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In The High Country Of The Mind One Has To Become Adjusted To The Thinner Air Of Uncertainty.
-Robert M. Pirsig
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In The High Country

Robert M. Pirsig
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In The High Country Of The Mind One Has To Become Adjusted To The Thinner Air Of Uncertainty.

Understanding the Quote: "in the high country of the mind one has to become adjusted..."

This quote by Robert M. Pirsig reflects deeply on the theme of country. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Country, Air, Mind, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Robert M. Pirsig interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Robert M. Pirsig

Robert M. Pirsig is celebrated for insightful thoughts on country and air. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Country
Air
Mind
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They Just Hate It When People Make Love. And Then They'll Go To A Fistfight Where Somebody's Really Hurt And All Covered With Bloodand They'll Just Love That. Or A War And Stuff Like That. They're All Mixed Up And They're Trying To Take It Out On You So You Get Mixed Up Too.
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A Person Filled With Gumption Doesn’t Sit About Stewing About Things. He’s At The Front Of The Train Of His Own Awareness, Watching To See What’s Up The Track And Meeting It When It Comes. That’s Gumption. If You’re Going To Repair A Motorcycle, An Adequate Supply Of Gumption Is The First And Most Important Tool. If You Haven’t Got That You Might As Well Gather Up All The Other Tools And Put Them Away, Because They Won’t Do You Any Good.
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Dialectic, Which Is The Parent Of Logic, Came Itself From Rhetoric. Rhetoric Is In Turn The Child Of The Myths And Poetry Of Ancient Greece. That Is So Historically, And That Is So By Any Application Of Common Sense. The Poetry And Myths Are The Response Of A Prehistoric People To The Universe Around Them Made On The Basis Of Quality. It Is Quality, Not Dialectic, Which Is The Generator Of Everything We Know.
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Running
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Of Course, The Laws Of Science Contain No Matter And Have No Energy Either And Therefore Do Not Exist Except In People's Minds. It's Best To Be Completely Scientific About The Whole Thing And Refuse To Believe In Either Ghosts Or The Laws Of Science. That Way You're Safe. That Doesn't Leave You Very Much To Believe In, But That's Scientific Too.
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Culture
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Evolution
The Tv Scientist Who Mutters Sadly, "the Experiment Is A Failure; We Have Failed To Achieve What We Had Hoped For," Is Suffering Mainly From A Bad Script Writer. An Experiment Is Never A Failure Solely Because It Fails To Achieve Predicted Results. An Experiment Is A Failure Only When It Also Fails Adequately To Test The Hypothesis In Question, When The Data It Produces Don't Prove Anything One Way Or Another.
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Suffering
Tests
New York Has Always Been Going To Hell But Somehow It Never Gets There.
Funny
New York
Humorous
To Live Only For Some Future Goal Is Shallow. It's The Sides Of The Mountain That Sustain Life, Not The Top.
Life
Wisdom
Future
One Thing About Pioneers That You Don't Hear Mentioned Is That They Are Invariably, By Their Nature, Mess-makers. They Go Forging Ahead, Seeing Only Their Noble, Distant Goal, And Never Notice Any Of The Crud And Debris They Leave Behind Them.
Goal
Pioneers
Noble
One Geometry Cannot Be More True Than Another; It Can Only Be More Convenient. Geometry Is Not True, It Is Advantageous.
Science
Geometry
Convenient
What Keeps The World From Reverting To The Neanderthal With Each Generation Is The Continuing, Ongoing Mythos... The Huge Body Of Common Knowledge That Unites Our Minds As Cells Are United In The Body Of Man.
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Cells
Mind
A Thing That Has No Value Does Not Exist.
Doe
Values
It's Nice To Start Journeys Pleasantly, Even When You Know They Won't End That Way.
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Intellectual
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Thinking
Data
Like Those In The Valley Behind Us, Most People Stand In Sight Of The Spiritual Mountains All Their Lives And Never Enter Them, Being Content To Listen To Others Who Have Been There And Thus Avoid The Hardships.
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Soldier
Patterns
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Reflection
Serenity
Mind
Institutions Such As Schools, Churches, Governments And Political Organizations Of Every Sort All Tended To Direct Thought For Ends Other Than Truth, For The Perpetuation Of Their Own Functions, And For The Control Of Individuals In The Service Of These Functions.
School
Government
Organization
The Funny Thing About Insane People Is That It Is Kind Of The Opposite Of Being A Celebrity. Nobody Envies You.
Opposites
Funny Things
Envy
What's Wrong With Technology Is That It's Not Connected In Any Real Way With Matters Of The Spirit And Of The Heart. And So It Does Blind, Ugly Things Quite By Accident And Gets Hated For That.
Real
Heart
Technology
The Bones And Flesh And Legal Statistics Are The Garments Worn By The Personality, Not The Other Way Around.
Personality
Flesh
Statistics
The Buddha, The Godhead, Resides Quite As Comfortably In The Circuits Of A Digital Computer Or The Gears Of A Cycle Transmission As He Does At The Top Of A Mountain Or In The Petals Of A Flower. To Think Otherwise Is To Demean The Buddha - Which Is To Demean Oneself.
Flower
Thinking
Mountain
What The Metaphysics Of Quality Would Do Is Take This Separate Category, Quality, And Show How It Contains Within Itself Both Subjects And Objects. The Metaphysics Of Quality Would Show How Things Become Enormously More Coherent-fabulously More Coherent-when You Start With An Assumption That Quality Is The Primary Empirical Reality Of The World. . . . . . . But Showing That, Of Course, Was A Very Big Job. . . .
Jobs
Reality
Quality
The Good Was Not A Form Of Reality. It Was Reality Itself, Ever-changing, Ultimately Unknowable In Any Kind Of Fixed, Rigid Way.
Reality
Unity
Way
The Test Of The Machine Is The Satisfaction It Gives You. There Isn't Any Other Test. If The Machine Produces Tranquility It's Right. If It Disturbs You It's Wrong Until Either The Machine Or Your Mind Is Changed.
Technology
Giving
Mind
If A Revolution Destroys A Systematic Government, But The Systematic Patterns Of Thought That Produced That Government Are Left Intact, Then Those Patterns Will Repeat Themselves In The Succeeding Government.
Government
Patterns
Systematic
Now, To Take That Which Has Caused Us To Create The World, And Include It Within The World We Have Created, Is Clearly Impossible. This Is Why Quality Cannot Be Defined. If We Do Define It, We Are Defining Something Less Than Quality Itself.
Quality
World
Defining
Care And Quality Are Internal And External Aspects Of The Same Thing. A Person Who Sees Quality And Feels It As He Works Is A Person Who Cares. A Person Who Cares About What He Sees And Does Is A Person Who’s Bound To Have Some Characteristic Of Quality.
Quality
Who Cares
Doe
There Is An Evil Tendency Underlying All Our Technology - The Tendency To Do What Is Reasonable Even When It Isn't Any Good.
Technology
Evil
Tendencies
You Go Up The Mountaintop And All You're Gonna Get Is A Great Big Heavy Stone Tablet Handed To You With A Bunch Of Rules On It.
Stones
Tablets
Bigs
Data Without Generalization Is Just Gossip.
Data
Gossip
Generalization
We Must Understand That When A Society Undermines Intellectual Freedom For Its Own Purposes It Is Absolutely Morally Bad, But When It Represses Biological Freedom For Its Own Purposes It Is Absolutely Morally Good.
Intellectual
Purpose
Intellectual Freedom
How Are You Going To Teach Virtue If You Teach The Relativity Of All Ethical Ideas? Virtue, If It Implies Anything At All, Implies An Ethical Absolute. A Person Whose Idea Of What Is Proper Varies From Day To Day Can Be Admired For His Broadmindedness, But Not For His Virtue.
Ideas
Ethics
Virtue
When Analytic Thought, The Knife, Is Applied To Experience, Something Is Always Killed In The Process.
Knives
Process
Analytics
Programs Of A Political Nature Are Important End Products Of Social Quality That Can Be Effective Only If The Underlying Structure Of Social Values Is Right. The Social Values Are Right Only If The Individual Values Are Right. The Place To Improve The World Is First In One's Heart And Head And Hands, And Then Work Outward From There.
