Philip K. Dick Quotes

239 Sourced Quotes

That was my problem then and it's my problem now; I have a bad attitude. In a nutshell, I fear authority but at the same time I resent it — the authority and my own fear — so I rebel. And writing SF is a way to rebel. … SF is a rebellious art form and it needs writers and readers and bad attitudes — an attitude of "Why?" or "How come?" or "Who says?"

Philip K. Dick
People just have no criterion left to evaluate the importance of things. I think the only thing that would really affect people would be the announcement that the world was going to be blown up by the hydrogen bomb. I think that would really affect people. I think they would react to that. But outside of that, I don't think they would react to anything. "Peking has been wiped out by an earthquake, and the RTD — the bus strike is still on." And some guy says, "Damnit! I'll have to walk to work!"

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
In one of the most brilliant papers in the English language Hume made it clear that what we speak of as 'causality' is nothing more than the phenomenon of repetition. When we mix sulphur with saltpeter and charcoal we always get gunpowder. This is true of every event subsumed by a causal law — in other words, everything which can be called scientific knowledge. "It is custom which rules," Hume said, and in that one sentence undermined both science and philosophy.

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 … thereby it becomes its enemies.

Philip K. Dick
Do you have information that there's an android in the cast? I'd be glad to help you, and if I were an android would I be glad to help you?" "An android," he said, "doesn't care what happens to another android. That's one of the indications we look for." "Then," Miss Luft said, "you must be an android.

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
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
Crazy people do not apply the principle of scientific parsimony... they shoot for the baroque.

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
A psychologist said, They used to talk about seeing only 'reflections' of reality. Not reality itself. The main thing wrong with a reflection is not that it isn't real, but that it's reversed.

Philip K. Dick
We can travel anywhere we want, even to other planets. And for what? To sit day after day, declining in morale and hope. Falling into an interminable ennui.

Philip K. Dick
Are you an official of some kind? Like a greeter? Or from the L. A. Chamber of Commerce? I've had dealings with them and they're all right.
No, Buckman said. I'm an individual. Like you.

Philip K. Dick
We'll know homo superior when he comes — by definition. He'll be the one we won't be able to euth.

Philip K. Dick
It is futile to try to make the universe add up. But I guess we must go on anyhow.

Philip K. Dick
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
"You are certain you can keep the truth from her?"
"Sure," Ed said confidently. "I know I can."
"All right." The Old Man nodded slowly. "I will send you back. But you must tell no one." He swelled visibly. "Remember: you will eventually come back to me — everyone does, in the end — and your fate will not be enviable."

Philip K. Dick
A child of today can detect a lie quicker than the wisest adult of two decades ago. When I want to know what is true, I ask my children.

Philip K. Dick
An EEG of a person watching TV shows that after about half an hour the brain decides that nothing is happening, and it goes into a hypnoidal twilight state, emitting alpha waves. This is because there is such little eye motion.

Philip K. Dick
The highway construction truck tore up the street at forty miles an hour.

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

Philip K. Dick
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
The distinction between sanity and insanity is narrower than the 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
But what are you supposed to do in a society that's corrupt? Are you supposed to obey corrupt laws? Is it a crime to break a law that's a rotten law, or an oath that's rotten?
It's a crime, Cartwright admitted slowly. But it may be the right thing to do.
In a society of criminals, Shaeffer offered, the innocent man goes to jail.
Who decides when the society is made up of criminals? Benteley demanded. How do you know when your society has gone wrong? How do you know when it's right to stop obeying the laws?
You just know, Rita O'Neill said fiercely.

Philip K. Dick
Little kids are that way; they feel if their parents aren't watching what they do then what they do isn't real.

Philip K. Dick