Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

"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."

"There is a perennial classical question that asks which part of the motorcycle, which grain of sand in which pile, is the Buddha. Obviously to ask that question is to look in the wrong direction, for the Buddha is everywhere. But just as obviously to ask the question is to look in the right direction, for the Buddha is everwhere."

"You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt."

"We have artists with no scientific knowledge and scientists with noartistic knowledge and both with no spiritual sense of gravity at all,and the result is not just bad, it is ghastly."

"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 a Religion."

"For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses."

"…the doctrinal differences between Hinduism and Buddhism and Taoism are not anywhere near as important as doctrinal differences among Christianity and Islam and Judaism. Holy wars are not fought over them because verbalized statements about reality are never presumed to be reality itself."

"To all appearances he was just drifting. In actuality he was just drifting."

"The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there."

"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."

"When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called a Religion."

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