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The Funny Thing About Insane People Is That It Is Kind Of The Opposite Of Being A Celebrity. Nobody Envies You.
-Robert M. Pirsig
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The Funny Thing About

Robert M. Pirsig
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The Funny Thing About Insane People Is That It Is Kind Of The Opposite Of Being A Celebrity. Nobody Envies You.

Understanding the Quote: "the funny thing about insane people is that it is kind of..."

This quote by Robert M. Pirsig reflects deeply on the theme of opposites. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Opposites, Funny Things, Envy, 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 opposites and funny things. 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
Opposites
Funny Things
Envy
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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.
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For Me, A Writer Should Be More Like A Lighthouse Keeper, Just Out There By Himself. He Shouldn't Get His Ideas From Other People All Around Him.
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It's Paradoxical That Where People Are The Most Closely Crowded, In The Big Coastal Cities In The East And West, The Loneliness Is The Greatest... The Explanation, I Suppose, Is That The Physical Distance Between People Has Nothing To Do With Loneliness. It's Psychic Distance...
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A Culture-bearing Book, Like A Mule, Bears The Culture On Its Back. No One Should Sit Down To Write One Deliberately. Culture-bearing Books Appear Almost Accidentally, Like A Sudden Surge In The Stock Market. There Are Books Of High Quality That Are A Part Of The Culture, But That Is Not The Same. They Are A Part Of It. They Aren't Carrying It Anywhere. They May Talk About Insanity Sympathetically, For Example, Because That's The Standard Cultural Attitude. But They Don't Carry Any Suggestion That Insanity Might Be Something Other Than Sickness Or Degeneracy.
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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.
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Serenity
Machines
Tests
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Quality
Doe
Way
Between The Subject And The Object Lies The Value.
Lying
Subjects
Objects
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Art
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Motorcycle
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
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I Think Now The Trace Of Egotism May Have Been The Beginning Of All His Troubles
Thinking
May
Trouble
We Always Condemn Most In Others, He Thought, That Which We Most Fear In Ourselves.
Acceptance
Self Acceptance
Today We Are Living In An Intellectual And Technological Paradise And A Moral And Social Nightmare Because The Intellectual Level Of Evolution, In Its Struggle To Become Free Of The Social Level, Has Ignored The Social Level's Role In Keeping The Biological Level Under Control.
Struggle
Intellectual
Roles
Cultures Are Not The Source Of All Morals, Only A Limited Set Of Morals. Cultures Can Be Graded And Judged Morally According To Their Contribution To The Evolution Of Life.
Culture
Moral
Evolution
A Person Who Follows The Dharma Is Unpredictable Because The Dharma Is Unpredictable.
Dharma
Unpredictable
Persons
What I Mean (and Everybody Else Means) By The Word 'quality' Cannot Be Broken Down Into Subjects And Predicates. This Is Not Because Quality Is So Mysterious But Because Quality Is So Simple, Immediate And Direct.
Mean
Simple
Broken
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
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
We’re In Such A Hurry Most Of The Time We Never Get Much Chance To Talk. The Result Is A Kind Of Endless Day-to-day Shallowness, A Monotony That Leaves A Person Wondering Years Later Where All The Time Went And Sorry That It’s All Gone.
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Years
Gone
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.
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Men
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Order
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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.
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Pioneers
Noble
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Quality
Fans
Wave
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
An Evolutionary Morality Argues That The North Was Right In Pursuing That War Because A Nation Is A Higher Form Of Evolution Than A Human Body And The Principle Of Human Equality Is An Even Higher Form Than A Nation
War
Principles
Body
That Which Destroys The Old Mythos Becomes The New Mythos.
Is It Hard?' Not If You Have The Right Attitudes. Its Having The Right Attitudes Thats Hard.
Attitude
Hard
Ifs
Data Without Generalization Is Just Gossip.
Data
Gossip
Generalization
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
Good Is A Noun Rather Than An Adjective.
Unity
Adjectives
Nouns
A Culture That Supports The Dominance Of Social Values Over Biological Values Is An Absolutely Superior Culture To One That Does Not, And A Culture That Supports The Dominance Of Intellectual Values Over Social Values Is Absolutely Superior To One That Does Not.
Social Values
Support
Intellectual
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
So Round And Round You Go, Spinning Mental Wheels And Nowhere Finding Anyplace To Get Traction. What The Hell...is It?
Spinning
Wheels
Hell
I Think Metaphysics Is Good If It Improves Everyday Life; Otherwise Forget It.
Thinking
Everyday
Forget
Talk About Rationality Can Get Very Confusing Unless The Things With Which Rationality Deals Are Also Included.
