Philip K. Dick quotes

Philip K. Dick was an American writer renowned for his influential works of science fiction. His novels and stories often explored themes of reality, identity, and the impact of technology on society. He inspired countless movies, such as "Blade Runner" and "Total Recall," and remains a visionary figure in literature. Here are 283 of his quotes:

It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.

Philip K. Dick

Reality is that which when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away.

Philip K. Dick

This, to me, is the ultimately heroic trait of ordinary people; they say no to the tyrant and they calmly take the consequences of this resistance.

Philip K. Dick

Don't try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.

Philip K. Dick

The most dangerous kind of person... is one who is afraid of his own shadow.

Philip K. Dick

The problem with introspection is that it has no end.

Philip K. Dick

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

Philip K. Dick

Science Fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can't talk about science because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful.

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

I started reading SF when I was about twelve and I read all I could, so any author who was writing about that time, I read. But there's no doubt who got me off originally and that was A. E. van Vogt.

Philip K. Dick

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

To live is to be hunted.

Philip K. Dick

They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one after another of them being killed-run over, maimed, destroyed-but they continued to play anyhow.

Philip K. Dick

Everything is true,' he said. 'Everything anybody has ever thought.' 'Will you be all right?' 'I'll be all right,' he said, and thought, And I'm going to die. Both those are true, too.

Philip K. Dick

When I was a child, I thought as a child. But now I have put away childish things. ... I must be scientific.

Philip K. Dick

There is evil! It's actual, like cement. I can't believe it. I can't stand it. Evil is not a view... it's an ingredient in us. In the world. Poured over us, filtering into our bodies, minds, hearts, into the pavement itself.

Philip K. Dick

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

Philip K. Dick

I'd like to see you move up to the goat class, where I think you belong.

Philip K. Dick

That is the artist's job: take mineral rock from dark silent earth, transform it into shining light-reflecting form from sky.

Philip K. Dick

I, for one, bet on science as helping us. I have yet to see how it fundamentally endangers us, even with the H-bomb lurking about. Science has given us more lives than it has taken; we must remember that.

Philip K. Dick

Each of us assumes everyone else knows what HE is doing. They all assume we know what WE are doing. We don't ... Nothing is going on and nobody knows what it is. Nobody is concealing anything except the fact that he does not understand anything anymore and wishes he could go home.

Philip K. Dick

Well, I hate to admit it, but it is possible that there is (one) such a thing as telepathy and (two) that the CETI project's idea that we might communicate with extraterrestrial beings via telepathy is possibly a reasonable idea--if telepathy exists and if ETIs exist. Otherwise we are trying to communicate with someone who doesn't exist with a system which doesn't work.

Philip K. Dick