All Quotes

"The vidphone company let me off the hook."

"The highway construction truck tore up the street at forty miles an hour."

"I am not in a position to enjoy sexual relations."

"He flushes at his presence in a comfort station."

"The hopes of the woolen industry are threadbare."

"Fully absorbed in the peculiar text he had become totally oblivious to the noises and movements around him; all that existed for him now was the printed page held motionless before his intense scrutiny."

"I am a fictionalizing philosopher, not a novelist; my novel and story-writing ability is employed as a means to formulate my perception. The core of my writing is not art but truth. Thus what I tell is the truth, yet I can do nothing to alleviate it, either by deed or explanation. Yet this seems somehow to help a certain kind of sensitive troubled person, for whom I speak. I think I understand the common ingredient in those whom my writing helps: they cannot or will not blunt their own intimations about the irrational, mysterious nature of reality, and, for them, my corpus of writing is one long ratiocination regarding this inexplicable reality, an investigation and presentation, analysis and response and personal history. My audience will always be limited to those people."

"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."

"Loyce gazed up, rigid with horror. The splotch of darkness, hanging over the City Hall. Darkness so thick it seemed almost solid. In the vortex something moved. Flickering shapes. Things, descending from the sky, pausing momentarily above the City Hall, fluttering over it in a dense swarm and then dropping silently onto the roof. Shapes. Fluttering shapes from the sky. From the crack of darkness that hung above him. He was seeing—them."

"The emotional masses of ordinary people who resented the Great Work, the bombs and bacteria and guided missiles, were coming to the surface. The were rising up - finally. Putting an end to super-logic: rationality without responsibility."

"How can I join one of the parties? All their slogans and propaganda, it seems so damn - silly. How the hell can I get exited about clean teeth and underarm odor. People kill each other over these trifles... it doesn't make sense. There's going to be suicidal civil war, if that amendment passes, and I'm supposed to join one side or the other?"

"He awoke—and wanted Mars. The valleys, he thought. What would it be like to trudge among them? Great and greater yet: the dream grew as he became fully conscious, the dream and the yearning. He could almost feel the enveloping presence of the other world, which only Government agents and high officials had seen. A clerk like himself? Not likely."

"To live is to be haunted."

"There is a major flaw in America, which does not appear to exist in France: the American people are basically anti-intellectual. They're not interested in novels of ideas. And science fiction is essentially the field of ideas. And the anti-intellectualism of Americans prohibits their interest in imaginative ideas [and] in intellectual concepts."

"It seems to me that in many ways, ideas have a life of their own. They appear to seize on people and make use of them."

"The greatest menace that faces the human being in the 20th century is the coming into existence in our times of the totalitarian state, which can take many forms."

"[Dick's] chosen manner of writing … [is] comparable to downhill racing. The results can be spectacular, though often the spectacle provided is one of disaster."

"I have no guilt regarding my love of fantasy and science fiction, only pleasure. I grew up reading the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. I chuckle over how this “genre” has become mainstream and how time travel, alternative universes and magic are now so everyday. Plus, no one could ever feel guilty about reading writers like Ursula K. Le Guin and Philip K. Dick."

"There are no heroes in Dick's books, but there are heroics. One is reminded of Dickens: what counts is the honesty, constancy, kindness and patience of ordinary people."

"Philip Dick does not lead his critics an easy life, since he does not so much play the part of a guide through his phantasmagoric worlds as give the impression of one lost in their labyrinth."

"[He would spend] three days straight writing a couple hundred pages. I didn't get any sleep either because every ten minutes [he would ask] "How do you spell _____, I need some coffee, Is there any food?" ...He'd lay down for about ten minutes, get up again, and write some more."

"[H]e never went anywhere, and never left his house. I didn't realize what a big deal it was then, but the older I get, the less I want to go anywhere. We live in the mountains, on a dirt road, in the middle of nowhere. ... He didn't like driving either. I remember he had a car for about three or four years before he passed away and it only had about 600 miles on it."

