Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert M Pirsig

This quote was added by weesin
People arrive at a factory and perform a totally meaningless task from eight to five without question because the structure demands that it be that way. There's no villain, 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.

Train on this quote


Rate this quote:
3.1 out of 5 based on 43 ratings.

Edit Text

Edit author and title

(Changes are manually reviewed)

or just leave a comment:


bvw 1 year, 10 months ago
A great book published in 1974, 34 years later the age of the factory in the US was pretty much over. Only the meat packing plants and a few others. In the Pacific Rim, however the factories are strong and use slave labor, or at least much harsher lock ins to the "structure" -- today it might be called the "hegemony". But this particular quote by the author Pirsig is wrong even then. The jobs were not meaningless. And there is no "structure". That's magical fantasy. It's always men, us. We humans, men and women.

Test your skills, take the Typing Test.

Score (WPM) distribution for this quote. More.

Best scores for this typing test

Name WPM Accuracy
ltfigs 146.86 99.5%
doesho 144.99 99.7%
yayobrayo 143.53 96.8%
treemeister 142.57 97.3%
user939249 136.58 94.0%
practicebutt69 135.40 99.0%
alliekarakosta 134.68 97.5%
mundu 133.26 98.2%

Recently for

Name WPM Accuracy
qayss 65.30 89.3%
user95911 49.07 94.0%
tipanibalon6 31.74 92.2%
nik343 81.06 93.1%
user97360 63.97 88.9%
iltranscendent 89.20 93.8%
user76036 85.00 97.3%
ben.tomo.132 97.55 96.1%