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Philip K. Dick Quotes
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Philip Kindred Dick was an American science fiction writer. Dick explored philosophical, social, and political themes in his novels with plots dominated by monopolistic corporations, alternative universes, authoritarian governments, and altered states of consciousness. His work reflected his personal interest in metaphysics and theology, and often drew upon his life experiences in addressing the nature of reality, identity, drug abuse, schizophrenia, and transcendental experiences.

Born in Illinois before moving to California, Dick began publishing science fiction stories in the 1950s, initially finding little commercial success. His 1962 alternative history novel The Man in the High Castle earned Dick early acclaim, including a Hugo Award for Best Novel. He followed with science fiction novels such as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Ubik . His 1974 novel Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel. Following a series of religious experiences in February–March 1974, Dick's work engaged more explicitly with issues of theology, philosophy, and the nature of reality, as in such novels as A Scanner Darkly and VALIS . A collection of his non-fiction writing on these themes was published posthumously as The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick . He died in 1982 of a stroke, aged 53.

In addition to 44 published novels, Dick wrote approximately 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime. A variety of popular films based on his works have been produced, including Blade Runner , Total Recall , Minority Report , A Scanner Darkly , and The Adjustment Bureau . In 2005, Time magazine named Ubik one of the hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923. In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series.

✵ 16. December 1928 – 2. March 1982
Philip K. Dick photo
Philip K. Dick: 278   quotes 5   likes

Philip K. Dick Quotes

“"No communication." Baines was sweating. "In eighteen years there hasn't been any semantic bridge between you? Does he have any contact? Signs? Codes?"
"He — ignores us. He eats here, stays with us. Sometimes he plays when we play. Or sits with us. He's gone days on end. We've never been able to find out what he's doing — or where. He sleeps in the barn — by himself."”

Philip K. Dick

The Golden Man (1954)

Communication , Sleep

“I realized, then, that I had stood without intending to. Flight reaction, I said to myself. Instinctive. Upon experiencing close adversaries. The lizard part of the brain.”

Philip K. Dick The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

Page 158
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982)

Parting

“"He's too far ahead of us. We can't compete with him." Wisdom's eyes were bleak. "We can only guess what's going to happen. He knows. For him, it's a sure thing. I don't think it'll help him at euth, though. The whole stage is flooded simultaneously. Instantaneous gas, released throughout." He signalled impatiently to the guards. "Get going. Take him down right away. Don't waste any time."”

Philip K. Dick

The Golden Man (1954)

Wisdom , Thinking , Time , Help

“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 book Confessions of a Crap Artist

Confessions of a Crap Artist (1959)

Hell , Reading

“Life is short. Art, or something not life, is long, stretching out endless, like concrete worm. Flat, white, unsmoothed by any passage over or across it. Here I stand. But no longer.”

Philip K. Dick book The Man in the High Castle

The Man in the High Castle (1962)

Life , Art

“"You don't go by odds. You know what's coming. You've seen the cards already." She studied his face intently. "No, you can't be cold-decked. It wouldn't be possible."”

Philip K. Dick

The Golden Man (1954)

Study

“But an artist, he realized. Or rather so-called artist. Bohemian. That’s closer to it. The artistic life without the talent.”

Philip K. Dick book The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

Source: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965), Chapter 10 (p. 168)

Life

“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 book The Man in the High Castle

The Man in the High Castle (1962)

Life , Reality , Sense

“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 book A Scanner Darkly

Source: A Scanner Darkly (1977), Chapter 11 (pp. 185-186)

Truth

“"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 book Adjustment Team

Adjustment Team (1954)

Fate , Truth , Confidence

“People have told me that everything about me, every facet of my life, psyche, experiences, dreams, and fears, are laid out explicitly in my writing, that from the corpus of my work I can be absolutely and precisely inferred. This is true.”

Philip K. Dick

Introduction to The Golden Man (1980)

Life , People , Fear , Dreams

“The merest presence of life, even the smallest possible quantity of volition, desire and intent was enough to reverse the process by which the eternal landscape of hell made itself known.”

