Robert M. Pirsig Quotes

The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth.

Ambiguity is something that I really respond to. I like the complexity of it.

All records are riddles, and whatever you may want people to think it's about, it may just be throwing them off. And you don't want it to get in the way of what someone else's understanding is. It's not really about anything. At the same time, it will find some meaning.

In many cases it is a matter for decision and not a simple matter of fact whether x understands y; and so on.

There are always two or three or four sides to every story.

We like love - we love love - but perhaps its only meaning lies in its ubiquitous meaninglessness. We apprehend it, we feel it, and we think we know it, yet we cannot say what we mean by it.

It's always hard to put your finger on what it is that makes Primus Primus.

We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.

Mark Twain cannot be defined.

Actions are always more complex and nuanced than they seem. We have to be willing to wrestle with paradox in pursuing understanding.

Life is weird and complex but very simple at the same time. It's all about perception.

I understand and I don't understand human beings.

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.

I begin to see an object when I cease to understand it.

Understanding is but the sum of misunderstandings.

Life is like that. We don't know anything. We call something bad; we call it good. But really we just don't know.

It's impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because of what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out, there are too many parts, sides, crosscurrents, nuances; too many gestures, which could mean this or that, too many shapes which can never be fully described, too many flavors, in the air or on the tongue, half-colors, too many.

The more I see, the less I know.

What is simple is wrong, and what is complicated cannot be understood.

Quid est ergo tempus? Si nemo ex me quaerat, scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio. What, then, is time? I know well enough what it is, provided that nobodyasksme; but if Iamasked what it is and try to explain, I am baffled.

Everything is true and not true about everything. That’s one thing I’ve learned.

We cannot understand. The best is perhaps what we understand least.

Mankind is a science that defies definitions.

The enchanting, and sometimes terrifying, thing is that the world can be so many things to so many different souls. That it can be, and is, all these things at once and the same time.

For me, truth cracks open in the places where things do not cohere. That's how life is.