Robert M. Pirsig’s book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was originally published in 1974.
It is a fictionalized autobiography that delves into Pirsig’s idea of Quality.
The book has received widespread recognition and continues to inspire millions of people.
Here are some of the best quotes from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance novel.
Table of Contents
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Quotes
“This forest silence improves anyone.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“We keep passing unseen through little moments of other people’s lives.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
“Motorcycle maintenance gets frustrating. Angering. Infuriating. That’s what makes it interesting.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of the mountain, or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha – which is to demean oneself.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“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.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“Who really can face the future? All you can do is project from the past, even when the past shows that such projections are often wrong. And who really can forget the past? What else is there to know?” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“If someone’s ungrateful and you tell him he’s ungrateful, okay, you’ve called him a name. You haven’t solved anything.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Other Popular Book Quotes: Something Wicked This Way Comes Quotes by Ray Bradbury and Their Eyes Were Watching God Quotes by Zora Neale Hurston
Best Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Quotes
“The real cycle you’re working on is a cycle called yourself.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“Care and Quality are internal and external aspects of the same thing. A person who sees Quality and feels it as he works is a person who cares. A person who cares about what he sees and does is a person who’s bound to have some characteristic of quality.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“To all appearances he was just drifting. In actuality he was just drifting.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“Logic presumes a separation of subject from object; therefore logic is not final wisdom.This is Zen. This is my motorcycle maintenance.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“Familiarity can blind you.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
“Although motorcycle riding is romantic, motorcycle maintenance is purely classic.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“You look at where you’re going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you’ve been and a pattern seems to emerge.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“One thing about pioneers that you don’t hear mentioned is that they are invariably, by their nature, mess-makers.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
“Programs of a political nature are important end products of social quality that can be effective only if the underlying structure of social values is right. The social values are right only if the individual values are right. The place to improve the world is first in one’s heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“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.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“First you get the feeling, then you figure out why.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
“You look at where you’re going and where you are and it never makes much sense, but then you look back at where you’ve been and a pattern seems to emerge. And if you project forward from that pattern, then sometimes you can come up with something.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“If you can’t define something you have no formal rational way of knowing that it exists. Neither can you really tell anyone else what it is. There is, in fact, no formal difference between inability to define and stupidity.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“My favorite cure for boredom is sleep. It’s very easy to get to sleep when bored and very hard to get bored after a long rest.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
Quotes from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
“The way to see what looks good and understand the reasons it looks good, and to be at one with this goodness as the work proceeds, is to cultivate an inner quietness, a peace of mind so that goodness can shine through.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“The pencil is mightier than the pen.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“Some things you miss because they’re so tiny you overlook them. But some things you don’t see because they’re so huge.” ― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
“It’s the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“This condemnation of technology is ingratitude, that’s what it is. Blind alley, though. If someone’s ungrateful and you tell him he’s ungrateful, okay, you’ve called him a name. You haven’t solved anything.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“The truth knocks on the door and you say, “Go away, I’m looking for the truth,” and so it goes away. Puzzling.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“Anxiety, the next gumption trap, is sort of the opposite of ego. You’re so sure you’ll do everything wrong you’re afraid to do anything at all. Often this, rather than “laziness” is the real reason you find it hard to get started.” ~ Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values.
“We’re in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it’s all gone.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“The bones and flesh and legal statistics are the garments worn by the personality, not the other way around.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with the emphasis on “good” rather than on “time”….” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here’s where things grow.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Greatest Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Quotes
“My personal feeling is that this is how any further improvement of the world will be done: by individuals making Quality decisions and that’s all.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
“Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. I think that what I have to say has more lasting value.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“If you get careless or go romanticizing scientific information, giving it a flourish here and there, Nature will soon make a complete fool out of you.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“Absence of Quality is the essence of squareness.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It’s easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog to see the sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes. The dog has certain relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
Thought-Provoking Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Quotes
“I think now the trace of egotism may have been the beginning of all his troubles.” ~ Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
“If your mind is truly, profoundly stuck, then it might be much better off than when it was loaded with ideas.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“When you want to hurry something, that means you no longer care about it and want to get on to other things.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
“When you live in the shadow of insanity, the appearance of another mind that thinks and talks as yours does is something close to a blessed event.” ~ Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values.
“You look at these mountains now, and they look so permanent and peaceful, but they’re changing all the time and the changes aren’t always peaceful. Underneath us, beneath us here right now, there are forces that can tear this whole mountain apart.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“We have artists with no scientific knowledge and scientists with no artistic knowledge and both with no spiritual sense of gravity at all, and the result is not just bad, it is ghastly.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“Sometimes it’s a little better to travel than to arrive.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called a Religion.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“Your common sense is nothing more than the voices of thousands and thousands of these ghosts from the past.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
Famous Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Quotes
“Mental reflection is so much more interesting than TV it’s a shame more people don’t switch over to it.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“People spend their entire lives at those lower altitudes without any awareness that this high country exists.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“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.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
“The more you read, the more you calm down.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“He’d no longer be a grade-motivated person. He’d be a knowledge-motivated person.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
“Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).
“You always suppress momentary anger at something you deeply and permanently hate.” ~ Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
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