Sleepingwithink

“Insanity on the other hand is an intellectual pattern. It may have biological causes but it has no physical or biological reality. No scientific instrument can be produced in court to show who is insane and who is sane. There's nothing about insanity that conforms to any scientific law of the universe. The scientific laws of the universe are invented by sanity. There's no way by which sanity, using the instruments of its own creation, can measure that which is outside of itself and its creations. Insanity isn't an 'object' of observation. It's an alteration of observation itself. There's no such thing as a 'disease' of patterns of intellect. There's only heresy. And that's what insanity really is.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals

“If you eliminate suffering from this world you eliminate life. There’s no evolution. Those species that don’t suffer don’t survive.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals

“The most sinister thing about the fall of the Roman Empire was that the people who conquered it never understood that they had done so. They paralyzed the patterns of Roman social structure to a point where everybody just forgot what that structure was. Taxes became uncollectible. Armies composed of hired barbarians stopped receiving pay. Everything just lapsed. The patterns of civilization were forgotten, and a Dark Age settled in.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals

“As long as you’re stuck with the old conventions, insanity is going to be a “misunderstanding of the object by the subject.” The object is real, the subject is mistaken. The only problem is how to change the subject’s mind back to a correct comprehension of objective reality.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals