Robert M. Pirsig Quotes about Quality

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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

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

Quality, Who Cares, Doe

Art is anything you can do well. Anything you can do with quality.

Robert M. Pirsig

Art, Quality, Wells

NPR Interview, 1974.

Even though quality cannot be defined, you know what quality is.

Robert M. Pirsig

Quality, Knows, Defined

"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, April 1, 1974.

Man is not the source of all things, as the subjective idealists would say. Nor is he the passive observer of all things, as the objective idealists would say. The Quality which creates the world emerges as a relationship between man and his experience. He is a participant in the creation of all things. The measure of all things.

Robert M. Pirsig

Men, Unity, Quality

"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, Ch. 29, 1974.

Absence of Quality is the essence of squareness.

Robert M. Pirsig

Essence, Quality, Absence

Quality... you know what it is, yet you don't know what it is.

Robert M. Pirsig

Understanding, Quality, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance

The birth of a new fact is always a wonderful thing to experience. It's dualistically called a "discovery" because of the presumption that it has an existence independent of anyone's awareness of it. When it comes along, it always has, at first, a low value. Then, depending on the value-looseness of the observer and the potential quality of the fact, its value increases, either slowly or rapidly, or the value wanes and the fact disappears.

Robert M. Pirsig

Independent, Discovery, Quality

Within a Metaphysics of Quality, science is a set of static intellectual patterns describing this reality, but the patterns are not the reality they describe.

Robert M. Pirsig

Reality, Intellectual, Quality

Robert M. Pirsig (1991). “LILA An Inquriry into Morals”

Quality tends to fan out like waves.

Robert M. Pirsig

Quality, Fans, Wave

"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, 1974.

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.

Robert M. Pirsig

Religious, Intellectual, Quality

"Lila : An Inquiry Into Morals". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, 1991.

The sun of quality does not revolve around the subjects and objects of our existence. It does not just passively illuminate them. It is not subordinate to them in any way. It has CREATED them. They are subordinate to IT.

Robert M. Pirsig

Quality, Doe, Way

What the Metaphysics of Quality would do is take this separate category, Quality, and show how it contains within itself both subjects and objects. The Metaphysics of Quality would show how things become enormously more coherent-fabulously more coherent-when you start with an assumption that Quality is the primary empirical reality of the world. . . . . . . but showing that, of course, was a very big job. . . .

Robert M. Pirsig

Jobs, Reality, Quality

Robert M. Pirsig (1991). “LILA An Inquriry into Morals”

Now, to take that which has caused us to create the world, and include it within the world we have created, is clearly impossible. This is why Quality cannot be defined. If we do define it, we are defining something less than Quality itself.

Robert M. Pirsig

Quality, World, Defining

"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, 1974.