Top 500 Philip K. Dick Quotes (2026 Update)
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451. “This guy – Joe whatever – hasn’t even got the right expression on his face; he should have that cold but somehow enthusiastic look, as if he believed in nothing and yet somehow had absolute faith.”

— Philip K. Dick

452. “And what good was a political strategist who couldn’t look ahead to his own death? Without that he would have been merely another Hitler, who didn’t want his country to survive him.”

— Philip K. Dick

453. “Caroline said, “She’s terribly, terribly disruptive.” “So is reality,” Hawthorne said.”

— Philip K. Dick

454. “God, they read a book, he thought, and they spout on forever.”

— Philip K. Dick

455. “How can justice fall victim, ever, to what is right?”

— Philip K. Dick

456. “Fat had phoned his pharmacy somewhere along the line to get a refill on his Librium prescription; he had taken thirty Librium just before taking the digitalis. The pharmacist had contacted the paramedics. 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

457. “I’ve read the Cosmic Trigger and Robert Anton Wilson says.”

— Philip K. Dick

458. “But change’s always harsh on the loser. Nothing new.”

— Philip K. Dick

459. “It meant that you were seeing into absolute reality. The essence beyond the mere appearance.” In your terminology, he thought, what you saw is called – stigmata.”

— Philip K. Dick

460. “Simple Shepherd Mortuary.”

— Philip K. Dick

461. “Going to the closet – it was the ancient-style manual variety – he hung up his coat.”

— Philip K. Dick

462. “A man is an angel that has become deranged, Joe Fernwright thought. Once they – all of them – had been genuine angels, and at that time they had had a choice between good and evil, so it was easy, easy being an angel. And then something happened. Something went wrong or broke down or failed. And they had become faced with the necessity of choosing not good or evil but the lesser of two evils, and so that had unhinged them and now each was a man.”

— Philip K. Dick

463. “But she looked – smaller. As if something in her had dwindled away, as if she had dried up. It was almost – age. Yet not quite. Could their separation have done this much damage? He doubted it. His wife, since he had seen her last, had become frail, and he did not like this; despite his animosity he felt concern.”

— Philip K. Dick

464. “The guilty, he reflected as he drove amid the heavy late-afternoon traffic as carefully as possible, may flee when no one pursues – he.”

— Philip K. Dick

465. “This bowl of milk, the pitch on yonder jar, are strange and far-bound travelers come from far.”

— Philip K. Dick

466. “Basically, Sherri’s idea had to do with bringing Fat’s mind down from the cosmic and the abstract to the particular. She had hatched out the practical notion that nothing is more real than a large World War Two Soviet tank.”

— Philip K. Dick

467. “A dream woke me,” Arctor said. “A religious dream. In it there was this huge clap of thunder, and all of a sudden the heavens rolled aside and God appeared and His voice rumbled at me-what the hell did He say?-oh yeah. ‘I am vexed with you, my son’ He said. He was scowling. I was shaking, in the dream, and looking up, and I said, ‘What’d I do now, Lord?’ And He said, ‘You left the cap off the toothpaste tube again.’ And then I realized it was my ex-wife.”

— Philip K. Dick

468. “I don’t believe in God,” Kevin said. “I believe in the Great Punta. And the ways of the Great Punta are mysterious. No one knows why he does what he does, or doesn’t do.” “Are you kidding me?” “No,” Kevin said. “Where did the Great Punta come from?” “Only the Great Punta knows.”

— Philip K. Dick

469. “We trust – I’ll tell you what we trust that fouls us up, Roy; it’s our goddamn superior intelligence!”

— Philip K. Dick

470. “Mercerism is a swindle.′ The whole experience of empathy is a swindle.”

— Philip K. Dick

471. “You will have to stop searching for me because l will never stop searching for you.”

— Philip K. Dick

472. “Nothing is true.”

— Philip K. Dick

473. “Insane people – psychologically defined, not legally define – are not in touch with reality.”

— Philip K. Dick

474. “The universe makes certain decisions and on the basis of these decisions some people live and some people die. This is a harsh law. But every creature yields to it out of necessity.”

— Philip K. Dick

475. “Typical of their mania for the trivial, their legalistic fascination with documents, proclamations, ads.”

