Philip K. Dick Quotes: 18

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

  VALIS

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

  I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon

• You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.

  Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

• If you think this Universe is bad, you should see some of the others.

• No single thing abides; and all things are fucked up.

  The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

• The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Parmenides taught that the only things that are real are things which never change... and the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus taught that everything changes. If you superimpose their two views, you get this result: Nothing is real.

• This is a mournful discovery.1)Those who agree with you are insane2)Those who do not agree with you are in power.

  VALIS

• Truth, she thought. As terrible as death. But harder to find.

  The Man in the High Castle

• It really seems to me that in the midst of great tragedy, there is always the horrible possibility that something terribly funny will happen.

• The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

  VALIS

• To live is to be haunted.

  Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

• Everybody knows that Aristotelian two-value logic is fucked.

  VALIS

• The bird is gone, and in what meadow does it now sing?

  Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

• 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.

  Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

• Imagine being sentient but not alive. Seeing and even knowing, but not alive. Just looking out. Recognizing but not being alive. A person can die and still go on. Sometimes what looks out at you from a person's eyes maybe died back in childhood.

  A Scanner Darkly

• The mentally disturbed do not employ the Principle of Scientific Parsimony: the most simple theory to explain a given set of facts. They shoot for the baroque.

  VALIS

• They ought to make it a binding clause that if you find God you get to keep Him.

  VALIS

• Pious people spoke to God, and crazy people imagined that God spoke back.

  VALIS