Quotes from 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, quote from 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, quote from 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. 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.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, quote from 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, quote from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

“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, quote from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

“Sometimes it's a little better to travel than to arrive”
― Robert M. Pirsig, quote from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

“Is it hard?'
Not if you have the right attitudes. Its having the right attitudes thats hard.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, quote from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

“In a car you're always in a compartment, and because you're used to it you don't realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You're a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.

On a cycle the frame is gone. You're completely in contact with it all. You're in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, quote from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

“For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses. ”
― Robert M. Pirsig, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

“But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There’s so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, quote from 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, quote from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

“The law of gravity and gravity itself did not exist before Isaac Newton." ...and what that means is that that law of gravity exists nowhere except in people's heads! It 's a ghost!"
Mind has no matter or energy but they can't escape its predominance over everything they do. Logic exists in the mind. numbers exist only in the mind. I don't get upset when scientists say that ghosts exist in the mind. it's that only that gets me. science is only in your mind too, it's just that that doesn't make it bad. or ghosts either."
Laws of nature are human inventions, like ghosts. Law of logic, of mathematics are also human inventions, like ghosts."
...we see what we see because these ghosts show it to us, ghosts of Moses and Christ and the Buddha, and Plato, and Descartes, and Rousseau and Jefferson and Lincoln, on and on and on. Isaac Newton is a very good ghost. One of the best. Your common sense is nothing more than the voices of thousands and thousands of these ghosts from the past.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

“It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, quote from 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, quote from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

“The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, quote from 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, quote from 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 M. Pirsig, quote from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

“To the untrained eye ego-climbing and selfless climbing may appear identical. Both kinds of climbers place one foot in front of the other. Both breathe in and out at the same rate. Both stop when tired. Both go forward when rested. But what a difference! The ego-climber is like an instrument that’s out of adjustment. He puts his foot down an instant too soon or too late. He’s likely to miss a beautiful passage of sunlight through the trees. He goes on when the sloppiness of his step shows he’s tired. He rests at odd times. He looks up the trail trying to see what’s ahead even when he knows what’s ahead because he just looked a second before. He goes too fast or too slow for the conditions and when he talks his talk is forever about somewhere else, something else. He’s here but he’s not here. He rejects the here, he’s unhappy with it, wants to be farther up the trail but when he gets there will be just as unhappy because then *it* will be “here”. What he’s looking for, what he wants, is all around him, but he doesn’t want that because it *is* all around him. Every step’s an effort, both physically and spiritually, because he imagines his goal to be external and distant.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, quote from 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, quote from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

“I argued that physical discomfort is important only when the mood is wrong. Then you fasten on to whatever thing is uncomfortable and call that the cause. But if the mood is right, then physical discomfort doesn't mean much.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, quote from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

“(What makes his world so hard to see clearly is not its strangeness but its usualness).Familiarity can blind you too.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, quote from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

“And what is good, Phaedrus,
And what is not good—
Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?”
― Robert M. Pirsig, quote from 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, quote from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

“The pencil is mightier than the pen.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, quote from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

About the author

Popular quotes

“Lucas crept around the building to the back parking lot. And there it was, just like he had seen from the roof—a baby lying in a shopping cart. Lucas’s mind went negative. What if the kid was dead? He tried to think if he had ever seen a dead person before. He’d never been to a funeral, and he knew he had never seen a dead baby. And he definitely didn’t want to.
His heart pounded in his chest.
Lucas walked, almost tiptoed, toward the shopping cart. The last of the parking lot lights flickered out, leav-ing only the early morning sun. He moved across the blacktop, making sure not to step on a white line. At this moment he needed all the luck he could muster. As he got closer to the cart, he held his breath and swallowed. Then he grabbed the shopping cart handle and looked over into the basket.
He gasped.”
― Paul Aertker, quote from Brainwashed

“The line between him and the enemy had simultaneously blurred and solidified. Somehow, while perhaps it shouldn't have, this thought provided a strange sense of peace.”
― Kristina McMorris, quote from Every Time We Say Goodbye

“Without love, there can be no true marriage; with love, there can be nothing else.”
― David Weber, quote from Flag in Exile

“People can change... no matter where they come from, no matter where they think they ought to go, people can make their own way.”
― Rochelle Maya Callen, quote from Ashes and Ice

“I have never before considered the feelings of a cow. I suppose they must not care for us at all.’ ‘They are only dumb beasts,’ Laurence said, ‘and such thought surely beyond them. Any animal will defend its life and young, but that is not the same as being a thinking, reasoning creature.’ ‘Only, how could one be certain?’ Temeraire said. ‘After all, if one wishes to be particularly dull, one might be like that fellow Salcombe, and say that dragons are also dumb beasts. And I am quite sure the bunyips are not, though they do not seem to talk at all: they are only nasty thinking creatures. It is not very fair, though, that I should allow them to have sense because they will contrive one unpleasantness after another; what if cows are very clever, only they do not like to make a fuss about it?’ ‘If they dislike fuss enough to tolerate being eaten,’ Laurence said, with rather an amused expression, ‘surely it need not matter one way or another.’ ‘Perhaps they think they will be eaten anyway, as they are so delicious,”
― Naomi Novik, quote from Tongues of Serpents

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.