Philip K. Dick

Source: Lies, Inc. (1984), Chapter 8 (p. 79)

Life , Hell

“Madness has its own dynamism. It just goes on.”

Philip K. Dick book VALIS

VALIS (1981)

Madness

“Isn’t a miserable reality better than the most interesting illusion? Or is it illusion, Barney? I don’t know anything about philosophy; you explain it to me because all I know is religious faith and that doesn’t equip me to understand this.”

Philip K. Dick book The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

Source: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965), Chapter 8 (p. 143)

Faith , Understanding , Reality

“He awoke—and wanted Mars. The valleys, he thought. What would it be like to trudge among them? Great and greater yet: the dream grew as he became fully conscious, the dream and the yearning. He could almost feel the enveloping presence of the other world, which only Government agents and high officials had seen. A clerk like himself? Not likely.”

Philip K. Dick

"We Can Remember It For You Wholesale"
The Phillip K. Dick Reader

World , Dreams , Feeling

“For Mercer everything is easy, he thought, because Mercer accepts everything. Nothing is alien to him. But what I’ve done, he thought; that’s become alien to me. In fact everything has become unnatural; I’ve become an unnatural self.”

Philip K. Dick book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Source: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), Chapter 21 (p. 230)

“Here, the enemy was not merely another group of human beings with a differing political persuasion; the enemy here was death.”

Philip K. Dick book Clans of the Alphane Moon

Source: Clans of the Alphane Moon (1964), Chapter 5 (pp. 69-70)

Death

“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. … It's my job and my vice mixed together. You can't hope for better than that: having your job and your sin commingled.”

Philip K. Dick

Introduction to The Golden Man (1980)

Love , Life , Hope , Music

“'“Everything is true”, he said. “Everything anybody has ever thought.””

Philip K. Dick book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Source: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), Chapter 20 (p. 227)

“What about [my] books? How do I feel about them?
I enjoyed writing all of them. But I think that if I could only choose a few, which, for example, might escape World War Three, I would choose, first, Eye in the Sky. Then The Man in the High Castle. Martian Time-Slip (published by Ballantine). Dr. Bloodmoney (a recent Ace novel). Then The Zap Gun and The Penultimate Truth, both of which I wrote at the same time. And finally another Ace book, The Simulacra.
But this list leaves out the most vital of them all: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. I am afraid of that book; it deals with absolute evil, and I wrote it during a great crisis in my religious beliefs. I decided to write a novel dealing with absolute evil as personified in the form of a "human." When the galleys came from Doubleday I couldn't correct them because I could not bear to read the text, and this is still true.
Two other books should perhaps be on this list, both very new Doubleday novels: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and another as yet untitled Ubik]. Do Androids has sold very well and has been eyed intently by a film company who has in fact purchased an option on it. My wife thinks it's a good book. I like it for one thing: It deals with a society in which animals are adored and rare, and a man who owns a real sheep is Somebody… and feels for that sheep a vast bond of love and empathy. Willis, my tomcat, strides silently over the pages of that book, being important as he is, with his long golden twitching tail. Make them understand, he says to me, that animals are really that important right now. He says this, and then eats up all the food we had been warming for our baby. Some cats are far too pushy. The next thing he'll want to do is write SF novels. I hope he does. None of them will sell.”

Philip K. Dick

"Self Portrait" (1968), reprinted in The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick (1995), ed. Lawrence Sutin

Love , War , Truth , Books

“Mental illness is not funny.”

Philip K. Dick book VALIS

VALIS (1981)

“This time, there was no punishment from above. Sighing, Hamilton almost wished there had been; the capricious personality element infuriated him. There was just too little relationship between deed and punishment; the lightning was probably cutting down some totally innocent Cheyennite, on the far side of town.”

Philip K. Dick book Eye in the Sky

Source: Eye in the Sky (1957), Chapter 7 (p. 92)

Time , Personality

“She did not really want to know; she believed she understood already.”

