Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values Quotes
"The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself."
"The truth knocks on the door and you say, 'Go away, I'm looking for the truth,' and so it goes away."
"The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands."
"Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions."
"It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top."
"The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there."
"To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top."
"The test of the machine is the satisfaction it gives you. There isn't any other test."
"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."
"The solution to the problem of technology is not to use less technology but to develop technology that is better."
"A person is sitting somewhere, minding his own business, and suddenly...flash!...he understands something he didn't understand before."
"The supreme task --is to arrive at those universal elementary laws from which the cosmos can be built up by pure deduction."
"There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them."
"The state of mind which enables a man to do work of this kind is akin to that of the religious worshipper or lover."
"The daily effort comes from no deliberate intention or program, but straight from the heart."
"Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and intelligible picture of the world."
"He then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experience, and thus to overcome it."
"He makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life in order to find in this way the peace and serenity which he cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience."
"Nobody who has really gone into the matter will deny that in practice the world of phenomena uniquely determines the theoretical system, in spite of the fact that there is no theoretical bridge between phenomena and their theoretical principles."
"In the temple of science are many mansions --and various indeed are they that dwell therein and the motives that have led them there."
"The act of formally writing everything down precisely and clearly seemed to suggest them."
"The number of rational hypotheses that can explain any given phenomenon is infinite."
"If the purpose of scientific method is to select from among a multitude of hypotheses, and if the number of hypotheses grows faster than experimental method can handle, then it is clear that all hypotheses can never be tested."
"Did Einstein really mean to state that truth was a function of time?"
"The more you look, the more you see. Instead of selecting one truth from a multitude, you are increasing the multitude."
"The purpose of scientific method is to select a single truth from among many hypothetical truths."
"The cause of our current social crises is a genetic defect within the nature of reason itself."
"The real University is nothing less than the continuing body of reason itself."
"A true minister, in such situations, must act as though he'd never heard the threats. His primary goal isn't to serve the community ahead of everything else. His primary goal is to serve, through reason, the goal of truth."
"You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in."
"The real University, he said, has no specific location. It owns no property, pays no salaries and receives no material dues. The real University is a state of mind."
"You can't really tell whether a set of instructions is all right until you check it against the device or procedure it describes."
"Peace of mind isn't at all superficial, really; it's the whole thing."
"The material object of observation, the bicycle or rotisserie, can't be right or wrong."
"If the machine produces tranquility it's right. If it disturbs you it's wrong until either the machine or your mind is changed."
"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."
"The act of pronouncing it wrong's a form of caring."
"Technology presumes there's just one right way to do things and there never is."
"What's really angering about instructions of this sort is that they imply there's only one way to put this rotisserie together...their way."
"The ultimate test's always your own serenity. If you don't have this when you start and maintain it while you're working you're likely to build your personal problems right into the machine itself."
"Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire."
"Quality is the continuing stimulus which our environment puts upon us to create the world in which we live."
"The Quality event is the cause of the subjects and objects, which are then mistakenly presumed to be the cause of the Quality!"
"Geometry can not be more true than another; it can only be more convenient."
"Our concepts of space and time are also definitions, selected on the basis of their convenience in handling the facts."
"The axioms of geometry, in other words, are merely disguised definitions."
"Quality is neither a part of mind, nor is it a part of matter. It is a third entity which is independent of the two."
"The easiest intellectual analogue of pure Quality that people in our environment can understand is that `Quality is the response of an organism to its environment'."
"Reality is always the moment of vision before the intellectualization takes place. There is no other reality."
"The scientist does not choose at random the facts he observes. He seeks to condense much experience and much thought into a slender volume."
"Ideas arose in crowds. He felt them collide until pairs interlocked, so to speak, making a stable combination."
"The true work of the inventor consists in choosing among these combinations so as to eliminate the useless ones."
"Mathematical solutions are selected by the subliminal self on the basis of 'mathematical beauty,' of the harmony of numbers and forms, of geometric elegance."
"The quest of this special classic beauty, the sense of harmony of the cosmos, which makes us choose the facts most fitting to contribute to this harmony."
"It's almost impossible to state them precisely; they must be felt rather than formulated."
"This harmony, this beauty, that is at the center of it all."
"What guarantees the objectivity of the world in which we live is that this world is common to us with other thinking beings."
"The fear of stuckness is needless because the longer you stay stuck the more you see the Quality...reality that gets you unstuck every time."
"The past cannot remember the past. The future can't generate the future."
"The real train of knowledge isn't a static entity that can be stopped and subdivided. It's always going somewhere. On a track called Quality."
"Quality, or its absence, doesn't reside in either the subject or the object."
"The real ugliness is not the result of any objects of technology."
"The real ugliness lies in the relationship between the people who produce the technology and the things they produce."
"If you have a high evaluation of yourself then your ability to recognize new facts is weakened."
"Gumption is the psychic gasoline that keeps the whole thing going."
"Peace of mind is a prerequisite for a perception of that Quality which is beyond romantic Quality and classic Quality."
"When you first see that you have to go back and take it apart all over again it's definitely time for that long break."
"The best way to break this cycle, I think, is to work out your anxieties on paper."
"You can reduce your anxiety somewhat by facing the fact that there isn't a mechanic alive who doesn't louse up a job once in a while."
"Boredom is the next gumption trap that comes to mind."
"When you're bored, stop! Go to a show. Turn on the TV. Call it a day."
"Impatience is close to boredom but always results from one cause: an underestimation of the amount of time the job will take."
"We're pulling into Dayville and my rear end feels like it's turned to concrete."
"Zen has something to say about boredom. Its main practice of `just sitting' has got to be the world's most boring activity."
"The dualistic mind tends to think of mu occurrences in nature as a kind of contextual cheating, or irrelevance, but mu is found throughout all scientific investigation, and nature doesn't cheat, and nature's answers are never irrelevant."
"Something about the car drivers too. They look just like the gasoline attendant, staring straight ahead in some private trance of their own."
"The mythos is a building of analogues upon analogues upon analogues."
"Technology is blamed for a lot of this loneliness, since the loneliness is certainly associated with the newer technological devices."
"There's a place for [big programs] but they've got to be built on a foundation of Quality within the individuals involved."
"Aristotle fouled up what Phædrus wanted to say by placing rhetoric in an outrageously minor category in his hierarchic order of things."