Confusing
Deals
Rationality
The Real University... Has No Specific Location. It Owns No Property, Pays No Salaries, And Receives No Material Dues... The Real University Is A State Of Mind. It Is That Great Heritage Of Rational Thought That Has Been Brought Down To Us Through The Centuries.
Real
Mind
Salary
An Egoless Acceptance Of Stuckness Is A Key To An Understanding Of All Quality.
Acceptance
Keys
Understanding
You Want To Know How To Paint A Perfect Painting? It's Easy. Make Yourself Perfect And Then Just Paint Naturally.
Perfect
Want
Painting
"when Are We Going To Get Going?" Chris Says. "what's Your Hurry?" I Ask. "i Just Want To Get Going." "there's Nothing Up Ahead That's Any Better Than It Is Right Here."
Want
Asks
One Of The Most Moral Acts Is To Create A Space In Which Life Can Move Forward.
Moving
Moving Forward
Space
The Real Cycle You're Working On Is A Cycle Called Yourself.
Real
Philosophical
Zen Motorcycle Maintenance
To An Experienced Zen Buddhist, Asking If One Believes In Zen Or One Believes In The Buddha, Sounds A Little Ludicrous, Like Asking If One Believes In Air Or Water. Similarly Quality Is Not Something You Believe In, Quality Is Something You Experience.
Buddhist
Believe
Air
Quality Isn't A Thing. It Is An Event.
Quality
Events
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.
Truth
Liars
Doors
My Favorite Piece Of Technical Writing: Assembly Of Japanese Bicycle Require Great Peace Of Mind.
Peace
Writing
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
One Geometry Cannot Be More True Than Another; It Can Only Be More Convenient. Geometry Is Not True, It Is Advantageous.
Science
Geometry
Convenient
Rules Of Order State That ... No Minority Has A Right To Block A Majority From Conducting The Legal Business Of The Organisation .... But No Majority Has A Right To Prevent A Minority From Peacefully Attempting To Become The Majority.
Block
Order
Majority
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.
Children
People
Common Sense
Coastal People Never Really Know What The Ocean Symbolizes To Landlocked Inland People--what A Great Distant Dream It Is, Present But Unseen In The Deepest Level Of Subconsciousness, And When They Arrive At The Ocean And The Conscious Images Are Compared With The Subconscious Dream There Is A Sense Of Defeat At Having Come So Far To Be Stopped By A Mystery That Can Never Be Fathomed. The Source Of It All.
Dream
Ocean
People
In The High Country Of The Mind One Has To Become Adjusted To The Thinner Air Of Uncertainty.
Country
Air
Mind
That's All The Motorcycle Is, A System Of Concepts Worked Out In Steel.
Motorcycle
Steel
Bikers
The Past Exists Only In Our Memories, The Future Only In Our Plans. The Present Is Our Only Reality. The Tree That You Are Aware Of Intellectually, Because Of That Small Time Lag, Is Always In The Past And Therefore Is Always Unreal. Any Intellectually Conceived Object Is Always In The Past And Therefore Unreal. Reality Is Always The Moment Of Vision Before The Intellectualization Takes Place. There Is No Other Reality.
Memories
Past
Reality
Definitions Are The Foundation Of Reason. You Can't Reason Without Them.
Foundation
Definitions
Reason
The Logic Of Science Was Infallible, And If The Scientists Were Sometimes Mistaken, This Was Assumed To Be Only From Their Mistaking Its Rules.
Logic
Sometimes
Scientist
Caring About What You Are Doing Is Considered Either Unimportant Or Taken For Granted.
Taken
Caring
Granted
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
If You Are Following The Dharma No Matter What You Do It Is Moral.
Matter
Moral
Dharma
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
Even Though Quality Cannot Be Defined, You Know What Quality Is.
Quality
Knows
Defined
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.
Spiritual
Sight
People
Unless You're Fond Of Hollering You Don't Make Great Conversations On A Running Cycle. Instead You Spend Your Time Being Aware Of Things And Meditating On Them. On Sights And Sounds, On The Mood Of The Weather And Things Remembered, On The Machine And The Countryside You're In, Thinking About Things At Great Leisure And Length Without Being Hurried And Without Feeling You're Losing Time.
Running
Thinking
Sight
What's New?" Is An Interesting And Broadening Eternal Question, But One Which, If Pursued Exclusively, Results Only In An Endless Parade Of Trivia And Fashion, The Silt Of Tomorrow.
