Philip K. Dick
The universe is information and we are stationary in it, not three dimensional and not in space or time.Collection: Space
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.Collection: Knowledge
We live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups. I ask, in my writing, 'What is real?' Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms.Collection: Society
The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.Collection: Communication
Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error of judgment.Collection: Car
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
We are living in a computer-programmed reality, and the only clue we have to it is when some variable is changed, and some alteration in reality occurs. We have the overwhelming impression that we were reliving the present - deja vu.
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.
It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.
Comprehension follows perception.
The Martians are always coming.
Strange how paranoia can link up with reality now and then.
I dreamed: I am the fish whose flesh is eaten, and because I am fat, it is good.
I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards.
I am basically analytical, not creative; my writing is simply a creative way of handling analysis.
If you can get them to see the world as you do, they will think as you do.
I saw a segment of Douglas Trumbull's special effects for 'Blade Runner' on the KNBC-TV news. I recognized it immediately. It was my own interior world. They caught it perfectly.
The two basic topics which fascinate me are 'What is reality?' and 'What constitutes the authentic human being?'
Don't try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.
I am one of the elect, one of the few in the know, in the gnosis.
In 1955, when I'd write a science-fiction novel, I'd set it in the year 2000. I realised around 1977 that, 'My God, it's getting exactly like those novels we used to write in the 1950s!' Everything's just turning out to be real.
The core of my writing is not art but truth.
I don't write beautifully - I just write reports about our condition.
The ultimate problem confronting me all my life has been the senseless injury to and neglect of my sister.
When I believe, I am crazy. When I don't believe, I suffer psychotic depression.
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.
I am a fictionalizing philosopher, not a novelist.
I used to dig in the garden, and there isn't anything fantastic or ultradimensional about crab grass... unless you are a SF writer, in which case, pretty soon you're viewing crabgrass with suspicion. What are its real motives? And who sent it in the first place? The question I always found myself asking was, 'What is it, really?'
Movies like 'Westworld' used ideas I'd thought of a long time ago.
Reality, by itself, becomes a story by Philip K. Dick.
There will come a time when it isn't 'They're spying on me through my phone' anymore. Eventually, it will be 'My phone is spying on me'.Collection: Technology
Because today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups... So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.Collection: Religious
The true measure of a man is not his intelligence or how high he rises in this freak establishment. No, the true measure of a man is this: how quickly can he respond to the needs of others and how much of himself he can give.Collection: Men
Reality is just a point of view.Collection: Reality
In a society of criminals, the innocent man goes to jail.Collection: Men
Everything in life is just for a while.Collection: Life Is
There is no route out of the maze. The maze shifts as you move through it, because it is alive.Collection: Inspirational
If you think this Universe is bad, you should see some of the others.Collection: Inspirational
I am a reader. I am a writer. People assume I do these things to escape. You couldn't be more right. I'm escaping a world I don't like. A world I have no control in. In this world, I am nothing. I am a color, a height, a weight, a number. But in the world of books and writing, I am amazing. I am powerful. I am different. People are better. Worlds are endless. Change is possible. Life is manageable.Collection: Powerful
Reality denied comes back to haunt.Collection: Reality
It's not what happened but how it is told.Collection: Statistics
Just because something bears the aspect of the inevitable one should not, therefore, go along willingly with it.Collection: Bears
Maybe each human being lives in a unique world, a private world different from those inhabited and experienced by all other humans. . . If reality differs from person to person, can we speak of reality singular, or shouldn't we really be talking about plural realities? And if there are plural realities, are some more true (more real) than others?Collection: Real
When two people dream the same dream, it ceases to be an illusion.Collection: Dream
There exists, for everyone, a sentence - a series of words - that has the power to destroy you. Another sentence exists, another series of words, that could heal you. If you're lucky you will get the second, but you can be certain of getting the first.Collection: Lucky
I'm not much but I'm all I have.Collection: Optimistic
There are no private lives. This a most important aspect of modern life. That one of the biggest transformations we have seen in human life in our society is the diminution of the sphere of the private. That we must reasonably now all regard the fact that there are no secrets and nothing is private. Everything is public.Collection: Secret
Either I've invented a whole new logic or, ahem, I'm not playing with a full deck.Collection: Statistics
My schedule for today lists a six-hour self-accusatory depression.Collection: Self
Unless we can psychologically accommodate change, we ourselves begin to die, inwardly. What I am saying is that objects, customs, habits, and ways of life must perish so that the authentic human being can live. And it is the authentic human being who matters most, the viable, elastic organism which can bounce back, absorb, and deal with the new.Collection: Matter