Philip K. Dick book Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

Source: Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (1974), Chapter 5 (p. 53)

““Then shall it come to pass the saying that is written,” a voice said. “Death is swallowed up. In victory.” Perhaps only Fred heard it. “Because,” the voice said, “as soon as the writing appears backward, then you know which is illusion and which is not. The confusion ends, and death, the last enemy, Substance Death, is swallowed not into the body but up—in victory. Behold, I tell you the sacred secret now: we shall not all sleep in death.””

Philip K. Dick book A Scanner Darkly

Source: A Scanner Darkly (1977), Chapter 13 (p. 214)

Death , Secret , Sleep , Appearance

“The hopes of the woolen industry are threadbare.”

Philip K. Dick

Source: Lies, Inc. (1984), Chapter 14 (p. 157)

Hope

“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 book VALIS

VALIS (1981)

God

“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 book The Man in the High Castle

The Man in the High Castle (1962)

Way , Feeling , Parent

“I'm a strange person. Sometimes I hardly know what I'm going to do or say next. Sometimes I seem a stranger to myself. Sometimes what I do surprises me and I can't understand why I do it.”

Philip K. Dick book Solar Lottery

Solar Lottery (1955)

Understanding , Personality

“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 book VALIS

VALIS (1981)

Strong

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

Philip K. Dick book Solar Lottery

Source: Solar Lottery (1955), Chapter 5 (p. 60)

Chance

““Mountains, Bruce, mountains,” the manager said.
“Mountains, Bruce, mountains,” Bruce said and gazed.
“Echolalia, Bruce, echolalia,” the manager said. “Echolalia, Bruce—”
“Okay, Bruce,” the manager said, and shut the cabin door behind him, thinking, I believe I’ll put him among the carrots. Or beets. Something simple. Something that won’t puzzle him.”

Philip K. Dick book A Scanner Darkly

Source: A Scanner Darkly (1977), Chapter 17 (p. 273)

Mountain , Thinking

“Robert Arctor halted. Stared at them, at the straights in their fat suits, their fat ties, their fat shoes, and he thought, Substance D can’t destroy their brains; they have none.”

Philip K. Dick book A Scanner Darkly

Source: A Scanner Darkly (1977), Chapter 2 (p. 26)

Shoe

“"Maybe his characteristics are recessive. Maybe ours will cancel his out."
"I wouldn't lay any money on that," Baines said. "I think I know already which of the two strains is going to turn up dominant." He grinned wryly. "I mean, I'm making a good guess. It won't be us."”

Philip K. Dick

The Golden Man (1954)

Money , Thinking

“He glared at her. Women can get a man to do anything, he realized. Mother, wife, even employee; they twist us like hot little bits of thermoplastic.”

Philip K. Dick book The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

Source: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965), Chapter 11 (p. 183)

Women

“Once they notice you, Jason realized, they never completely close the file. You can never get back your anonymity. It is vital not to be noticed in the first place.”

Philip K. Dick book Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

Source: Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (1974), Chapter 6 (p. 75)

“Silence. It flashed from the woodwork and the walls; it smote him with an awful, total power, as if generated by a vast mill. It rose from the floor, up out of the tattered gray wall-to-wall carpeting. It unleashed itself from the broken and semi-broken appliances in the kitchen, the dead machines which hadn’t worked in all the time Isidore had lived here. From the useless pole lamp in the living room it oozed out, meshing with the empty and wordless descent of itself from the fly-specked ceiling. It managed in fact to emerge from every object within his range of vision, as if it—the silence—meant to supplant all things tangible. Hence it assailed not only his ears but his eyes; as he stood by the inert TV set he experienced the silence as visible and, in its own way, alive. Alive! He had often felt its austere approach before; when it came it burst in without subtlety, evidently unable to wait. The silence of the world could not rein back its greed. Not any longer. Not when it had virtually won.”