Heart
Social Values
Hands
The Major Producer Of The Social Chaos, The Indeterminacy Of Thought And Values That Rational Knowledge Is Supposed To Eliminate, Is None Other Than Science Itself.
Science
Chaos
Social
Science Probes; It Does Not Prove. Imagine Newton's Reaction To An Objector Of His Law Of Gravity Who Argued That He Could Not Establish A Universal Law Because He Had Not Observed Every Falling Apple, Much Less Proved The Law Of Gravity - There Might, After All, Be An Apple That Levitates! Why Should A Group Of Simple, Stable Compounds Of Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen And Nitrogen Struggle For Billions Of Years To Organize Themselves Into A Professor Of Chemistry?
Struggle
Fall
Simple
The Way To Solve The Conflict Between Human Values And Technology Needs Is Not To Run Away From Technology. That's Impossible. The Way To Resolve The Conflict Is To Break Down The Barriers Of Dualistic Thought That Prevent A Real Understanding Of What Technology Is--not An Exploitation Of Nature, But A Fusion Of Nature And The Human Spirit Into A New Kind Of Creation That Transcends Both.
Running
Real
Technology
We Want To Make Good Time, But For Us Now This Is Measured With The Emphasis On "good" Rather Than On "time".
Travel
Want
Good Times
Making An Art Out Of Your Technological Life Is The Way To Solve The Problem Of Technology...art Is Anything That You Can Do Well. Anything That You Can Do With Quality.
Art
Creativity
Technology
Great Minds Struggle To Cure Diseases So That People May Live Longer, But Only Madmen Ask Why. One Lives Longer In Order That He May Live Longer. There Is No Other Purpose.
Struggle
Order
People
If Someone's Ungrateful And You Tell Him He's Ungrateful, Okay, You've Called Him A Name. You Haven't Solved Anything.
Names
Ungrateful
Okay
I've Wondered Why It Took Us So Long To Catch On. We Saw It, And Yet We Didn't See It. Or Rather We Were Trained Not To See It. Conned Perhaps Into Thinking That The Real Action Was Metropolitan And All This Was Just Boring Hinterland. It Was 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.
Truth
Real
Thinking
You Look At Where You're Going And Where You Are And It Never Makes Sense, But Then You Look Back At Where You've Been And A Pattern Seems To Emerge.
Looks
Patterns
Where You Are
When You Look Directly At An Insane Man All You See Is A Reflection Of Your Own Knowledge That He's Insane, Which Is Not To See Him At All.
Depression
Reflection
Men
Any Effort That Has Self-glorification As Its Final Endpoint Is Bound To End In Disaster.
Failure
Self
Effort
When A Shepherd Goes To Kill A Wolf, And Takes His Dog To See The Sport, He Should Take Care To Avoid Mistakes. The Dog Has Certain Relationships To The Wolf The Shepherd May Have Forgotten.
Funny
Sports
Dog
Anxiety Is Sort Of The Opposite Of Ego. You're So Sure You'll Do Everything Wrong You're Afraid To Do Anything At All. It Results From Over-motivation- Leading To Errors That Lead To An Underestimation Of One's Self. Work Out Your Anxieties On Paper And Read. This Calms The Mind.
Motivation
Humility
Self
Laws Of Nature Are Human Inventions, Like Ghosts. Laws Of Logic, Or Mathematics Are Also Human Inventions, Like Ghosts. The Whole Blessed Thing Is A Human Invention, Including The Idea That It Isn't A Human Invention.
Blessed
Law
Ideas
Stuckness Shouldn't Be Avoided. It's The Physic Predecessor Of All Real Understanding.
Real
Understanding
Avoided
The Buddha Takes No Position On Gods, He Suggests They May Exist Or They May Not, But Either Way You Can Live A Moral Life.
May
Way
Moral
What Is Essential To Understand At This Point Is That Until Now There Was No Such Thing As Mind And Matter, Subject And Object, Form And Substance. Those Divisions Are Just Dialectical Inventions That Came Later...they Are Just Ghosts, Immortal Gods Of The Modern Mythos Which Appear To Us To Be Real Because We Are Within That Mythos. But In Reality They Are Just As Much An Artistic Creation As The Anthropomorphic Gods They Replaced.