"It was either Phil [Dick] or [Ace editor] Terry Carr who came up with the idea of an Ace Double edition of the Holy Bible. One of these days Ace will print the Holy Bible as a Double, back to back, the Old Testament and the New Testament each cut to exactly 30,000 words, the Old Testament titled Master of Chaos and the New Testament titled The Thing with Three Souls."

"The two guides call out to a man early and late. And yet, no, for when remorse calls to a man it is always late. The call to find the way again by seeking out God in the confession of sins is always at the eleventh hour. Whether you are young or old, whether you have sinned much or little, whether you have offended much or neglected much, the guilt makes this call come at the eleventh hour. The inner agitation of the heart understands what remorse insists upon, that the eleventh hour has come. For in the sense of time, the old man's age is the eleventh hour; and the instant of death, the final moment in the eleventh hour. The indolent youth speaks of a long life that lies before him. The indolent old man hopes that his death is still a long way off. But repentance and remorse belong to the eternal in a man."

"You have surely noticed among schoolboys, that the one that is regarded by all as the boldest is the one who has no fear of his father, who dares to say to the others, "Do you think I am afraid of him?" On the other hand, if they sense that one of their number is actually and literally afraid of his father, they will readily ridicule him a little. Alas, in men's fear-ridden rushing together into a crowd (for why indeed does a man rush into a crowd except because he is afraid!) there, too, it is a mark of boldness not to be afraid, not even of God. And if someone notes that there is an individual outside the crowd who is really and truly afraid – not of the crowd, but of God, he is sure to be the target of some ridicule. The ridicule is usually glossed over somewhat and it is said: a man should love God.Yes, to be sure, God knows that man's highest consolation is that God is love and that man is permitted to love Him. But let us not become too forward, and foolishly, yes, blasphemously, dismiss the tradition of our fathers, established by God Himself: that really and truly a man should fear God. This fear is known to the man who is himself conscious of being an individual, and thereby is conscious of his eternal responsibility before God."

"If it were so, as conceited sagacity, proud of not being deceived, thinks, that we should believe nothing that we cannot see with our physical eyes, then we first and foremost ought to give up believing in love. ... We can be deceived by believing what is untrue, but we certainly are also deceived by not believing what is true. ... Which deception is more dangerous?"

"Spontaneous love can reach the point of despair, shows that it is in despair, that even when it is happy it loves with the power of despair."

"Forgetting when God does it in relation to sin, is the opposite of creating, since to create is to bring forth from nothing and to forget is to take back into nothing. What is hidden from my eyes, that I have never seen; but what is hidden behind my back, that I have seen. The one who loves forgives in this way; he forgives, he forgets, he blots out the sin, in love he turns toward the one he forgives; but when he turns toward him, he of course, cannot see what is lying behind his back."

"If you listen carefully, in what most definitely must be called Gospel you yourself will hear also rigorousness. For example, what Jesus says to the centurion from Capernaum, “If we will apply these words to ourselves, we are obliged to say, “Be it done for you as you believe; if you have faith unto salvation, then you will be saved.” (Matthew 8:13) How lenient, how merciful! But is it also certain, then, that I have faith-I surely cannot summarily transfer to myself the fact that the centurion believed, as if I had faith because the centurion had it. Let us suppose that someone asked Christianity, “Is it also certain, then, that I have faith?” Christianity would answer, “Be it done for you as you believe.”"

"The greatest danger, that of losing one's own self, may pass off as quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, that of an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife etc., is sure to be noticed."

