Robert M. Pirsig Quotes

A man's at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with. He can know his heart, but he dont want to. Rightly so. Best not to look in there. It aint the heart of a creature that is bound in the way that God has set for it. You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it.

The danger always exists that our technology will serve as a buffer between us and nature, a block between us and the deeper dimensions of our own experience.

“I thought we were in a church basement, but we are literally in the heart of Jesus.” “Someone should tell Jesus,” I said. “I mean, it's gotta be dangerous, storing children with cancer in your heart.” “I would tell Him myself.” Augustus said, “but unfortunately I am literally stuck inside of His heart, so He won't be able to hear me.”

There is an evil tendency underlying all our technology - the tendency to do what is reasonable even when it isn't any good.

If you want to love, take the time to listen to your heart. In most ancient and wise cultures it is a regular practice for people to talk to their heart. There are rituals, stories, and meditative skills in every spiritual tradition that awaken the voice of the heart. To live wisely, this practice is essential, because our heart is the source of our connection to and intimacy with all of life. And life is love. This mysterious quality of love is all around us, as real as gravity... Yet how often we forget about love.

Introducing a technology is not a neutral act--it is profoundly revolutionary. If you present a new technology to the world you are effectively legislating a change in the way we all live. You are changing society, not some vague democratic process. The individuals who are driven to use that technology by the disparities of wealth and power it creates do not have a real choice in the matter. So the idea that we are giving people more freedom by developing technologies and then simply making them available is a dangerous illusion.

I can't say I know how to change the society, but I share the feeling that this society is full of technology which depersonalizes people, which seems to drain a sense of reality from our lives. It's full of a lot of other things too.

I cannot for the life of me understand why the American market keeps going up. Our economy has some real challenges. The infrastructure's falling apart. We're destroying jobs with technology. We are keeping the best and the brightest from around the world from coming to America to create new jobs and create new businesses. All of those things would give you pause to worry about the future.

But prosperity without a soul is like a corpse whose heart has stopped beating. There is no life, only consumption.

Images are made palpable, ironed flat by technology and, in turn, dictate the seemingly real through the representative.

We often use technology to save time, but increasingly, it either takes the saved time along with it, or makes the saved time less present, intimate and rich. I worry that the closer the world gets to our fingertips, the further it gets from our hearts.

The reason why all of us naturally began to live in France is because France has scientific methods, machines and electricity, but does not really believe that these things have anything to do with the real business of living.

Sometimes its necessary to embrace the magic, to find out what's real in life, and in one's own heart.

It's almost is like God, in our case, gave us a shot of anesthesia, you know, to your body and to your heart in a way, that you can survive. That you're - there's enough of a numbness, you're very much alive and very aware of eternity, I mean, Heaven and the real world there. I talk a lot about how Heaven's never been more clear to me. I've never been more sure that we are made for eternity.

The idea of implanting memories where by the implantee couldn't tell the difference between a real experience and a fantasy experience was really cool. And his ideas of technology - do we control technology or does technology begin to control us? His work hasn't aged a day it seems.

The only real blind person at Christmas time is he who has not Christmas in his heart.

With the new technology that keeps entering the media, film composers are constantly being placed in new learning situations. Acknowledging this and realizing that one must keep up, I maintain, nonetheless, that the real creative power is in the mind and heart of the composer.

Each of us in our own way can try to spread compassion into people's hearts. Western civilizations these days place great importance on filling the human brain with knowledge, but no one seems to care about filling the human heart with compassion. This is what the real role of religion is.

Real Life - the real life of joy we are meant to be living - begins when we restore a sense of reverence to our daily affairs. Today, search for the Sacred in the ordinary with gratitude in your heart and you will surely find it.

Real faith invariably produces holiness of heart and righteousness of life.

I think that we have to be very careful and get back into the loop, get back to nature. Get back to God and not let the technology send us somewhere that we're going to regret.

Cold hearts don't bleed. Still they pray for eternity, never seeing tomorrow.

To find this greater truth about God, Spirit, and the sacred, we must often set aside the limiting impressions from our childhood. In many instances these images of fear only serve to hold us back in our search for authentic spirituality...Open up your mind and heart to a concept of Spirit who looks out for us, loves us, sheds light on our path, and wants nothing less for us than unconditional happiness.

Many people have just enough natural religion to make them immune to the real thing.

I'm one of the few people who understands how producing technology requires intuition and creativity, and how producing something artistic takes real discipline.