Philip K. Dick book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Source: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), Chapter 2 (p. 20)

World , Way , Silence , Time

““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 book Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

Source: Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (1974), Chapter 27 (p. 222)

“You know what you can buy at the supermarket?” Laws inquired acidly. “I’ll tell you. Canned burnt offerings.”
“You know what you can buy at the hardware store?” Hamilton answered. “Scales to weigh your soul on.”
“That’s silly,” the blond said petulantly. “A soul doesn’t have any weight.”
“Then,” Hamilton reflected, “you could put one through the U. S. mail for nothing.”
“How many souls,” Laws conjectured ironically, “can be fitted into one stamped envelope? New religious question. Split mankind in half. Warring factions. Blood running in the gutters.”
“Ten,” Hamilton guessed.
“Fourteen,” Laws contradicted.
“Heretic. Baby-murdering monster.”
“Bestial drinker of unpurified blood.”

Philip K. Dick book Eye in the Sky

“Accursed spawn of filth-devouring evil.”
Source: Eye in the Sky (1957), Chapter 6 (p. 75)

War , Law , Soul , Question

“Am I being paid back for something I did? He asked himself. Something I don't know about or remember? But nobody pays back, he reflected. I learned that a long time ago: you're not paid back for the bad you do nor the good you do. It all comes out uneven at the end. Haven’t I learned that by now, if I've learned anything?”

Philip K. Dick book Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

Source: Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (1974), Chapter 6 (p. 66)

Learning , Time

“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 The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

Page 13
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982)

Life , Education , Time , Parting

“The living, he thought, should never be used to serve the purposes of the dead. But the dead—he glanced at Bruce, the empty shape beside him — should, if possible, serve the purposes of the living.
That, he reasoned, is the law of life.
And the dead, if they could feel, might feel better doing so.
The dead, Mike thought, who can still see, even if they can't understand: they are our camera.”

Philip K. Dick book A Scanner Darkly

Source: A Scanner Darkly (1977), Chapter 15 (p. 266)

Life , Law , Feeling , Understanding

“(Insanity) is not hubris, not pride; it is inflation of the ego to its ultimate — confusion between him who worships and that which is worshipped. Man has not eaten God; God has eaten man.”

Philip K. Dick book The Man in the High Castle

The Man in the High Castle (1962)

God

“So that’s that, Barney said to himself. I violated Rule One of career-oriented functioning: never tell your superior something he doesn’t want to hear.”

Philip K. Dick book The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

Source: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965), Chapter 4 (p. 60)

“The book business is hidebound.”

Philip K. Dick

Source: Lies, Inc. (1984), Chapter 12 (p. 131)(This and the next six quotes are referred to by the author as "Thingisms")

Books , Business

“Where there’s dope, there’s hope!”

Philip K. Dick book A Scanner Darkly

Source: A Scanner Darkly (1977), Chapter 7 (p. 118)

Hope

““How come you didn’t recognize me?” Hentman said crossly. “Aren’t I world-famous? Or maybe you don’t watch TV.””

Philip K. Dick book Clans of the Alphane Moon

Source: Clans of the Alphane Moon (1964), Chapter 5 (p. 57)

World

“Doctor Labyrinth, like most people who read a great deal and who have too much time on their hands, had become convinced that our civilization was going the way of Rome. He saw, I think, the same cracks forming that had sundered the ancient world, the world of Greece and Rome; and it was his conviction that presently our world, our society, would pass away as theirs did, and a period of darkness would follow.”

Philip K. Dick

"The Preserving Machine" (1953), The Collected Short Stories of Philip K. Dick, v.1: The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford (1987)

People , World , Way , Thinking

“Helping people was one of the two basic things Fat had been told to give up; helping people and taking dope. He had stopped taking dope, but all his energy and enthusiasm were now totally channelled into saving people. Better he had kept on with the dope.”

Philip K. Dick book VALIS

VALIS (1981)

People , Help

“The Empire Never Ended”

Philip K. Dick book VALIS

VALIS (1981)

“The pain, the cut in his scalp, so unexpected and undeserved, had for some reason cleared away the cobwebs. It flashed on him instantly that he didn’t hate the kitchen cabinet: he hated his wife, his two daughters, his whole house, the back yard with its power mower, the garage, the radiant heating system, the front yard, the fence, the whole fucking place and everyone in it.”

Philip K. Dick book A Scanner Darkly

Source: A Scanner Darkly (1977), Chapter 4 (p. 64)

Housing , Pain , Hate , Daughters