top of page
.png){kind=small}
"If I hold my head to the left and look down at the handle grips and front wheel and map carrier and gas tank I get one pattern of sense data. If I move my head to the right I get another slightly different pattern of sense data. The two views are different. The angles of the planes and curves of the metal are different. The sunlight strikes them differently. If there's no logical basis for substance then there's no logical basis for concluding that what's produced these two views is the same motorcycle."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Perception quotes
"Materialistic perception of life makes us spiritually shortsighted."
"Beauty is only there when you have the ability to see and appreciate it."
"Close your eyes to see the world with your imaginative mind."
"Light wears out the eyes but does not wear out the soul."
"What other people think is important to them. What you think has great importance to you."
"Maya (deceit) means that one cannot see the nature of things as they are but sees them in a different form."
"We each project to others a reflection of the world which includes our choices of perception."
"If your life is founded on what you can see then your success will be insignificant and very brief."
"We do not actually know other nations, we only know our judgements."
"The essential Not-self could be perceived very clearly in things and in livingcreatures on the hither side of good and evil. In human beings it was visible only when they were inrepose, their minds untroubled, their bodies motionless."
Explore more quotes by Robert M. Pirsig
"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."
"I wake up wondering if I know we're near mountains because of memory or because of something in the air."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Once they got into the idea of seeing directly for themselves they also saw there was no limit to the amount they could say. It was a confidence building assignment too, because what they wrote, even though seemingly trivial, was nevertheless their own thing, not a mimicking of someone else's."
"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."
"To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top."
"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."
bottom of page