110+ Philip K. Dick Quotes (Imaginative, Dystopian And Surreal)

Philip K. Dick was an American writer best known for his science fiction works. He wrote 44 novels and 121 short stories, many of which were adapted into films such as Blade Runner, Total Recall, and Minority Report. His works often explored philosophical, social, and political themes, questioning the nature of reality and identity.

Top 10 Philip K. Dick Quotes

1. The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.
2. It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.
3. Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
4. There is no route out of the maze. The maze shifts as you move through it, because it is alive.
5. Reality denied comes back to haunt.
6. Don't try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.
7. If you think this Universe is bad, you should see some of the others.
8. I'm not much but I'm all I have.
9. The problem with introspection is that it has no end.
10. This, to me, is the ultimately heroic trait of ordinary people; they say no to the tyrant and they calmly take the consequences of this resistance.

Philip K. Dick Image Quotes

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. — Philip K. Dick

Reality denied comes back to haunt. — Philip K. Dick

Philip K. Dick Short Quotes

• Strange how paranoia can link up with reality now and then.
• In a society of criminals, the innocent man goes to jail.
• Where there's dope, there's hope!
• Reality is whatever refuses to go away when I stop believing in it.
• No matter how long a log stays in the water, it doesn't become a crocodile.
• I like her; I could watch her the rest of my life. She has breasts that smile.
• Activity does not necessarily mean life.
• The will to believe chases out the rational mind, whenever and wherever the two come into conflict.
• Madness has its own dynamism. It just goes on.
• In a one-party system there is always a landslide.

Philip K. Dick Famous Quotes And Sayings

The true measure of a man is not his intelligence or how high he rises in this freak establishment. No, the true measure of a man is this: how quickly can he respond to the needs of others and how much of himself he can give. — Philip K. Dick

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. — Philip K. Dick

Reality denied comes back to haunt. — Philip K. Dick

The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Parmenides taught that the only things that are real are things which never change... and the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus taught that everything changes. If you superimpose their two views, you get this result: Nothing is real. — Philip K. Dick

There exists, for everyone, a sentence - a series of words - that has the power to destroy you. Another sentence exists, another series of words, that could heal you. If you're lucky you will get the second, but you can be certain of getting the first. — Philip K. Dick

You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe. — Philip K. Dick

The distinction between sanity and insanity is narrower than a razor’s edge, sharper than a hound’s tooth, more agile than a mule deer. It is more elusive than the merest phantom. Perhaps it does not even exist; perhaps it is a phantom. — Philip K. Dick

The odd thing in this world is that an eager-beaver type, with no original ideas, who mimes those in authority above him right to the last twist of necktie and scrape of chin, always gets noticed. Gets selected. Rises. — Philip K. Dick

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

The mentally disturbed do not employ the Principle of Scientific Parsimony: the most simple theory to explain a given set of facts. They shoot for the baroque. — Philip K. Dick

Activity does not necessarily mean life. Quasars are active. And a monk meditating is not inanimate. — Philip K. Dick

No structure, even an artificial one, enjoys the process of entropy. It is the ultimate fate of everything, and everything resists it. — Philip K. Dick

No man is infinitely strong; for every creature that runs, flies, hops or crawls there is a terminal nemesis which he will not circumvent, which will finally do him in. — Philip K. Dick

God is dead,' Nick said. 'They found his carcass in 2019. Floating in space near Alpha.' 'They found the remains of an organism advanced several thousand times over what we are,' Charley said. 'And evidently could create habitable worlds and populate them with living organisms, derived from itself. But that doesn't prove it was God. — Philip K. Dick

It really seems to me that in the midst of great tragedy, there is always the horrible possibility that something terribly funny will happen. — Philip K. Dick

(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

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

A lot can be said for the infinite mercies of God, but the smarts of a good pharmacist, when you get down to it, is worth more. — Philip K. Dick

We are in a maze which we built, and then we fell into, now can't get out. To make the game into something real, something more than merely an intellectual exercise, we elected to lose our exceptional faculties, to reduce us an entire level. This unfortunately, includes a loss of memory. — Philip K. Dick

Each of us assumes everyone else knows what HE is doing. They all assume we know what WE are doing. We don't...Nothing is going on and nobody knows what it is. Nobody is concealing anything except the fact that he does not understand anything anymore and wishes he could go home. — Philip K. Dick

Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error of judgment. — Philip K. Dick

It has been said of dreams that they are a 'controlled psychosis,' or, put another way, a psychosis is a dream breaking through during waking hours. — Philip K. Dick

Empathy, he once had decided, must be limited to herbivores or anyhow omnivores who could depart from a meat diet. Because,ultimately, the empathic gift blurred the boundaries between hunter and victim, between the successful and the defeated. — Philip K. Dick

This is a mournful discovery. 1)Those who agree with you are insane 2)Those who do not agree with you are in power. — Philip K. Dick