"I see again what I thought I saw the first time, when I sent forth the little book that was compared to and in fact could best be compared to “a humble little flower under the cover of the great forest”"

"No politics has been able, no politics is able, no worldliness has been able, no worldliness has been able to think through or to actualize to the ultimate consequences this idea: human-equality, human likeness [Menneske-Lighed]. To achieve perfect equality in the medium of world-likeness [Verds-Lighed], that is, in the medium that by nature is dissimilarity, and to achieve it in a world-like [verds-ligt], that is, differentiating way, is eternally, impossible, as one can see by the categories. If perfect equality, likeness, should be achieved, then worldliness would have to be completely eradicated, and when perfect equality, likeness, is achieved worldliness ceases to be. But is it not, then, like an obsession, that worldliness has gotten the idea of wanting to force perfect equality, likeness, and to force it in a worldly way – in worldliness, world-likeness! Ultimately only the essentially religious can with the help of eternity effect human equality [Menneske-Lighed], the godly, the essential, the not-worldly, the true, the only true possible human equality; and this is also why – be it said to tis glorification – the essentially religious is the true humanity [Menneskelighed]."

"It was a purely Christian satisfaction to me that if ordinarily there was no one else there was one who in action tried a little to do the doctrine about loving the neighbor – alas, one who precisely by his act also received a frightful into what an illusion Christendom is and indeed, particularly later, also into how the common people let themselves be seduced by wretched journalists, whose striving and fighting for equality can only lead, if it leads to anything, since it is in the service of the lie, to making the elite, in self-defense, proud of their aloofness from the common man, and the common man brazen in his rudeness."

"I have needed God every day to defend myself against the abundance of thoughts."

"I have never definitely broken with Christianity nor renounced it. To attack it has never been my thought. No, from the time when there could be any question of the employment of my powers, I was firmly determined to employ them all to defend Christianity, or in any case to present it in its true form."

"He was extremely important to his contemporaries, who wanted nothing more than to see in him the Expected One; they wanted almost to press it upon him and and to force him into the role - but that he then refuses to be that!"

"My doubt goes like this: How could the Loving One have the heart to let human beings become so guilty that they got his murder on their consciences?"

"I can understand myself in believing, although in addition I can in a relative misunderstanding comprehend the human aspect of this life: but comprehend faith or comprehend Christ, I cannot."

"b. The Difference between a Genius and an Apostle. by H.H."

"Sin is man's destruction. Only the rust of sin can consume the soul-or eternally destroy it. For here indeed is the remarkable thing from which already that simple wise man of olden time derived a proof of the immortality of the soul, that the sickness of the soul (sin) is not like bodily sickness which kills the body. Sin is not a passage-way which a man has to pass through once, for from it one shall flee; sin is not (like suffering) the instant, but an eternal fall from the eternal, hence it is not ‘once’, and it cannot possibly be that its ‘once’ is no time. No, just as between the rich man in hell and Lazarus in Abraham's bosom there was a yawning gulf fixed, so is there also a yawning distinction between suffering and sin. Let us not confuse it, lest talk about suffering might become less frank-hearted, because it had also sin in mind, and this less frank-hearted talk might be boldly impudent inasmuch as it is talking this way about sin. This precisely is the Christian position, that there is this infinite distinction between evil and evil, as they are confusedly named; this precisely is the Christian characteristic, to talk of temporal sufferings ever more and more frank-heartedly, more triumphantly, more joyfully, because Christianity regarded, sin, and sin only, is destructive."

"A person can perhaps succeed in hiding his sins from the world, he can perhaps be foolishly happy that he succeeds, or yet, a little more honest, admit that it is a deplorable weakness and cowardliness that he does not have the courage to become open-but a person cannot hide his sins from himself. P. 182"

"Every earthly or worldly good is in itself selfish, begrudging; its possession is begrudging or is envy and in one way or another must make others poorer – what I have someone else cannot have; the more I have, the less someone else must have. The unrighteous mammon (with this term we perhaps may indeed designate every earthly good, also worldly honor, power, etc.) is in itself unjust and makes for injustice (quite apart here from the question of acquiring it or possessing it in an unlawful manner) and in itself cannot be acquired or possessed equally. If one person is to have much of it, there must be someone else who necessarily gets only a little, and what the one has the other cannot possibly have. Furthermore, all the time and energy, all the mental solicitude and concern that is applied to acquiring or possessing earthly good is selfish, begrudging, or the person who is occupied in this way is selfish, at every such moment has no thought for others; at every such moment he is selfishly working for himself or selfishly for a few others, but not equally for himself and for everyone else. Even if a person is willing to share his earthly goods, at every moment in which he is occupied with acquiring them or is engrossed in possessing them, he is selfish, just as that is which he possesses or acquires."