Real
Mind
Essentials
Between The Subject And The Object Lies The Value.
Lying
Subjects
Objects
I Think Metaphysics Is Good If It Improves Everyday Life; Otherwise Forget It.
Thinking
Everyday
Forget
…the Doctrinal Differences Between Hinduism And Buddhism And Taoism Are Not Anywhere Near As Important As Doctrinal Differences Among Christianity And Islam And Judaism. Holy Wars Are Not Fought Over Them Because Verbalized Statements About Reality Are Never Presumed To Be Reality Itself.
War
Buddhism
Reality
The Truth Knocks On The Door And You Say, Go Away, I'm Looking For The Truth, And It Goes Away. Puzzling.
Truth
Science
Discovery
Science Values Static Patterns.
Science
Patterns
Static
The Mythos-over-logos Argument Points To The Fact That Each Child Is Born As Ignorant As Any Caveman. What Keeps The World From Reverting To The Neandertal With Each Generation Is The Continuing, Ongoing Mythos, Transformed Into Logos But Still Mythos, The Huge Body Of Common Knowledge That Unites Our Minds As Cells Are United In The Body Of Man. To Feel That One Is Not So United, That One Can Accept Or Discard This Mythos As One Pleases, Is Not To Understand What The Mythos Is.
Art
Children
Men
The Birth Of A New Fact Is Always A Wonderful Thing To Experience. It's Dualistically Called A "discovery" Because Of The Presumption That It Has An Existence Independent Of Anyone's Awareness Of It. When It Comes Along, It Always Has, At First, A Low Value. Then, Depending On The Value-looseness Of The Observer And The Potential Quality Of The Fact, Its Value Increases, Either Slowly Or Rapidly, Or The Value Wanes And The Fact Disappears.
Independent
Discovery
Quality
Familiarity Can Blind Too.
Blind
Familiarity
The Best Students Always Are Flunking. Every Good Teacher Knows That.
Teacher
Students
Very Good
Stuckness Shouldn't Be Avoided. It's The Psychic Predecessor Of All Real Understanding. An Egoless Acceptance Of Stuckness Is A Key To An Understanding Of All Quality, In Mechanical Work As In Other Endeavors.
Real
Acceptance
Keys
There's So Much Talk About The System. And So Little Understanding.
Understanding
Littles
Zen Motorcycle Maintenance
To Speak Of Certain Government And Establishment Institutions As 'the System' Is To Speak Correctly . . . They Are Sustained By Structural Relationships Even When They Have Lost All Other Meaning And Purpose. People Arrive At A Factory And Perform A Totally Meaningless Task From Eight To Five Without Question Because The Structure Demands It Be That Way. There's No Villian, No 'mean Guy' Who Wants Them To Live Meaningless Lives, It's Just That The Structure, The System Demands It And No One Is Willing To Take On The Formidable Task Of Changing The Structure Just Because It Is Meaningless.
Mean
Eight
Government
Talk About Rationality Can Get Very Confusing Unless The Things With Which Rationality Deals Are Also Included.
Confusing
Deals
Rationality
Quality... You Know What It Is, Yet You Don't Know What It Is.
Understanding
Quality
Zen Motorcycle Maintenance
I Have Money, Fame, A Happy Wife, Our Daughter Nell.
Daughter
Mother
Wife
I Think This Fear Of Insanity Is Comparable To The Fear People Once Had Of Falling Off The Edge Of The World. Or The Fear Of Heretics...what's Happening Is That Each Year Our Old Flat Earth Of Conventional Reason Becomes Less And Less Adequate To Handle The Experiences We Have And This Is Creating Wide-spread Feelings Of Topsy-turviness. As A Result We're Getting More And More People In Irrational Areas Of Thought...occultism, Mysticism, Drug Changes And The Like...because They Feel An Inadequacy In Classical Reason To Handle What They Know Are Real Experiences.
Real
Fall
Thinking
The Hippies Had In Mind Something That They Wanted, And Were Calling It Freedom, But In The Final Analysis Freedom Is A Purely Negative Goal. It Just Says Something Is Bad. Hippies Weren't Really Offering Any Alternatives Other Than Colorful Short-term Ones, And Some Of These Were Looking More And More Like Pure Degeneracy. Degeneracy Can Be Fun But It's Hard To Keep Up As A Serious Lifetime Occupation.