He felt all at once like an ineffectual moth, fluttering at the windowpane of reality, dimly seeing it from outside. — Philip K. Dick

You know what the doctor said to me to cheer me up?" Fat said. "There are worse diseases than cancer." "Did he show you slides?" We both laughed. When you are nearly crazy with grief, you laugh at what you can. — Philip K. Dick

It is amazing that when someone else spouts the nonsense you yourself believe you can readily perceive it as nonsense — Philip K. Dick

The real origin of science fiction lay in the seventeeth-century novels of exploration in fabulous lands. Therefore Jules Verne's story of travel to the moon is not science fiction because they go by rocket but because of where they go. It would be as much science fiction if they went by rubber band. — Philip K. Dick

I must admit that the existence of Disneyland (which I know is real) proves that we are not living in Judaea in 50 AD. . . . Saint Paul would never go near Disneyland. Only children, tourists, and visiting Soviet high officials ever go to Disneyland. Saints do not. — Philip K. Dick

What a tragic realm this is, he reflected. Those down here are prisoners, and the ultimate tragedy is that they don't know it; they think they are free because they have never been free, and do not understand what it means. — Philip K. Dick

People have told me that everything about me, every facet of my life, psyche, experiences, dreams, and fears, are laid out explicitly in my writing, that from the corpus of my work I can be absolutely and precisely inferred. This is true. — Philip K. Dick

When he turned on the tape-transport once more, Arctor was saying, "-- as near as I can figure out, God is dead." Luckman answered, "I didn't know He was sick. — Philip K. Dick

I think great art should play a part in the ordinary man's life, don't you? It can make his existence so much richer and more meaningful. — Philip K. Dick

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

You're - psychotic. There's something wrong with you." "I know," Benteley agreed. "I'm a sick man. And the more I see, the sicker I get. I'm so sick I think everybody else is sick and I'm the only healthy person. That's pretty bad off, isn't it? — Philip K. Dick

If the last to know he’s an addict is the addict, then maybe the last to know when a man means what he says is the man himself, he reflected. — Philip K. Dick

He started keeping a journal - had been, in fact, secretly doing so for some time: the furtive act of a deranged person. — Philip K. Dick

Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can't talk about science, because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful. — Philip K. Dick

The wisest people are the clowns, like Harpo Marx, who would not speak. If I could have anything I want I would like God to listen to what Harpo was not saying, and understand why Harpo would not talk. — Philip K. Dick

I guess that's the story of life: what you most fear never happens, but what you most yearn for never happens either. This is the difference between life and fiction. I suppose it's a good trade-off. But I'm not sure. — Philip K. Dick

Dilemma of civilized man; body mobilized, but danger obscure. — Philip K. Dick

The person I am now, compared with the person in the dream, has been baffled and defeated and only supposes he enjoys a full life. In the dreams, I see what a full life really consists of, and it is not what I really have. — Philip K. Dick

...the essence of the evil government is that it anticipates bad conduct on the part of its citizens. Any government which assumes that the population is going to do something evil has already lost its franchise to govern. — Philip K. Dick

The frogs hopping indoors agree that we are on a prison planet. They themselves are frog criminals that were convicted of doing frog crimes. — Philip K. Dick

Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. — Philip K. Dick

Certainly it constitutes bad news if the people who agree with you are buggier than batshit. — Philip K. Dick

Maybe I'll go where I can see stars, he said to himself as the car gained velocity and altitude; it headed away from San Francisco, toward the uninhabited desolation to the north. To the place where no living thing would go. Not unless it felt that the end had come. — Philip K. Dick

The hell with the newspapers. Nobody reads the letters to the editor column except the nuts. It's enough to get you down. — Philip K. Dick

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

On some other world, possibly it is different. Better. There are clear good and evil alternatives. Not these obscure admixtures, these blends, with no proper tool by which to untangle the components. — Philip K. Dick

The inanity of her remark infuriated him. 'Good grief don't you understand Janet? At this point I'm thoroughly delusional. I'm as mentally ill as it's possible to be. It's incredible that I can communicate with you at all. It's a credit to my ego-strength that I'm not at this point totally autistic. — Philip K. Dick

In a civil war… every side is wrong. It’s hopeless to try to untangle it. Everyone is a victim. — Philip K. Dick

A weird time in which we are alive. We can travel anywhere we want, even to other planets. And for what? To sit day after day, declining in morale and hope. — Philip K. Dick

One thing I've found that I can do that I really enjoy is rereading my own writing, earlier stories and novels especially. It induces mental time travel, the same way certain songs you hear on the radio do ... the whole thing returns, an eerie feeling that I'm sure you've experienced. — Philip K. Dick

Life in Anaheim, California, was a commercial for itself, endlessly replayed. Nothing changed; it just spread out farther and farther in the form of neon ooze. What there was always more of had been congealed into permanence long ago, as if the automatic factory that cranked out these objects had jammed in the on position. — Philip K. Dick

