741 Quotes by Philip K. Dick

Men and the world are mutually toxic to each other.

It had been a phobia of his for years that someday he would fall into the hands of madmen---in particular, madmen who seemed sane up until the last moment.

All his life he had controlled machines, bent nature and the forces of nature to man and man's needs. The human race had slowly evolved until it was in a position to operate things, run them as it saw fit. Now all at once it had been plunged back down the ladder again, prostrate before a Power against which they were children.

I wonder, he wondered, if any human has ever felt this way before about an android.

Guilt—if there was any guilt—spread out and diffused itself over everybody and everything…. Perhaps at some point in time, at some spot in the world, a moment of responsibility existed.

I use this as a paradigm for our whole attitude toward life, what you did was you worked very hard, you try to understand and try to direct these complicated, powerful forces and at the very end of the struggle you've made no progress at all. That upon discovering that, you've raised to a lofty moral height, and you've accepted your fate, and somehow went on.

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.

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.

Kevin is right about his cat. It’s all there in his dead cat. The Great Judge can’t answer Kevin: ‘Why did my cat die?’ Answer: ‘Damned if I know.’ There is no answer; there is only a dead animal that just wanted to cross the street. We’re all animals that want to cross the street only something mows us down half-way across that we never saw.