As Poincaré pointed out, there must be a subliminal choice of what facts we observe. The difference between a good mechanic and a bad one, like the difference between a good mathematician and a bad one, is precisely this ability to select the good facts from the bad ones on the basis of quality.

“What?” A small bird rises from a tree in front of us. “What should I be when I grow up?” The bird disappears over a far ridge. I don’t know what to say. “Honest,” I finally say. “I mean what kind of a job?” “Any kind.”

When one isn’t dominated by feelings of separateness from what he’s working on, then one can be said to “care” about what he’s doing. That is what caring really is, a feeling of identification with what one’s doing. When one has this feeling then he also sees the inverse side of caring, Quality itself. So the thing to do when working on a motorcycl

All the time we are aware of millions of things around us—these changing shapes, these burning hills, the sound of the engine, the feel of the throttle, each rock and weed and fence post and piece of debris beside the road—aware of these things but not really conscious of them unless there is something unusual or unless they reflect something we ar

What you have to do, if you get caught in this gumption trap of value rigidity, is slow down—you’re going to have to slow down anyway whether you want to or not—but slow down deliberately and go over ground that you’ve been over before to see if the things you thought were important were really important and to…well…just stare at the machine. There

I would like, instead, to be concerned with the question “What is best?,” a question which cuts deeply rather than broadly, a question whose answers tend to move the silt downstream. There are eras of human history in which the channels of thought have been too deeply cut and no change was possible, and nothing new ever happened, and “best” was a m

A classical understanding sees the world primarily as underlying form itself. A romantic understanding sees it primarily in terms of immediate appearance.

Technology presumes there’s just one right way to do things and there never is. And when you presume there’s just one right way to do things, of course the instructions begin and end exclusively with the rotisserie. But if you have to choose among an infinite number of ways to put it together then the relation of the machine to you, and the relatio

Because Quality is the generator of the mythos. That’s it. That’s what he meant when he said, “Quality is the continuing stimulus which causes us to create the world in which we live. All of it. Every last bit of it.” Religion isn’t invented by man. Men are invented by religion. Men invent responses to Quality, and among these responses is an under