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Other authors named Robert:
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Vote: | It is a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling. |
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Vote: | It is always good policy to tell the truth unless of course you are an exceptionally good liar. Jerome K. Jerome It is a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, go away, I'm looking for the truth. and so it goes away. Puzzling. |
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Vote: | Metaphysics is a restaurant where they give you a thirty thousand page menu, and no food. |
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Vote: | Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual abstractions. |
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Vote: | The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there. |
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Vote: | The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands. |
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Vote: | The solutions all are simple - after you have arrived at them. But they're simple only when you know already what they are. |
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Vote: | The truth knocks on the door and you say, go away, I'm looking for the truth, and it goes away. Puzzling. |
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Vote: | To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top. |
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Vote: | Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best, 20 - 20 hindsight. It's good for seeing where you've been. It's good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can't tell you where you ought to go. |
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Biography
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Robert Maynard Pirsig (born September 6, 1928) is a popular American writer, famous for his first book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (1974). The book outlined Pirsig's philosophy of the Metaphysics of Quality, in the form of a mostly-autobiographical tale of a man's motorcycle trip across North America. The book remains a popular title to this day. In 1974 Pirsig was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for his work. Its followup, '' (1991), further explores Pirsig's philosophies.
Pirsig was a precocious child, with an IQ of 170 at age 9, and promoted several grades, which, along with a stammer, made for a difficult childhood school experience. Pirsig began his studies at the University of Minnesota in 1943, and after flunking out, and serving with US military in Korea. He returned to receive his B.A. in 1950. He then attended Benares Hindu University in India to further explore Eastern philosophy. In 1954 he married Nancy Ann James, and the couple had a son, Chris, in 1956, and a second son, Theodore (Ted) in 1958.
Supporting himself by taking freelance jobs and teaching freshman English, Pirsig spent 1960–1963 in and out of mental institutions following a mental breakdown; he was treated with shock therapy. Pirsig divorced Nancy in 1978, going on to marry Wendy Kimball later in the year. The couple had a daughter, Nell, in 1980.
Pirsig has published little other than his two major works and avoids the public eye, frequently traveling around the Atlantic by boat, having lived in various places around the United States as well as Sweden and England. In 1979, Pirsig's first son Chris - who had played an important role in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'' - was stabbed to death during a mugging in San Francisco.
External links
* MOQ
* Robert M. Pirsig & Quality
* Timeline of Robert Pirsig's life
* Photograph of Pirsig and the motorcycle he rode in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
* Pictures from Robert Pirsig's original 1968 trip upon which Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is based
* A Bio of Pirsig from the American Society of Authors and Writers
* ZAMM Travel Route
* Audio: 1974 NPR Interview with Pirsig
* Audio: 1992 NPR Interview with Pirsig
...(more on Wikipedia)
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Robert M. Pirsig".
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