Top 500 Philip K. Dick Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “In my writing I even question the universe; I wonder out loud if it is real, and I wonder out loud if all of us are real.”

— Philip K. Dick

52. “The Logos was both that which thought, and the thing which it thought: thinker and thought together. The universe, then, is thinker and thought, and since we are part of it, we as humans are, in the final analysis, thoughts of and thinkers of those thoughts.”

— Philip K. Dick

53. “The greatest power one human being can exert over others is to control their perceptions of reality, and infringe on the integrity and individuality of their world. This is done in politics, in psychotherapy.”

— Philip K. Dick

54. “Strange how paranoia can link up with reality now and then.”

— Philip K. Dick

55. “Matter is plastic in the face of Mind.”

— Philip K. Dick

56. “Dilemma of civilized man; body mobilized, but danger obscure.”

— Philip K. Dick

57. “But we cannot do it all at once; it is a sequence. An unfolding process. We can only control the end by making a choice at each step.”

— Philip K. Dick

58. “Fish cannot carry guns.”

— Philip K. Dick

59. “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

60. “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

61. “What is possible and what is not possible is not objectively known but is, rather, a subjective belief on the part of the author and of the reader.”

— Philip K. Dick

62. “In a one-party system there is always a landslide.”

— Philip K. Dick

63. “Skill is a function of chance. It’s an intuitive best-use of chance situations.”

— Philip K. Dick

64. “It is amazing that when someone else spouts the nonsense you yourself believe you can readily perceive it as nonsense.”

— Philip K. Dick

65. “I like her; I could watch her the rest of my life. She has breasts that smile.”

— Philip K. Dick

66. “He felt all at once like an ineffectual moth, fluttering at the windowpane of reality, dimly seeing it from outside.”

— Philip K. Dick

67. “The horse-shoe nail. Remember the old poem? ‘For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of the shoe the horse was lost. For want of the horse the rider was lost. For want –.”

— Philip K. Dick

68. “We live in a society where detachment is almost essential.”

— Philip K. Dick

69. “We are all sleeping avatars of God, with amnesia.”

— Philip K. Dick

70. “Everything is true Everything anybody has ever thought.”

— Philip K. Dick

71. “I have seen myself backward.”

— Philip K. Dick

72. “And of course, in my writing, there is the constant theme of music, love of, preoccupation with, music. Music is the single thread making my life into a coherency.”

— Philip K. Dick

73. “No matter how long a log stays in the water, it doesn’t become a crocodile.”

— Philip K. Dick

74. “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

75. “Just because something bears the aspect of the inevitable one should not, therefore, go along willingly with it.”

— Philip K. Dick

76. “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

77. “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

78. “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

79. “Giving me a a new idea is like handing a cretin a gun, but I do thank you anyhow, bang bang.”

— Philip K. Dick

80. “So books are real to me, too; they link me not just with other minds but with the vision of other minds, what those minds understand and see. I see their worlds as well as I see my own.”

— Philip K. Dick

81. “No one can win against kipple,” he said, “except temporarily and maybe in one spot, like in my apartment I’ve sort of created a stasis between the pressure of kipple and nonkipple, for the time being. But eventually I’ll die or go away, and then the kipple will again take over. It’s a universal principle operating throughout the universe; the entire universe is moving toward a final state of total, absolute kippleization.”

— Philip K. Dick

82. “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

83. “Fat realized that one of two possibilities existed and only two; either Dr. Stone was totally insane – not just insane but totally so – or else in an artful, professional fashion he had gotten Fat to talk; he had drawn Fat out and now knew that Fat was totally insane.”

— Philip K. Dick

84. “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

85. “Either I’ve invented a whole new logic or, ahem, I’m not playing with a full deck.”

— Philip K. Dick

86. “The trouble with being educated is that it takes a long time; it uses up the better part of your life and when you are finished what you know is that you would have benefited more by going into banking.”

— Philip K. Dick

87. “Every time I see a picture of Stalin I look him square in the eye and I say: You’re a meat eater, Joseph.”

— Philip K. Dick

88. “Can we consider the universe real, and if so, in what way?”

— Philip K. Dick

89. “Jump in the urinal and stand on your head. I’m the one that’s alive. You’re all dead.”

— Philip K. Dick

90. “If I’d known it was harmless, I’d have killed it myself!”

— Philip K. Dick

91. “For each person there is a sentence – a series of words – which has the power to destroy them.”

— Philip K. Dick

92. “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

93. “Objective reality is a synthetic construct, dealing with a hypothetical universalization of a multitude of subjective realities.”

— Philip K. Dick

94. “To inspire himself, he lit up a marijuana cigarette, excellent Land-O-Smiles brand.”

— Philip K. Dick

95. “Ubik... Safe when taken as directed.”

— Philip K. Dick

96. “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

97. “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

98. “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

99. “Sometimes I wish I knew how to go crazy. I forget how.”

— Philip K. Dick

100. “The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.”

— Philip K. Dick