Robert M. Pirsig Quotes

I think everybody's crazy, and if I'm the one being a little direct about it, that's fine by me.

Sanity is only that which is within the frame of reference of conventional thought.

A man is sane only to the extent that he subscribes to a previously-agreed construction of reality.

We believe in a society in delusion, and if you're awake and not deluded people tell you you're mad. That's why I'm a freak and they're not. But I'm actually not.

Sanity - a trick of agreement

A man might pass for insane who should see things as they are.

There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.

Well, sanity, I suppose, is getting people to see the world your way.

The 'what should be' never did exist, but people keep trying to live up to it. There is no 'what should be,' there is only what is.

Of course I'm crazy, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong

There are two kinds of truth. There are real truths and there are made up truths.

I always felt like reality was a bizarre place, and everybody was really good at being normal, and I didn't know how to do it.

It's important you don't lose touch with reality because, well, reality's the only thing you've got, really.

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.

Insanity is a very high art form. If everyone was insane, I wouldn't be here!

I'm not crazy in my head. Maybe in everybody else's.

If the way I see the world is mad, then fantastic.

Perception and reality are two different things.

Much Madness is Divinest Sense, to a Discerning Eye.

Our truth of nowadays is not what is, but what others can be convinced of; just as we call "money" not only that which is legal, but also any counterfeit that will pass.

I have toyed with the idea of playing it straight. But, like I say, I really believe we are all out of our minds at some level.

There is no way you can use the word “reality” without quotation marks around it.

Sometimes I aint so sho who's got ere a right to say when a man is crazy and when he aint. Sometimes I think it aint none of us pure crazy and aint none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way. It's like it aint so much what a fellow does, but it's the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it.

He wrote on a piece of paper with his pencil. Psychosis: out of touch with reality. Since then, I have been trying to find out what reality is, so that I can touch it.

Don’t worry if they say you’re crazy. They said that about me and yet I was saner than all of them. I knew. No matter. You know. Insane or sane, you know. It’s a good thing to know - no matter what they call it.