A man is an angel that has gone deranged.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that the innate goodness of humanity can become distorted or lost over time.
Philip K. Dick's quote presents a thought-provoking perspective on the nature of humanity, implying that people possess an inherent angelic quality but often succumb to madness or moral corruption. It raises questions about the fundamental nature of individuals and the impact of external forces on their psyche, highlighting the fragile balance between virtue and insanity.
In practice
In a philosophical discussion about the duality of human nature.
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.
Don't try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.
On some other world, possibly it is different. Better. There are clear good and evil alternatives. Not these obscure admixtures, these blends, with no proper tool by which to untangle the components.
"Do you have information that there's an android in the cast? I'd be glad to help you, and if I were an android would I be glad to help you?" "An android," he said, "doesn't care what happens to another android. That's one of the indications we look for." "Then," Miss Luft said, "you must be an android."
The universe is information and we are stationary in it, not three dimensional and not in space or time.
I never liked the idea of doing what a machine says. I hate having to salute something built in a factory.
Unless you come out of your mind and become a no-mind you will not know what life is all about, you will live in vain. You will not have your honeymoon, it is impossible. You will not know the sweetness that existence is full of and the ecstasy.
History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.
That’s the thing about a human life-there’s no control group, no way to ever know how any of us would have turned out if any variables had been changed.
Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity than straigthforward and simple integrity in another. A knave would rather quarrel with a brother knave than with a fool, but he would rather avoid a quarrel with one honest man than with both. He can combat a fool by management and address, and he can conquer a knave by temptations. But the honest man is neither to be bamboozled nor bribed.
LAUGHTER is the very essence of religion. Seriousness is never religious, cannot be religious. Seriousness is of the ego, part of the very disease. Laughter is egolessness. Yes, there is a difference between when you laugh and when a religious man laughs. The difference is that you laugh always about others - the religious man laughs at himself, or at the whole ridiculousness of man's being. Religion cannot be anything other than a celebration of life.
Wasn't he the one who said you shouldn't trust anybody who calls himself an ordinar man? - Naoko
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