“Any person of any philosophic persuasion who sits on a hot stove will verify without any intellectual argument whatsoever that he is in an undeniably low-quality situation: that the value of his predicament is negative.”

— Robert M. Pirsig , book Lila: An Inquiry into Morals

Lila (1991)
Context: Any person of any philosophic persuasion who sits on a hot stove will verify without any intellectual argument whatsoever that he is in an undeniably low-quality situation: that the value of his predicament is negative. This low quality is not just a vague, woolly-headed, crypto-religious, metaphysical abstraction. It is an experience. It is not a judgment about an experience. It is not a description of experience. The value itself is an experience. As such it is completely predictable. It is verifiable by anyone who cares to do so. It is reproducible.

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Robert M. Pirsig 164

American writer and philosopher 1928–2017

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“When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

An explanation of relativity which he gave to his secretary Helen Dukas to convey to non-scientists and reporters, as quoted in Best Quotes of '54, '55, l56 (1957) by James B. Simpson; also in Expandable Quotable Einstein (2005) edited by Alice Calaprice

William Hermanns recorded a series of four conversations he had with Einstein and published them in his book Einstein and the Poet (1983), quoting Einstein saying this variant in a 1948 conversation: "To simplify the concept of relativity, I always use the following example: if you sit with a girl on a garden bench and the moon is shining, then for you the hour will be a minute. However, if you sit on a hot stove, the minute will be an hour." ( p. 87 http://books.google.com/books?id=QXCyjj6T5ZUC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA87#v=onepage&q&f=false)

In the 1985 book Einstein in America, Jamie Sayen wrote "Einstein devised the following explanation for her [Helen Dukas] to give when asked to explain relativity: An hour sitting with a pretty girl on a park bench passes like a minute, but a minute sitting on a hot stove seems like an hour." ( p. 130 http://books.google.com/books?ei=yma3TsDWK8WciQL63smAAQ&ct=book-thumbnail&id=vs3aAAAAMAAJ&dq=sayen+%22einstein+in+america%22&q=pretty+girl#search_anchor)
Attributed in posthumous publications
Variant: When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.

“If a cat sits on a hot stove, that cat won't sit on a hot stove again. That cat won't sit on a cold stove either. That cat just don't like stoves.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“R. W. K. Paterson makes a central point of identifying Stirner with nihilism. His argument depends on a failure to distinguish between social values, which Stirner does reject, and personal values, to which he is more overtly committed than any other philosopher.”

John Carroll (1944) Australian professor and author

Source: Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974), p. 108, note

“"Yes, but not in the South", with slight adjustments, will do for any argument about any place, if not about any person.”

Stephen Potter (1900–1969) British writer

Some Notes on Lifemanship (1950) p. 43.
This versatile gambit for disconcerting one's opponent in debate is usually said to have been originated by Potter, even though he had himself said in a footnote to Lifemanship that "I am required to state that World Copyright of this phrase is owned by its brilliant inventor, Mr. Pound". On publication of Lifemanship the critic Richard Usborne wrote to Potter protesting that this stratagem had been invented not by the mysterious Mr. Pound but by Usborne himself, in an article called "Not in the South" published in the May 28, 1941 number of Punch magazine, where the phrase was described as "a formula that let me off the boredom of finding out facts and retaining knowledge". Potter replied, "My God, have I got it wrong? I now perceive with horrifying clearness that I have", but he never corrected the attribution in print. The whole story was set out by Usborne in a letter published in Time magazine, January 5, 1970. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,943107-4,00.html

“The new world we are attempting to create must destroy oppression of any type. The value of this new system will be determined by the status of the person who was low man on the totem pole.”

Frances M. Beal (1940) American activist

Source: "Black Women's Manifesto; Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female" (1969)

“Any philosophic explanation of Quality is going to be both false and true precisely because it is a philosophic explanation.”

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

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 20
Context: Any philosophic explanation of Quality is going to be both false and true precisely because it is a philosophic explanation. The process of philosophic explanation is an analytic process, a process of breaking something down into subjects and predicates. What I mean (and everybody else means) by the word ‘quality’ cannot be broken down into subjects and predicates. This is not because Quality is so mysterious but because Quality is so simple, immediate and direct.