Robert M. Pirsig Quotes

The science [geometry] is pursued for the sake of the knowledge of what eternally exists, and not of what comes for a moment into existence, and then perishes.

Geometry, like arithmetic, requires for its logical development only a small number of simple, fundamental principles. These fundamental principles are called the axioms of geometry.

Geometry is not true, it is advantageous.

Geometry draws the soul towards truth.

Geometry will draw the soul toward truth and create the spirit of philosophy.

One geometry cannot be more true than another; it can only be more convenient.

There are no sects in geometry.

The description of right lines and circles, upon which geometry is founded, belongs to mechanics. Geometry does not teach us to draw these lines, but requires them to be drawn.

Algebras deal not with laws of number, but with such laws of the human thinking machinery as have been discovered in the course of investigations on numbers. Plane geometry deals with such laws of thought as were discovered by men intent on finding out how to measure surface; and solid geometry with such additional laws of thought as were discovered when men began to extend geometry into three dimensions.

The ludicrous state of solid geometry made me pass over this branch.

The world of shapes, lines, curves, and solids is as varied as the world of numbers, and it is only our long-satisfied possession of Euclidean geometry that offers us the impression, or the illusion, that it has, that world, already been encompassed in a manageable intellectual structure. The lineaments of that structure are well known: as in the rest of life, something is given and something is gotten; but the logic behind those lineaments is apt to pass unnoticed, and it is the logic that controls the system.

I have no fault to find with those who teach geometry. That science is the only one which has not produced sects; it is founded on analysis and on synthesis and on the calculus; it does not occupy itself with the probable truth; moreover it has the same method in every country.

Geometry is the only science that it hath pleased God hitherto to bestow on mankind.

Geometry in every proposition speaks a language which experience never dares to utter; and indeed of which she but halfway comprehends the meaning.

Geometry enlightlens the intellect and sets one's mind right

Twins are so practical. It's always nice to have a spare.

Four circles to the kissing come, The smaller are the benter. The bend is just the inverse of The distance from the centre. Though their intrigue left Euclid dumb There's now no need for rule of thumb. Since zero bend's a dead straight line And concave bends have minus sign, The sum of squares of all four bends Is half the square of their sum.

Just because you have a choice, it doesn't mean that any of them 'has' to be right.

If it is solely an evolutionary convenience, there is really no such thing as good or evil.

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

...for since there is no real 'way' to sartori, the way you are following makes very little difference.

There can be no final truth in ethics any more than in physics, until the last man has had his experience and said his say.

How to know, oh how to know! All is relative ease and facility in orthodoxy, yet how can it be denied that good is in itself undeniable? Absolutes are the most uncertain of all formulations, while the uncertainties are the most real.

Man is the measure of all things, of the reality of those which are, and of the unreality of those which are not.

Pursuit of the approximate can conclude. Not so pursuit of the absolute.