Top 500 Philip K. Dick Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.”

— Philip K. Dick

Featured in: Crazy Quotes

2. “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”

— Philip K. Dick

Featured in: Truth Quotes, Quotes About Reality

3. “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 them.”

— Philip K. Dick

4. “If you think this Universe is bad, you should see some of the others.”

— Philip K. Dick

5. “I’m not much but I’m all I have.”

— Philip K. Dick

6. “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

7. “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

8. “Many men talk like philosophers and live like fools.”

— Philip K. Dick

9. “Reality is just a point of view.”

— Philip K. Dick

10. “Truth, she thought. As terrible as death. But harder to find.”

— Philip K. Dick

11. “The problem with introspection is that it has no end.”

— Philip K. Dick

12. “Everything in life is just for a while.”

— Philip K. Dick

13. “When you are crazy you learn to keep quiet.”

— Philip K. Dick

14. “Don’t try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.”

— Philip K. Dick

15. “A man is an angel that has gone deranged.”

— Philip K. Dick

16. “Where there’s dope, there’s hope!”

— Philip K. Dick

17. “I’m tired and I want to rest; I want to get out of this and go lie down somewhere, off where it’s dark and no one speaks. Forever.”

— Philip K. Dick

18. “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

19. “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

20. “In a society of criminals, the innocent man goes to jail.”

— Philip K. Dick

21. “There is no route out of the maze. The maze shifts as you move through it, because it is alive.”

— Philip K. Dick

22. “It’s easy to win. Anybody can win.”

— Philip K. Dick

23. “Reality denied comes back to haunt.”

— Philip K. Dick

24. “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

25. “The bird is gone, and in what meadow does it now sing?”

— Philip K. Dick

26. “The Empire is the institution, the codification, of derangement; it is insane and imposes its insanity on us by violence, since its nature is a violent one.”

— Philip K. Dick

27. “When two people dream the same dream, it ceases to be an illusion.”

— Philip K. Dick

28. “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

29. “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

30. “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

31. “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

32. “What constitutes the authentic human being?”

— Philip K. Dick

33. “How much of what we call ‘reality’ is actually out there or rather within our own head?”

— Philip K. Dick

34. “Maybe each human being lives in a unique world, a private world, a world different from those inhabited and experienced by all other humans.”

— Philip K. Dick

35. “My schedule for today lists a six-hour self-accusatory depression.”

— Philip K. Dick

36. “Fear can make you do more wrong than hate or jealousy. If you’re afraid you don’t commit yourself to life completely; fear makes you always, always hold something back. You shouldn’t be alone. It’s killing you; it’s undermining you. All the time, every day, you should be somewhere with people.”

— Philip K. Dick

37. “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

38. “Certainly it constitutes bad news when the people who agree with you are buggier than batshit.”

— Philip K. Dick

39. “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

40. “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

41. “Perhaps if you know you are insane then you are not insane. Or you are becoming sane, finally.”

— Philip K. Dick

42. “I’d like to see you move up to the goat class, where I think you belong.”

— Philip K. Dick

43. “The church of my choice is the free, open world.”

— Philip K. Dick

44. “Emigrate or Degenerate.”

— Philip K. Dick

45. “Those who refused to respond to new stimulus would perish. Adapt or perish.”

— Philip K. Dick

46. “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

47. “To live is to be haunted.”

— Philip K. Dick

48. “There are no private lives. This a most important aspect of modern life. One of the biggest transformations we have seen in our society is the diminution of the sphere of the private. We must reasonably now all regard the fact that there are no secrets and nothing is private. Everything is public.”

— Philip K. Dick

49. “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

50. “Writing is a lonely way of life. You shut yourself up in your study and work and work.”

— Philip K. Dick