“What follows is based on actual occurrences. Although much has been changed for rhetorical purposes, it must be regarded in its essence as fact.”

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

Introduction
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)
Context: What follows is based on actual occurrences. Although much has been changed for rhetorical purposes, it must be regarded in its essence as fact. However, it should in no way be associated with that great body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice. It's not very factual on motorcycles, either.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "What follows is based on actual occurrences. Although much has been changed for rhetorical purposes, it must be regarde…" by Robert M. Pirsig?
Robert M. Pirsig photo
Robert M. Pirsig164
American writer and philosopher 1928–2017

Related quotes

George Boole photo

“The above interpretation has been introduced, not on account of its immediate value in the present system, but as an illustration of a significant fact in the philosophy of the intellectual powers, viz., that what has commonly been regarded as the fundamental axiom of metaphysics is but the consequence of a law of thought, mathematical in its form.”

George Boole (1815–1864) English mathematician, philosopher and logician

Source: 1850s, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854), p. 50

Abdul Sattar Edhi photo

“Whereas the entire meaning of the Quran must easily be interpreted by the lives of Muslims, Islam's followers abandoned its essence.”

Abdul Sattar Edhi (1928–2016) Pakistani philanthropist, social activist, ascetic and humanitarian

as quoted by Tehmina Durrani author of A Mirror to the Blind, a biography of Abdul Sattar Edhi at Balzan Prize ceremony ( November 17, 2000, http://www.balzan.org/en/prizewinners/abdul-sattar-edhi/abdul-sattar-edhi-in-milan-speech-pronounced-by-tehmina-durrani/), retrieved July 21, 2016

“The intellectual … may live for ideas, as I have said, but something must prevent him from living for one idea, from becoming obsessive or grotesque. Although there have been zealots whom we may still regard as intellectuals, zealotry is a defect of the breed and not of the essence.”

Richard Hofstadter (1916–1970) American historian

Source: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1974), p. 29

Detlef Dürr photo

“It is widely believed that in our quantum world physical facts about occurrences in space time must be grounded in the wave function. There are several long recognized and much discussed difficulties with this view.”

Detlef Dürr (1951) German mathematician and physicist

Daniel Bedingham, Detlef Dürr, GianCarlo Ghirardi, Sheldon Goldstein, Roderich Tumulka, Nino Zanghì, "Matter Density and Relativistic Models of Wave Function Collapse", J Stat Phys (2014) 154:623–631

“Prison does strange things to men. Although its purpose is to break the free spirit of a man, in many cases it just adds fuel to the fire that has never been and will never be extinguished.”

William Powell (author) book The Anarchist Cookbook

"Postscript", p. 153.
The Anarchist Cookbook (1971)

Walter Isaacson photo

“The reality distortion field was a confounding mélange of a charismatic rhetorical style, indomitable will, and eagerness to bend any fact to fit the purpose at hand”

Walter Isaacson book Steve Jobs

Source: Steve Jobs

Ernest Hemingway photo

“If the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction. But there is always the chance that such a book of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

Source: A Moveable Feast

Fred Brooks photo

“Even perfect program verification can only establish that a program meets its specification. [… ] Much of the essence of building a program is in fact the debugging of the specification.”

Fred Brooks No Silver Bullet

Page 195.
No Silver Bullet (1986)

Joseph Larmor photo

“The physical properties of fluid media, as regards change of state, and as regards capillary phenomena, have been closely illustrated in theory by consideration of a model medium, subject to internal expansive pressure, of kinetic or other origin, which is counteracted by the contractive effect of mutual attraction between its molecules—the latter force extending through much the greater, though for ordinary purposes still insensible, range. For liquids, the difference between these two much larger quantities, of different types, constitutes the transmitted hydrostatic pressure.”

Joseph Larmor (1857–1942) Irish physicist and mathematician

[The transition from vapour to liquid when the range of the molecular attraction is sensible, Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, 15, 2, 13 January 1916, 182–191, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101044953782;view=1up;seq=242] (p. 182)

Related topics