Robert M. Pirsig Quotes

We do not consider patriotism desirable if it contradicts civilized behavior.

This country will never sacrifice humanity in order to carry out any policy.

If we are not anti-China, are we still human?

Better that the nation grow poor for a cause we can honor, than grow rich for an end that is unknown.

Life without prejudice, were it ever to be tried, would soon reveal itself to be a life without principle.

No nation has the right to bring about a revolution, even though such a change may be most urgently needed, if the price is the blood of one single innocent individual.

It is better to have a war for justice than peace in injustice.

The alternative position to whether torture is acceptable - that's not an alternative position, that's barbarism. The question here is not whether torture is acceptable or whether it works. It should be simply seen as a war crime. There's no other position on torture.

So far as he is able, a prince should stick to the path of good but, if the necessity arises, he should know how to follow evil.

There are issues of war and peace. And then, there are issues of life and death like this one that are no less morally compelling than war itself.

Let them revere nothing but religion, morality and liberty.

Does the commandment 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' mean nothing to us? Are we to interpret it as meaning 'Thou shalt not kill except on the grand scale,' or 'Thou shalt not kill except when the national leaders say to do so'?

There are some things to die for but none to kill for.

Leo Tolstoy ... defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers.

We ought to be respecting the principle of equality.

Beyond all our actions stands the larger shadow: How are we to choose between what we have been taught to think right and something else which manifestly succeeds?

War is not to be waged in the name of God.

Respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality.

Fantasy is a literature particularly useful for embodying and examining the real difference between good and evil. In an America where our reality may seem degraded to posturing patriotism and self-righteous brutality, imaginative literature continues to question what heroism is, to examine the roots of power, and to offer moral alternatives. Imagination is the instrument of ethics. There are many metaphors besides battle, many choices besides war, and most ways of doing good do not, in fact, involve killing anybody. Fanstasy is good at thinking about those other ways.

The definition of morality: Morality is the idiosyncrasy of decadents having the hidden desire to revenge themselves upon life - and being successful.

If possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not entitle one human to use another for his or her own ends, how can it entitle humans to exploit non-humans?

Let not your zeal to share your principles entice you beyond your borders.

If you want to know where you would have stood on slavery before the Civil War, don’t look at where you stand on slavery today. Look at where you stand on animal rights.

The same principle that forbids me to lie does not allow me to tell the truth.