Favorite quotes from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values – Robert M. Pirsig

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“We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with emphasis on “good” rather than “time” and when you make that shift in emphasis the whole approach changes.”

“The truth knocks on the door and you say, ‘Go away, I’m looking for the truth,’ and so it goes away. ”

“Sometimes it’s a little better to travel than to arrive”

“In the high country of the mind one has to become adjusted to the thinner air of uncertainty, and to the enormous magnitude of questions asked, and to the answers proposed to these questions….one hesitates even to go near for fear of getting lost in them and never finding one’s way out…. (From above) The sweep goes on and on and on so obviously much further than the mind can grasp.”

“You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow”

“To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top.”

“For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses.”

“The past cannot remember the past. The future can’t generate the future. The cutting edge of this instant right here and now is always nothing less than the totality of everything there is.” [The ancient greeks] saw the future as something that came upon them from behind their backs with the past receding away before their eyes.”

“The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.”

“‘Man is the measure of all things.’ Yes….The Quality which creates the world emerges as a relationship between man and his experience. He is a participant in the creation of all things.”

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Greg Chaney

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By Greg Chaney

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