Robert M. Pirsig: Quality

Robert M. Pirsig was American writer and philosopher. Explore interesting quotes on quality.

Robert M. Pirsig: 328 quotes3 likes

“You have all these fragments, like pieces of a puzzle, and you can place them together into large groups, but the groups don't go together no matter how you try, and then suddenly you get one fragment and it fits two different groups and then suddenly the two great groups are one. The relation of the mythos to insanity. That's a key fragment. I doubt whether anyone ever said that before. Insanity is the terra incognita surrounding the mythos. And he knew! He knew the Quality he talked about lay outside the mythos.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 28

“Art is anything you can do well. Anything you can do with Quality.”

Robert M. Pirsig

NPR Interview http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4612364 with Pirsig (1974)

“The Quality, the aretê he has fought so hard for, has sacrificed for, has never betrayed, but in all that time has never once understood, now makes itself clear to him and his soul is at rest.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 30

“To an experienced Zen Buddhist, asking if one believes in Zen or one believes in the Buddha, sounds a little ludicrous, like asking if one believes in air or water. Similarly Quality is not something you believe in, Quality is something you experience.”

Robert M. Pirsig

This appears in what could be either a paraphrase, a quote, or a re-translation of Pirsig in My Mercedes Is Not for Sale : From Amsterdam to Ouagadougou : An Auto-misadventure Across the Sahara (2006) by Jeroen van Bergeijk, in a 2008 translation books.google http://books.google.de/books?id=pIOcbS2Pl8kC&pg=PA26; Dutch original: books.google http://books.google.de/books?id=4zIzAgAAQBAJ&q=geoefende. <br class="br">Disputed

“The mythos. The mythos is insane. That's what he believed. The mythos that says the forms of this world are real but the Quality of this world is unreal, that is insane!”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 28