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When one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion.
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This is attributed to Pirsig by Richard Dawkins in the Preface to The God Delusion (2006), p. 28, but cannot be found prior to that and may be a paraphrase of some statement of Pirsig or someone else, perhaps derived from the famous Aphorism 156 of Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: Madness is something rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, peoples, ages it is the rule.

 

Robert M. Pirsig

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