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Philip K. Dick

225 quotes

“In the presence of the computer, he found himself becoming stupid.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What does it mean, insane? A legal definition. What do I mean? I feel it, see it, but what is it? It is something they do, something they are. It is their unconsciousness...Do they ignore parts of reality? Yes. But it is more. It is their plans...Their view; it is cosmic...They see through the here, the now, into the vast black deep beyond, the unchanging. And that is fatal to life. Because eventually there will be no life; there was once only the dust particles of space, the hot hydrogen gases, nothing more, and it will come again.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I was a child, I thought as a child. But now I have put away childish things. ... I must be scientific.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“(Insanity) is not hubris, not pride; it is inflation of the ego to its ultimate — confusion between him who worships and that which is worshipped. Man has not eaten God; God has eaten man.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Perhaps if you know you are insane then you are not insane.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whom the gods notice they destroy. Be small...and you will escape the jealousy of the great.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's the fault of those physicists and that synchronicity theory, every particle being connected with every other; you can't fart without changing the balance in the universe. It makes living a funny joke with nobody around to laugh. I open a book and get a report on future events that even God would like to file and forget. And who am I? The wrong person; I can tell you that.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Can anyone alter fate? All of us combined...or one great figure...or someone strategically placed, who happens to be in the right spot. Chance. Accident. And our lives, our world, hanging on it.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Little kids are that way; they feel if their parents aren't watching what they do then what they do isn't real.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This is an artifact and that was a relic. This is alive in the now, whereas that merely remained.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life is short. Art, or something not life, is long, stretching out endless, like concrete worm. Flat, white, unsmoothed by any passage over or across it. Here I stand. But no longer.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Are we to assist it in gaining power in order to save our lives? Is that the paradox of our earthly situation?”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To save one life, Mr. Tagomi had to take two. The logical, balanced mind cannot make sense of that. A kindly man like Mr. Tagomi could be driven insane by the implications of such reality.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have entered a Moment when we are alone. We cannot get assistance, as before. Well, Mr. Tagomi thought, perhaps that too is good. Or can be made good. One must still try to find the Way.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That is the artist's job: take mineral rock from dark silent earth, transform it into shining light-reflecting form from sky.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I feel the hot winds of karma driving me. Nevertheless I remain here. My training was correct: I must not shrink from the clear white light, for if I do, I will once more re-enter the cycle of birth and death, never knowing freedom, never obtaining release. The veil of maya will fall once more.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This hypnagogic condition. Attention-faculty diminished so that twilight state obtains; world seen merely in symbolic, archetypal aspect, totally confused with unconscious material.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I will never fully understand; that is the nature of such creatures. Or is this Inner Truth now, this that is happening to me? I will wait. I will see. Which it is. Perhaps it is both.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even if all life on our planet is destroyed, there must be other life somewhere which we know nothing of. It is impossible that ours is the only world; there must be world after world unseen by us, in some region or dimension that we simply do not perceive. Even though I can't prove that, even though it isn't logical — I believe it.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We do not have an ideal world, such as we would like, where morality is easy because cognition is easy. Where one can do right with no effort because he can detect the obvious.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“(Hawthorne Abendsen) told us about our own world. This, what's around us now. He wants us to see it for what it is. And I do, and more so each moment.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You're killing yourself with cynicism. Your idols got taken away from you one by one and now you have nothing to give your love to.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[Fiction] Appeals to the base lusts that hide in everyone no matter how respectable on the surface.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We can travel anywhere we want, even to other planets. And for what? To sit day after day, declining in morale and hope. Falling into an interminable ennui.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Dilemma of a civilized man; body mobilized but danger obscure.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is evil! It's actual, like cement.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There’s a law,” Chuck said, “which I call Rittersdorf’s Third Law of Diminished Returns, which states that proportional to how long you hold a job you imagine that it has progressively less and less importance in the scheme of things.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How come you didn’t recognize me?” Hentman said crossly. “Aren’t I world-famous? Or maybe you don’t watch TV.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Here, the enemy was not merely another group of human beings with a differing political persuasion; the enemy here was death.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But frankly—may I so speak?—your CIA people's theory strikes me as a miserable bundle of random suspicions, a few separate facts strung together by an intricate structure of ad hoc theorizing, in which everyone is credited with enormous powers for intrigue. A much simpler view can be entertained with more common sense, and as a CIA employee you must be aware that, like all intelligence agencies, it lacks the faculty of common sense.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hands in his pockets he began to walk aimlessly down the sidewalk runnel. And, each minute, feeling more and more scared and desperate. Everything was falling apart around him. And he seemed helpless to halt the collapse; he could only witness it, completely impotent, snatched up and gripped by processes too powerful for him to understand.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You must beware of seeing malice behind accidental injury.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hasn’t all this taught you anything?” Annette asked Gabriel Baines as they waited for the simulacrum's return and report. “Like what?” “That there is no perfect defense. There is no protection. Being alive means being exposed; it’s the nature of life to be hazardous—it’s the stuff of living.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Insanity — to have to construct a picture of one's life, by making inquiries of others.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'm not much, but I'm all I have.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So that’s that, Barney said to himself. I violated Rule One of career-oriented functioning: never tell your superior something he doesn’t want to hear.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“God,” Eldritch said, “promises eternal life. I can do better; I can deliver it.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You’re not just out of your body; you’re out of your mind, too.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It takes a certain amount of courage, he thought, to face yourself and say with candor, I’m rotten. I’ve done evil and I will again. It was no accident; it emanated from the true, authentic me.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We all make mistakes,” the cab said piously. “But some of us,” Barney said, “make fatal ones.” First about our loved ones, our wife and children, and then about our employer, he said to himself. The cab hummed on. And then, he said to himself, we make one last one. About our whole life, summing it all up. Whether to take a job with Eldritch or go into the service. And whichever we choose we can know this: It was the wrong alternative.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It’s not religious fervor; it’s just a mean, very cruel streak.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Isn’t a miserable reality better than the most interesting illusion? Or is it illusion, Barney? I don’t know anything about philosophy; you explain it to me because all I know is religious faith and that doesn’t equip me to understand this.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The time, then, had come for him to poison himself so that an economic monopoly could be kept alive, a sprawling, interplan empire from which he now derived nothing.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But an artist, he realized. Or rather so-called artist. Bohemian. That’s closer to it. The artistic life without the talent.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Isn’t there any way—” He broke off. Can’t the past be altered? he asked himself. Evidently not. Cause and effect work in only one direction, and change is real. So what’s gone is gone, and I might as well get out of here.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He glared at her. Women can get a man to do anything, he realized. Mother, wife, even employee; they twist us like hot little bits of thermoplastic.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That’s who I ought to call: Verne Engel. You know what I’d say to him? “You stupid bastard, does what you’re fighting for look so real now? Skin pigment. What a laugh! Why not eye color? Too bad nobody ever thought of that. It cuts it a little finer, but basically it’s the same thing. Okay, Verne, you get out there and die over the issue of upholding one certain eye color. Lots of luck.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And anyhow, he realized, none of us wants to start slaughtering the Peking people. It would be too much like the old days, back among our cave-dwelling ancestors. Back to their level. We must have grown out of that by now, he said to himself. And if we haven’t—what does it matter who wins?”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Obviously it’s impossible to do business with you Homo sapiens; you’re adept, polished liars.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Just what he hoped to see; just what the entire struggle has been about. How long it had been in coming…almost two centuries more than it should have taken. The mind of man was uncommonly stubborn and slow to change. Reformers, including himself, were always prone to forget that. Victory always seemed just around the corner. But generally it was not, after all.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source