Robert M. Pirsig

It is a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, ‘Go away, I’m looking for the truth.’ and so it goes away. Puzzling.

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

When one person suffers from a delusion It is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion It is called Religion.

The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.

My way of joking is to tell the truth. It is the funniest joke in the world.

There’s no limit to the things you can do.

Ageing’s alright, better than the alternative, which is not being here.

Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value.

Things that seemed simple and superfluous had some meaning, maybe it wasn’t a great meaning, it didn’t shake the world…

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.

Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.

If you go into a union, they have got you, but what have you got?

Don’t ever confuse the two, your life and your work. The second is only part of the first.

We do not know who we are until we see what we can do.

Would you believe me if I said you were three shades short of all my favorite hues and that I’ve been trying for years to pick words from my garden throat in attempts to explain to you all the things I can’t explain. Or what if I said I have nothing to say other than I love you in the simplest of ways.

Better contraceptives will control population only if people will use them. A nuclear holocaust can be prevented only if the conditions under which nations make war can be changed. The environment will continue to deteriorate until pollution practices are abandoned. We need to make vast changes in human behavior.

If you foul up, tell the President and correct it fast. Delay only compounds mistakes.

You gotta have a dream. If you don’t have a dream, how you gonna make a dream come true?

Nothing is more difficult, in my opinion, than to avoid something that fundamentally attracts you.