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Category: mechanics
Quotes of Category: mechanics
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  1. Robert M. Pirsig _ Zen and the Art of Motorcycle

    The machine itself receives some of the same feelings. With over 27,000 on it it's getting to be something of a high-miler, and old-timer, although there are plenty of older ones running. But over the miles, and I think most cyclists will agree with this, you pick up certain feelings about an individual machine that are unique for that one individual machine and no other. A friend who owns a cycle of the same make, model and even same year brought it over for a repair, and when I test rode it afterward it was hard to believe it had come from the same factory years ago. You could see that long ago it had settled into its own kind of feel and ride and sound, completely different from mine. No worse, but different.I suppose you could call that a personality. Each machine has its own, unique personality which probably could be defined as the intuitive sum total of everything you know and feel about it. This personality constantly changes, usually for the worse, but sometimes surprisingly for the better, and it is the personality that is the real object of motorcycle maintenance. The new ones start out as good-looking strangers, and depending on how they are treated, degenerate rapidly into bad-acting grouches or even cripples, or else turn into healthy, good-natured, long-lasting friends.
    book-quotedifferencesphilosophymechanics

  2. Robert M. Pirsig _ Zen and the Art of Motorcycle

    Finally, if you're as exasperated as I am by the parts problem and have some money to invest, you can take up the really fascinating hobby of machining your own parts. {...} With the welding equipment you can build up worn surfaces with better than original metal and then machine it back to tolerance with carbide tools. {...} If you can't do the job directly you can always make something that do it. The work of machining a part is very slow, and some parts, such as ball bearings, you're never going to machine, but you'd be amazed at how you can modify parts designs so that you can make them with your equipment, and the work isn't nearly a slow or frustrating as a wait for some smirking parts man to send away to the factory. And the work is gumption , not gumption destroying. To run a cycle with parts in it you've made yourself gives you a special feeling you can't possibly get from strictly store-bought parts.
    book-quotemechanicsmotorcyclesdo-it-yourself

  3. Robert M. Pirsig _ Zen and the Art of Motorcycle

    It should be inserted here parenthetically that there's a school of mechanical thought which says I shouldn't getting into a complex assembly I don't know anything about. I should have training or leave the job to a specialist. Thats a self-serving school of mechanical eliteness I'd like to see wiped out. {...} You're at a disadvantage the first time around it may cost you a little more because of parts you accidentally damage, and it will almost undoubtedly take a lot more time, but the next time around you're way ahead of the specialist. You, with gumption, have learned the assembly the hard way and you've a whole set of good feelings about it that he's unlikely to have.
    book-quotemechanicsmotorcyclesmotorcycle-maintenance

  4. Robert M. Pirsig _ Zen and the Art of Motorcycle

    That's all the motorcycle is, a system of concepts worked out in steel. There's no part in it, no shape in it, that is not out of someone's mind {...} I've noticed that people who have never worked with steel have trouble seeing this-that the motorcycle is primarily a mental phenomenon. They associate metal with given shapes-pipes, rods, girders, tools, parts-all of them fixed and inviolable., and think of it as primarily physical. But a person who does machining or foundry work or forger work or welding sees "steel" as having no shape at all. Steel can be any shape you want if you are skilled enough, and any shape but the one you want if you are not. Shapes, like this tappet, are what you arrive at, what you give to the steel. Steel has no more shape than this old pile of dirt on the engine here. These shapes are all of someone's mind. That's important to see. The steel? Hell, even the steel is out of someone's mind. There's no steel in nature. Anyone from the Bronze Age could have told you that. All nature has is a potential for steel. There's nothing else there.
    book-quotephilosophymechanicsmotorcycles

  5. Robert M. Pirsig _ Zen and the Art of Motorcycle

    You can reduce your anxiety somewhat by facing the fact that there isn't a mechanic alive who doesn't louse up a job once in a while. The main difference between you and the commercial mechanics is that when they do it you don't hear about it-just pay for it, in additional costs prorated through all your bills. When you make the mistakes yourself, you at least get the benefit of some education."
    book-quotemechanicsmotorcycle-maintenancelearning-from-mistakes

  6. Robert M. Pirsig _ Zen and the Art of Motorcycle

    On any mechanical repair job ego comes in for rough treatment. You're always being fooled, you're always making mistakes, and a mechanic who has a big ego to defend is at a terrific disadvantage. If you know enough mechanics to think of them as a group, and your observations coincide with mine, I think you'll agree that mechanics tend to be rather modest and quiet. There are exceptions, but generally if they're not quiet and modest at first, the works seems to make them that way. And skeptical. Attentive, but skeptical. But not egotistic. There's no way to bullshit your way into looking good on a mechanical repair job, except with someone who doesn't know what you're doing.
    book-quotemechanicsmotorcycle-maintenancetechnicians

  7. Robert M. Pirsig _ Zen and the Art of Motorcycle

    You can reduce your anxiety somewhat by facing the fact that there isn't a mechanic alive who doesn't louse up a job once in a while. The main difference between you and the commercial mechanics is that when they do it you don't hear about it-just pay for it, in additional costs prorated through all your bills. When you make the mistakes yourself, you at least get the benefit of some education.
    book-quotemechanicsmotorcycle-maintenancelearning-from-mistakes

  8. Robert M. Pirsig _ Zen and the Art of Motorcycle

    On any mechanical repair job ego comes in for rough treatment. You're always being fooled, you're always making mistakes, and a mechanic who has a big ego to defend is at a terrific disadvantage. If you know enough mechanics to think of them as a group, and your observations coincide with mine, I think you'll agree that mechanics tend to be rather modest and quiet. There are exceptions, but generally if they're not quiet and modest at first, the works seems to make them that way. And skeptical. Attentive, but skeptical. But not egotistic. There's no way to bullshit your way into looking good on a mechanical repair job, except with someone who doesn't know what you're doing."
    book-quotemechanicsmotorcycle-maintenancetechnicians

  9. Alexander McCall Smith _ Morality for Beautiful Girls

    Africa will get nowhere until we have mechanics... Mechanics are the first stone in the building. Then there are other people on top. Doctors. Nurses. Teachers. But the whole thing is built on mechanics. That is why it is important to teach young people to be mechanics.
    book-quotemechanics
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