Fashion
Interesting
Trivia
Sometimes It's A Little Better To Travel Than To Arrive
Inspirational
Travel
Littles
Any Person Of Any Philosophic Persuasion Who Sits On A Hot Stove Will Verify Without Any Intellectual Argument Whatsoever That He Is In An Undeniably Low-quality Situation: That The Value Of His Predicament Is Negative. This Low Quality Is Not Just A Vague, Woolly-headed, Crypto-religious, Metaphysical Abstraction. It Is An Experience. It Is Not A Judgment About An Experience. It Is Not A Description Of Experience. The Value Itself Is An Experience. As Such It Is Completely Predictable. It Is Verifiable By Anyone Who Cares To Do So.
Religious
Intellectual
Quality
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.
Data
Suffering
Tests
I Think Present-day Reason Is An Analogue Of The Flat Earth Of The Medieval Period. If You Go Too Far Beyond It You're Presumed To Fall Off, Into Insanity. And People Are Very Much Afraid Of That. 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. There's A Very Close Analogue There.
Fall
Thinking
People
The Only Zen You Can Find On The Tops Of Mountains Is The Zen You Bring Up There.
Encouraging
Wisdom
Hiking
The More You Look, The More You See.
Looks
Zen Motorcycle Maintenance
This Inner Peace Of Mind Occurs On Three Levels Of Understanding. Physical Quietness Seems The Easiest To Achieve, Although There Are Levels And Levels Of This Too, As Attested By The Ability Of Hindu Mystics To Live Buried Alive For Many Days. Mental Quietness, In Which One Has No Wandering Thoughts At All, Seems More Difficult, But Can Be Achieved. But Value Quietness, In Which One Has No Wandering Desires At All But Simply Performs The Acts Of His Life Without Desire, That Seems The Hardest.
Understanding
Inner Peace
Mind
Mental Reflection Is So Much More Interesting Than Tv It's A Shame More People Don't Switch Over To It.
Reflection
People
Interesting
There's So Much Talk About The System. And So Little Understanding.
Understanding
Littles
Zen Motorcycle Maintenance
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
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
Communism And Socialism, Programs For Intellectual Control Over Society ... Fascism, A Program For The Social Control Of Intellect.
Intellectual
Socialism
Communism
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.
Believe
Law
People
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 Pencil Is Mightier Than The Pen.
Pens
Pencils
Sanity Is Not Truth. Sanity Is Conformity To What Is Socially Expected. Truth Is Sometimes In Conformity, Sometimes Not.
Truth
Health
Independence
The Past Cannot Remember The Past. The Future Can't Generate The Future. The Cutting Edge Of The Instant Right Here And Now Is Always Nothing Less Than The Totality Of Everything There Is.
Cutting
Past
Remember
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
Physical Distance Between People Has Nothing To Do With Loneliness. It's Psychic Distance.
Distance
Loneliness
Psychics
The Bones And Flesh And Legal Statistics Are The Garments Worn By The Personality, Not The Other Way Around.
Personality
Flesh
Statistics
It's So Hard When Contemplated In Advance, And So Easy When You Do It.
Easy
Contemplating
Hard
Mental Patterns Do Not Originate Out Of Inorganic Nature. They Originate Out Of Society, Which Originates Out Of Inorganic Nature. And, As Anthropologists Know So Well, What A Mind Thinks Is As Dominated By Biological Patterns As Social Patterns Are Dominated By Biological Patterns And As Biological Patterns Are Dominated By Inorganic Patterns. There Is No Direct Scientific Connection Between Mind And Matter. As The Atomic Scientist, Niels Bohr, Said, "we Are Suspended In Language." Our Intellectual Description Of Nature Is Always Culturally Derived.
Thinking
Mind
Intellectual
We Take A Handful Of Sand From The Endless Landscape Of Awareness Around Us And Call That Handful Of Sand The World.
World
Landscape
Awareness
The Past Exists Only In Our Memories, The Future Only In Our Plans. The Present Is Our Only Reality.
Inspirational
Memories
Future
When You Live In The Shadow Of Insanity, The Appearance Of Another Mind That Thinks And Talks As Yours Does Is Something Close To A Blessed Event.
Blessed
Thinking
Insanity
It Is Not Good To Talk About Zen, Because Zen Is Nothingness... If You Talk About It, You Are Always Lying, And If You Don't Talk About It, No One Knows It Is There.
Lying
Knows
Ifs
Now The Stream Of Our Common Consciousness Seems To Be Obliterating Its Own Banks, Losing Its Central Direction And Purpose, Flooding The Lowlands, Disconnecting And Isolating The Highlands And To No Particular Purpose Other Than The Wasteful Fulfillment Of Its Own Internal Momentum
Momentum
Purpose
Losing
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
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
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