Top 500 Philip K. Dick Quotes (2025 Update)
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451. “Retrograde time is forward time which has passed the turning point; then as it turns back it is freighted with the load of accumulated knowledge. It is information rich. Logically, then, in its retrograde tracking, it would divest itself of its knowledge: teach rather than learn, so that when it arrived at the other end, it would be information poor, even info empty.”

— Philip K. Dick

452. “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

453. “Nothing is true.”

— Philip K. Dick

454. “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

455. “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

456. “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

457. “I had a lot of fears that the universe would discover just how different I was from it.”

— Philip K. Dick

458. “The little man with beard and glasses leaped up. ‘There’s nobody here has anything to do with governments! We’re all good people!”

— Philip K. Dick

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

— Philip K. Dick

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

— Philip K. Dick

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

— Philip K. Dick

462. “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

463. “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

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

— Philip K. Dick

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

— Philip K. Dick

466. “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

467. “Most self-indulgent of all Nazis, and is in sharp contrast to late H. Himmler, who lived in personal want at low salary. Herr Goring representative of spoils mentality, using power as means of acquiring personal wealth. Primitive mentality, even vulgar, but quite intelligent man, possibly most intelligent of all Nazi chiefs. Object of his drives: self-glorification in ancient emperor fashion.”

— Philip K. Dick

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

— Philip K. Dick

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

— Philip K. Dick

470. “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

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

— Philip K. Dick

472. “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

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

— Philip K. Dick

474. “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

475. “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

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

— Philip K. Dick

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

— Philip K. Dick

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

— Philip K. Dick

479. “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

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

— Philip K. Dick

481. “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

482. “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

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

— Philip K. Dick

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

— Philip K. Dick

485. “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

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

— Philip K. Dick

487. “Parcifal is one of those corkscrew artifact of culture in which you get the subjective sense that you’ve learned something from it, something valuable or even priceless; but on closer inspection you suddenly begin to scratch your head and say “Wait a minute. This makes no sense.”

— Philip K. Dick

488. “Guilt is useless. The world torments us, and we react by tormenting ourselves. I wonder how we can ever have such a low opinion of ourselves that we join in.”

— Philip K. Dick

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

— Philip K. Dick

490. “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

491. “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

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

— Philip K. Dick

493. “It sounds like they’re saying passive life is good, he thought. But there is no such thing as passive life. That’s a contradiction.”

— Philip K. Dick

494. “It was a brilliant idea and the only idea that could have worked. Up above, on the ruined, blasted surface of what had once been a living planet, the leady crawled and scurried, and fought Man’s war. And undersurface, in the depths of the planet, human beings toiled endlessly to produce the weapons to continue the fight, month by month, year by year.”

— Philip K. Dick

495. “And who am I? The wrong person; I can tell you that.”

— Philip K. Dick

496. “There was one, a Mr. Omuro, who had bought control of a great area of rental property in downtown San Francisco, and who for a time had been Frank’s landlord. There was a bad apple, he thought. A shark who had never made repairs, had partitioned rooms smaller and smaller, raised rents.”

— Philip K. Dick

497. “Oh no,” she said, still smiling; her eyes poured over with light, that of compassion. She understood how he felt, that this was not an impulse only. But the answer was still no, and, he knew, it would always.”

— Philip K. Dick

498. “Subordinate of H. Himmler, may have played role in Himmler’s not yet fully explained death in 1948.”

— Philip K. Dick

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

— Philip K. Dick

500. “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