Robert M. Pirsig Quotes

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.

Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.

Plato described ordinary life as unthinking, lived in a dim cave of shadowy reflections, but said that it is possible to leave the cave and see things in sunlit clarity as they actually are.

Insanity is believing your hallucinations are real. Religion is believing that other peoples' hallucinations are real.

Oftentimes what you see cancels out what you perceive.

The problem with being nuts, she thought, is that you don't always feel as if you're nuts. Sometimes, in fact, you feel perfectly sane, and there just happens to be a trailer-shaped dragon crouching in the lot next door.

It isn't safe to sit in judgment upon another person's illusion when you are not on the inside. While you are thinking it is a dream, he may be knowing it is a planet.

The human understanding, from its peculiar nature, easily supposes a greater degree of order and equality in things than it really finds.

We have ... dreamed so much and observed so little, that our imaginations have grown larger than the world we live in, and our judgments have dwindled down to a point.

If you have it and you know you have it, then you have it. If you have it and don't know you have it, you don't have it. If you don't have it but you think you have it, then you have it.

There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad.

Getting rid of a delusion makes us wiser than getting hold of a truth.

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

A reflection of an exact image is the closest thing to you-so that you can see it-but it's far enough away so that you really understand it. There is real life in this movie, but it hovers just an inch above reality.

Facts are many, but the truth is one.

Insanity - a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.

I used to think 'King Lear' was an analysis of insanity, but I don't really think it is. When Lear is supposed to be at his most insane, he is actually understanding the world for the first time.

As a man is, so he sees. As the eye is formed, such are its powers.

I don't think you ever know in yourself whether you have gone mad.

The value of experience is not in seeing much, but in seeing wisely.

He who closes his eyes sees nothing, even in the full light of day.

I don't believe there's any such thing as objective reality. It's only reality as we experience it.

No object is mysterious. The mystery is your eye.

The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad.

I doubt if a single individual could be found from the whole of mankind free from some form of insanity. The only difference is one of degree. A man who sees a gourd and takes it for his wife is called insane because this happens to very few people.