— Philip K. Dick

476. “Without war the lower elements of mankind have increased all out of proportion. They threaten the educated few, those with scientific knowledge and training, the ones equipped to direct society. They have no regard for science or a scientific society, based on reason. And this Movement seeks to aid and abet them. Only when scientists are in full control can the –.”

— Philip K. Dick

477. “Look, Haley’s comet!”

— Philip K. Dick

478. “We cannot enter the monstrous schizophrenic morass of Nazi internecine intrigue; our minds cannot adapt.”

— Philip K. Dick

479. “Maybe, he pondered as he ascended the stairs, that’s my problem with Kathy. I can’t remember our combined past: can’t recall the days when we voluntarily lived with each other... now it’s become an involuntary arrangement, derived God knows how from the past.”

— Philip K. Dick

480. “Amazing, the power of fiction, even cheap popular fiction, to evoke.”

— Philip K. Dick

481. “A man driven by rage may stumble, in his passion, onto truth.”

— Philip K. Dick

482. “It is therapeutic to meet these people who have intimidated you. And to discover what they are really like. Then the intimidation goes.”

— Philip K. Dick

483. “Everything’s the same, when you break through to absolute reality; it’s all one vast blur.”

— Philip K. Dick

484. “Maybe there’s a machine in Berkeley that will save me, too. Perhaps my problems can be automated out of existence.”

— Philip K. Dick

485. “I mean, knowing people, people are terrified of the unknown and they want to just kill the unknown.”

— Philip K. Dick

486. “Tears began to surge up into her eyes, and she found herself doubling up her fists, with the thumbs inside, as she had done as a child; she felt her jaw wobble, and when she spoke her voice could hardly be heard.”

— Philip K. Dick

487. “In wretched little lives like that, someone must intervene. Or at least mark their sad comings and goings. Mark and if possible permanently record so they’ll be remembered. For a better day, later on, when people will understand.”

— Philip K. Dick

488. “It’s amazing the limitation of the human anatomy, the fact that food and air must share a common passage.”

— Philip K. Dick

489. “Being crazy and getting caught at it, out in the open, turns out to be a way to wind up in jail.”

— Philip K. Dick

490. “If this place were closer to Terra there’d be empty beer cans and plastic plates strewn around. The trees would be gone. There’d be old jet motors in the water. The beaches would stink to high heaven. Terran Development would have a couple of million little plastic houses set up everywhere.”

— Philip K. Dick

491. “He stopped to look around. Everything was silent.”

— Philip K. Dick

492. “Nobody should lead mankind. It should lead itself.”

— Philip K. Dick

493. “Having nothing else to do or think about, he began to work out theoretically the life cycle of the bugs, and, with the aid of the Britannica, try to determine specifically which bugs they were.”

— Philip K. Dick

494. “The Public School, he had long ago decided, was neurotic. It wanted a world in which nothing new came about, in which there were no surprises. And that was the world of the compulsive-obsessive neurotic; it was not a healthy world at all.”

— Philip K. Dick

495. “His projected face bony and intense, Garth peered out of his booth like an aroused turtle.”

— Philip K. Dick

496. “Worse still, he had failed to pass the minimum mental faculties test, which made him in popular parlance a chickenhead.”

— Philip K. Dick

497. “It was hell living in the twenty-first century. Information transfer had reached the velocity of light.”

— Philip K. Dick

498. “His thoughts,” Helio said, “are as clear as plastic to me, and mine likewise to him. We are both prisoners, Mister, in a hostile land.” At that Arnie laughed loud and long. “Truth always amuses the ignorant,” Helio said.”

— Philip K. Dick

499. “Emptiness. He saw no one, only a large chamber with pewlike rows of seats and, at the far end, a casket surrounded by flowers. Off in a small sideroom an old-fashioned reed pump organ and a few wooden folding chairs. The mortuary smelled of dust and flowers, a sweet, stale mixture that repelled him. Think of all the Iowans, the thought, who’ve embraced eternity in this listless room.”

— Philip K. Dick

500. “Dr. Leon Stone turned out to be one of the most important people in Horselover Fat’s life. To get to Stone, Fat had to nearly kill himself physically, matching his mental death. Is this what they mean about God’s mysterious ways? How else could Fat have linked up with Leon Stone? Only some dismal act of the order of a suicide attempt, a truly lethal attempt, would have achieved it; Fat had to die, or nearly die, to be cured. Or nearly cured.”

— Philip K. Dick