The unconscious is selective, when it learns what to listen for. — Philip K. Dick

When I believe, I am crazy. When I don’t believe, I suffer psychotic depression. — Philip K. Dick

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

All responsible writers, to some degree, have become involuntary criers of doom, because doom is in the wind — Philip K. Dick

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

I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards. — Philip K. Dick

They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one after another of them being killed--run over, maimed, destroyed--but they continued to play anyhow. — Philip K. Dick

In this dark world where he now dwelt, ugly things and surprising things and once in a long while a tiny wondrous thing spilled out at him constantly; he could count on nothing. — Philip K. Dick

I'm a strange person. Sometimes I hardly know what I'm going to do or say next. Sometimes I seem a stranger to myself. Sometimes what I do surprises me and I can't understand why I do it. — Philip K. Dick

You must beware of seeing malice behind accidental injury. — Philip K. Dick

Insanity - to have to construct a picture of one's life, by making inquiries of others. — Philip K. Dick

The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. I you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words. — Philip K. Dick

Death hides within every religion. And at any time it can flash forth-not with healing in its wings but with poison, with that which wounds. — Philip K. Dick

I never liked the idea of doing what a machine says. I hate having to salute something built in a factory. — Philip K. Dick

In a nutshell-I fear authority but at the same time I resent it-the authority and my own fear. So I rebel. — Philip K. Dick

A man is an angel that has gone deranged. — Philip K. Dick

You mean old books?" "Stories written before space travel but about space travel." "How could there have been stories about space travel before --" "The writers," Pris said, "made it up. — Philip K. Dick

Those who refused to respond to the new stimulus would perish. Adapt or perish. — Philip K. Dick

The bird is gone, and in what meadow does it now sing? — Philip K. Dick

Sometimes one must try anything, it is no disgrace. On the contrary, it is a sign of wisdom. — Philip K. Dick

Maybe each human being lives in a unique world, a private world different from those inhabited and experienced by all other humans. . . If reality differs from person to person, can we speak of reality singular, or shouldn't we really be talking about plural realities? And if there are plural realities, are some more true (more real) than others? — Philip K. Dick

How undisturbed, the sleep of the foolish. — Philip K. Dick

My major preoccupation is the question, 'What is reality ?' Many of my stories and novels deal with psychotic states or drug-induced states by which I can present the concept of a multiverse rather than a universe. Music and sociology are themes in my novels, also radical political trends; in particular I've written about fascism and my fear of it. — Philip K. Dick

Because today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups... So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing. — Philip K. Dick

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

Sometimes I wish I knew how to go crazy. I forget how. — Philip K. Dick

Imagine being sentient but not alive. Seeing and even knowing, but not alive. Just looking out. Recognizing but not being alive. A person can die and still go on. Sometimes what looks out at you from a person's eyes maybe died back in childhood. — Philip K. Dick

The church of my choice is the free, open world. — Philip K. Dick

To fight the Empire is to be infected by its derangement.... Whoever defeats the Empire becomes the Empire; it proliferates like a virus. — Philip K. Dick

I never felt like that before. Maybe it could be depression, like you get. I can understand how you suffer now when you're depressed; I always thought you liked it and I thought you could have snapped yourself out any time, if not alone then my means of the mood organ. But when you get that depressed you don't care. Apathy, because you've lose a sense of worth. It doesn't matter whether you feel better because you have no worth. — Philip K. Dick

Don't never participate in no bad scenes, he reminded himself; that was his motto in life. — Philip K. Dick

I did not tell Fat this, but technically he had become a Buddha. It did not seem to me like a good idea to let him know. After all, if you are a Buddha you should be able to figure it out for yourself. — Philip K. Dick

The day came. The wrath descended. Sin, guilt, and retribution? The manic psychoses of those entities we referred to as states, institutions, systems - the powers, the thrones, the dominations - the things which perpetually merge with men and emerge from them? Our darkness, externalized and visible? However you look upon these matters, the critical point was reached. The wrath descended. — Philip K. Dick

Any given man sees only a tiny portion of the total truth, and very often, in fact almost ... perpetually, he deliberately deceives himself about that little precious fragment as well. — Philip K. Dick

When two people dream the same dream, it ceases to be an illusion. — Philip K. Dick

Can we consider the universe real, and if so, in what way? — Philip K. Dick

Just because something bears the aspect of the inevitable one should not, therefore, go along willingly with it. — Philip K. Dick

Life Lessons by Philip K. Dick

1. Philip K. Dick's works often explore the ideas of identity, reality, and the power of technology, emphasizing the importance of questioning and challenging accepted truths.
2. He encourages us to think outside the box and to be open to new possibilities, while also reminding us to stay grounded in reality and be aware of the consequences of our actions.
3. Through his stories, he teaches us to be mindful of our own beliefs and to be critical of the world around us, in order to create a better future.