more quotes by Robert M. Pirsig


"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."


"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?"


"Like those in the valley behind us, most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships."


"Care and Quality are internal and external aspects of the same thing. A person who sees Quality and feels it as he works is a person who cares. A person who cares about what he sees and does is a person who's bound to have some characteristic of quality."


"But until then, and right now, the sun is bright, the air is cool, my head is clear, there's a whole day ahead of us, we're almost to the mountains, it's a good day to be alive. It's this thinner air that does it. You always feel like this when you start getting into higher altitudes."


"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."


"He comments on how amazing it is that everything in the universe can be described by the twenty-six written characters with which they have been working. His (Korean) friends nod and smile and eat the food they've taken from tins and say no pleasantly."


"The bones and flesh and legal statistics are the garments worn by the personality, not the other way around."


"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."


"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."
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