Fun
Hippie
Offering
When Somebody Goes Outside The Cultural Norms, The Culture Has To Protect Itself.
Culture
Protect
Norm
Now He Began To See For The First Time The Unbelievable Magnitude Of What Man, When He Gained Power To Understand And Rule The World In Terms Of Dialectic Truths, Had Lost. He Had Built Empires Of Scientific Capability To Manipulate The Phenomena Of Nature Into Enormous Manifestations Of His Own Dreams Of Power And Wealth...but For This He Had Exchanged An Empire Of Understanding Of Equal Magnitude: An Understanding Of What It Is To Be A Part Of The World, And Not An Enemy Of It.
Dream
Men
Understanding
Physical Distance Between People Has Nothing To Do With Loneliness. It's Psychic Distance.
Distance
Loneliness
Psychics
Why, For Example, Should A Group Of Simple, Stable Compounds Of Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, And Nitrogen Struggle For Billions Of Years To Organize Themselves Into A Professor Of Chemistry? What's The Motive?
Struggle
Simple
Oxygen
The Thing To Understand Is That If You Are Going To Reform Society You Don't Start With Cops. And If You Are Going To Reform Intellect You Don't Start With Psychiatrists. If You Don't Like Our Present Social System Or Intellectual System The Best Thing You Can Do With Either Cops Or Psychiatrists Is Stay Out Of Their Way. You Leave Them 'till Last.
Intellectual
Growth
Way
Man Is Not The Source Of All Things, As The Subjective Idealists Would Say. Nor Is He The Passive Observer Of All Things, As The Objective Idealists Would Say. The Quality Which Creates The World Emerges As A Relationship Between Man And His Experience. He Is A Participant In The Creation Of All Things. The Measure Of All Things.
Men
Unity
Quality
Every Answer One Finds Leads To Ten More Questions. The More We Learn The Less We Know.
Answers
Knows
Ten
The Buddah Can Reside In The Gears Of A Motorcycle As Easily As In A Flower On A Mountaintop. To Believe Otherwise Is To Demean The Buddah; Which Is To Demean One's Self.
Flower
Believe
Self
If You Run From Technology, It Will Chase You.
Running
Technology
Ifs
I Argued That Physical Discomfort Is Important Only When The Mood Is Wrong. Then You Fasten On To Whatever Thing Is Uncomfortable And Call That The Cause. But If The Mood Is Right, Then Physical Discomfort Doesn't Mean Much.
Mean
Important
Causes
In A Car You're Always In A Compartment, And Because You're Used To It You Don't Realize That Through That Car Window Everything You See Is Just More Tv. You're A Passive Observer And It Is All Moving By You Boringly In A Frame. On A Cycle The Frame Is Gone. You're Completely In Contact With It All. You're In The Scene, Not Just Watching It Anymore, And The Sense Of Presence Is Overwhelming.
Moving
Car
Gone
99 Per Cent Of Your Life Recognises Things Without Definition, A Baby Recognises Its Mother's Face Without Having It Defined. It's Just An Arbitrary Rule This Rule Of Definition That Socrates Set Down.
Mother
Baby
Arbitrary
The Real Purpose Of The Scientific Method Is To Make Sure Nature Hasn’t Misled You Into Thinking You Know Something You Actually Don’t Know.
Nature
Real
Thinking
I Really Am A Recluse. I Just Enjoy Watching The Wind Blow Through The Trees. In America Someone Who Sits Around And Does That Is At The Bottom Of The Ladder, But In Japan, Say, Someone Who Goes Up Into The Mountains Is Accorded Great Respect. I Guess I Am Somewhere In Between. I Enjoy Reclusion: It Clears My Mind.
Blow
Wind
America
The Idea That The Majority Of Students Attend A University For An Education Independent Of The Degree And Grades Is A Hypocrisy Everyone Is Happier Not To Expose. Occasionally Some Students Do Arrive For An Education But Rote And Mechanical Nature Of The Institution Soon Converts Them To A Less Idealic Attitude
Attitude
Independent
Ideas
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