Philip K. Dick - Man Quotes

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Dilemma of a civilized man; body mobilized but danger obscure.

Philip K. Dick
A human being without the proper empathy or feeling is the same as an android built so as to lack it, either by design or mistake. We mean, basically, someone who does not care about the
fate which his fellow living creatures fall victim to; he stands detached, a spectator, acting out by his indifference John Donne's theorem that "No man is an island," but giving that
theorem a twist: that which is a mental and a moral island is not a man.

Philip K. Dick
The tragedy in his life already existed. To love an atmospheric spirit. That was the real sorrow. Hopelessness itself. Nowhere on the printed page, nowhere in the annals of man, would her name appear: no local habitation, no name. There are girls like that, he thought, and those you love most, the ones where there is no hope because it has eluded you at the very moment you close your hands around it.

Philip K. Dick
I think great art should play a part in the ordinary man's life, don't you? It can make his existence so much richer and more meaningful.

Philip K. Dick
No man is infinitely strong; for every creature that runs, flies, hops or crawls there is a terminal nemesis which he will not circumvent, which will finally do him in.

Philip K. Dick
Insanity is not hubris, not pride; it is inflation of the ego to its ultimate — confusion between him who worships and that which is worshiped. Man has not eaten God; God has eaten man.

Philip K. Dick
Can any of us fix anything? No. None of us can do that. We're specialized. Each one of us has his own line, his own work. I understand my work, you understand yours. The tendency in evolution is toward greater and greater specialization. Man's society is an ecology that forces adaptation to it. Continued complexity makes it impossible for us to know anything outside our own personal field — I can't follow the work of the man sitting at the next desk over from me. Too much knowledge has piled up in each field. And there are too many fields.

Philip K. Dick
It's a downer to tell anything to a kid. I once had a kid ask me, What was it like to see the first automobile? Shit, man, I was born in 1962.

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
Forty-two. His age had astounded him for years, and each time that he had sat so astounded, trying to figure out what had become of the young, slim man in his twenties, a whole additional year slipped by and had to be recorded, a continually growing sum which he could not reconcile with his self-image. He still saw himself, in his mind's eye, as youthful, and when he caught sight of himself in photographs he usually collapsed... Somebody took my actual physical presence away and substituted this, he had thought from time to time. Oh well, so it went.

Philip K. Dick
Why does a man cry? he wondered. Not like a woman; not for that. Not for sentiment. A man cries over the loss of something, something alive. A man can cry over a sick animal that he knows won't make it. The death of a child: a man can cry for that. But not because things are sad. A man, he thought, cries not for the future or the past but for the present.

Philip K. Dick
Any given man sees only a tiny portion of the total truth, and very often, in fact almost... perpetually, he deliberately deceives himself about that precious little fragment as well.

Philip K. Dick
I'm a sick man. And the more I see, the sicker I get. I'm so sick I think everybody else is sick and I'm the only healthy person. That's bad off, isn't it?

Philip K. Dick
Explain it, Hamilton muttered. This place—this bar. Why doesn't God erase it? If this world operates by moral laws—
This bar is necessary to the moral order. This is a sinkpit of corruption and vice, a fleshpot of iniquity. You think salvation can function without damnation? You think virtue can exist without sin? That's the trouble with you atheists; you don't grasp the mechanics of evil. Get on the inside and enjoy life, man. If you're one of the Faithful, you've got nothing to worry about.
Opportunist.
Bet your sweet soul.

Philip K. Dick
To save one life, Mr. Tagomi had to take two. The logical, balanced mind cannot make sense of that. A kindly man like Mr. Tagomi could be driven insane by the implications of such reality.

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
"The Neanderthal probably thought the Cro-Magnon man had merely an improved line. A little more advanced ability to conjure up symbols and shape flint. From your description, this thing is more radical than a mere improvement."
"This thing," Baines said slowly, "has an ability to predict. So far, it's been able to stay alive. It's been able to cope with situations better than you or I could. How long do you think we'd stay alive in that chamber, with energy beams blazing down at us? In a sense it's got the ultimate survival ability. If it can always be accurate —"

Philip K. Dick
You're - psychotic. There's something wrong with you." "I know," Benteley agreed. "I'm a sick man. And the more I see, the sicker I get. I'm so sick I think everybody else is sick and I'm the only healthy person. That's pretty bad off, isn't it?

Philip K. Dick
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