Philip K. Dick Quotes

I don’t understand why we must do things in this world, why we must have friends and aspirations, hopes and dreams. Wouldn’t it be better to retreat to a faraway corner of the world, where all its noise and complications would be heard no more? Then we could renounce culture and ambitions; we would lose everything and gain nothing; for what is there to be gained from this world?

My search not only failed, but I convinced myself that all those who had searched like myself had failed also, and come like me to the despairing conviction that the only absolute knowledge man can possess is this—that life is without a meaning.

Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd.

In a universe suddenly divested of illusion and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land.

As far as history goes I am dead. If there is something beyond I shall have to bounce back. I have found God, but he is insufficient. I am only spiritually dead. Physically I am alive. Morally I am free. The world which I have departed is a menagerie.

This life we live nowadays. It's not life, it's stagnation death-in-life. Look at all these bloody houses and the meaningless people inside them. Sometimes I think we're all corpses. Just rotting upright.

I could see the road ahead of me. I was poor and I was going to stay poor. But I didn't particularly want money. I didn't know what I wanted. Yes, I did. I wanted someplace to hide out, someplace where one didn't have to do anything. The thought of being something didn't only appall me, it sickened me . . . To do things, to be part of family picnics, Christmas, the 4th of July, Labor Day, Mother's Day . . . was a man born just to endure those things and then die? I would rather be a dishwasher, return alone to a tiny room and drink myself to sleep.

I don't know whether I'm misanthropic. It seems to me I'm constantly disappointed. I'm very easily disappointed.

I do not write often now - not for want of something to say, but from a loathing of all I see and hear. Why dwell upon it?

In sum, thought and reflection have been rendered thoroughly pointless by the circumstances in which modern men and women live and act.

If I could get my membership fee back, I'd resign from the human race.

The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less.

Have all the hopes of ages come to naught? Is life no more with noble meaning fraught?

Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.

I think the degree of alienation and despair is more universal.

I found, when I left, that there were others who felt the same way. We'd meet, they'd come and seek me out, we'd talk about the future. And I found that their depression and pessimism was every bit as acute as mine.

The reason for the sadness of this modern age and the men who live in it is that it looks for the truth in everything and finds it.

The flesh, alas, is sad, and I have read all the books.

I think I got off on the wrong planet. Beam me up Scotty, there's no rational life here.

People are hurting, and they feel very disengaged and disenfranchised.

As soon as I was out in the street, I realized I didn't want to be alone after all, I realized I didn't want to be anything at all.

So then you’re free?’ ‘Yes, I’m free,’ said Karl, and nothing seemed more worthless than his freedom.

As far as I am concerned, I resign from humanity. I no longer want to be, nor can still be, a man. What should I do? Work for a social and political system, make a girl miserable? Hunt for weaknesses in philosophical systems, fight for moral and esthetic ideals? It’s all too little. I renounce my humanity even though I may find myself alone. But am I not already alone in this world from which I no longer expect anything?

The world itself makes us sick of the world.

Life has never interested me so much as the escape from life.