"You complain that no one can put himself in your place. I can imagine that it may never have occurred to you, preoccupied day and night with that thought, that you should comfort others: and he, the Comforter, he is the only one of whom it truly holds that no one could put himself in his place-how true if he had complained in that way! He, the Comforter, in whose place no one could put himself, he can put himself completely in your place and in every sufferer's place. .... There is still one who is able to put himself completely in your place, the Lord Jesus Christ, who ”because he has suffered and himself been tempted is able to help those who are tempted” (Hebrews 2:18)."

"A man who but rarely, and then only cursorily, concerns himself with his relationship to God, hardly thinks or dreams that he has so closely to do with God, or that God is so close to him, that there exists a reciprocal relationship between him and God, the stronger a man is, the weaker God is, the weaker a man is, the stronger God is in him. Every one who assumes that a God exists naturally thinks of Him as the strongest, as He eternally is, being the Almighty who creates out of nothing, and for whom all the creation is as nothing; but such a man hardly thinks of the possibility of a reciprocal relationship. And yet for God, the infinitely strongest, there is an obstacle; He has posited it Himself, yea, He has lovingly, with incomprehensible love posited it Himself; for He posited it and posits it every time a man comes into existence, when He in His love makes to be something directly in apposition to Himself. Oh, marvelous omnipotence of love! A man cannot bear that his ‘creations’ should be directly in apposition to Himself, and so he speaks of them in a tone of disparagement as his ‘creations’. But God who creates out of nothing, who almightily takes from nothing and says, ‘Be’, lovingly adjoins, ‘Be something even in apposition to me.’ Marvellous love, even His omnipotence is under the sway of love!"

"God's greatness lies in forgiving, in showing mercy, and in this greatness He is greater than the heart which condemns itself. Behold, this is that greatness of God which we have to speak of especially within the sanctuary; for here we know God differently, more closely – from the other side, if one may say so – that out there, where doubtless He is revealed, is to be known in His works, whereas here He is to be known as He has revealed Himself, as He would be known by Christians. The tokens of God's greatness can be known in nature everyone can behold with wonder, or rather there is no special token, for the works themselves are the tokens; thus every one can see the rainbow and must wonder when he sees it. But the token of God's greatness in showing mercy exists only for faith; this token is in fact the Sacrament. God's greatness in nature is manifest, but God's greatness in showing mercy is a secret which has to be believed."

"This little book (which in view of the circumstances under which it is issued reminds me of my first and more especially of the first to my first, the Preface to the Two Edifying Discourses of 1843, which came out immediately after Either/Or) will, as I hope, recall this to ‘that single individual whom I with joy and gratitude call my reader’: ‘it desires to remain in retirement, as it was in concealment it had its origin – a little flower in the cover of a great forest.’ Preface. P. 313"

"now, in the solemn silence before God with the lilies and the birds, where accordingly there is nobody at all present, where accordingly there is no other intercourse for thee but with God-there indeed the rule holds good: either hold to Him/or despise Him. There is no excuse, for no one else is present, in any case no one is present in such a wise that thou canst hold to him without despising God; for precisely there in the silence it is clear how close God is to thee. P. 334"

"Be attentive therefore, according to the instruction of the Gospel, to learn obedience from the lily and the bird. Be not affrighted, do no despair, when thou comparest thy life with these teachers. There is nothing to despair about, for indeed thou shalt learn from them; and the Gospel first comforts thee by telling thee that God is the God of patience, and then it adds: 'Thou shalt learn from the lilies and the birds, learn to be absolutely obedient like the lilies and the birds, learn not to serve two masters; for no man can serve two masters, he must either ... or. P. 343"

"a. Does a Human Being Have the Right to Let Himself Be Put to Death for the Truth? by H.H."

"These two essays probably will essentially be able to interest only theologians. (Preface)"