Radio Free Albemuth Quotes

“How undisturbed, the sleep of the foolish.”
― Philip K. Dick, Radio Free Albemuth

“There was a beauty in the trash of the alleys which I had never noticed before; my vision seemed sharpened, rather than impaired. As I walked along it seemed to me that the flattened beer cans and papers and weeds and junk mail had been arranged by the wind into patterns; these patterns, when I scrutinized them, lay distributed so as to comprise a visual language. ”
― Philip K. Dick, Radio Free Albemuth

“In a one-party system there is always a landslide.”
― Philip K. Dick, Radio Free Albemuth

“Cancer... the process of creation gone wild, I thought.”
― Philip K. Dick, Radio Free Albemuth

“I remember something the Buddha said after he witnessed a supposed saint walk on water: 'For a penny,' the Buddha said, 'I can board a ferry and do that.' It was more practical, even for the Buddha, to cross the water normally. The normal and the supranormal were not antagonistic realms, after all.”
― Philip K. Dick, Radio Free Albemuth

“What sort of an imaginary voice is that? I asked myself, suppose Columbus had heard an imaginary voice telling him to sail west. And because of it he had discovered the New World and changed human history... We would be hard put to defend the use of the term 'imaginary' then, for that voice, since the consequences of its speaking came to affect us all. Which would have constituted greater reality, an 'imaginary' voice telling him to sail west, or a 'real' voice telling him the idea was hopeless?”
― Philip K. Dick, Radio Free Albemuth

“Never walk over a writer, I said to myself, unless you're positive he can't rise up behind you. If you're going to burn him, make sure he's dead. Because if he's alive, he will talk: talk in written form, on the printed, permanent page.”
― Philip K. Dick, Radio Free Albemuth

“The end times were not the end times after all. The end times were always coming but never here, always nearby and influencing us but never realized.”
― Philip K. Dick, Radio Free Albemuth

“One asks, Why should such disparate groups as the Soviet Union and the US intelligence community back the same man? I am no political theoretician, but Nicholas one time said, 'They both like figureheads who are corrupt. So they can govern from behind. The Soviets and the fuzz, they're all for shadow governments. They always will be, because basically each of them is the man with the gun. The pistol to the head.' ... However, Nicholas was no political theoretician either. In point of fact he had no idea how the coalition behind Fremont had formed; in fact he had no idea it existed. Like the rest of us over those years, he simply stood amazed as prominent politicians were murdered and Fremont rose rapidly to power. What was happening made no sense. No pattern could be discerned. ¶ There is a Latin motto, when one is seeking to know who has committed a crime, that goes, Look to see who gains.”
― Philip K. Dick, Radio Free Albemuth

“When you attack a tyranny you must expect it to fight back.”
― Philip K. Dick, Radio Free Albemuth

“We now dwelt in a very large prison, without walls, bounded by Canada, Mexico and two oceans. There were the jailers, the turnkeys, the informers, and somewhere in the Midwest the solitary confinement of the special internment camps. Most people did not appear to notice. Since there were no literal walls or barbed wire, since they had committed no crimes, had not been arrested or taken to court, they did not grasp the change, the dread transformation, of their situation. It was the classic case of a man kidnapped while standing still. Since they had been taken nowhere and since they themselves had voted the new tyranny into power, they could see nothing wrong. Anywho, a good third of them, had they known, would have thought it a good idea…Their freedom to do as they were told had been preserved.”
― Philip K. Dick, Radio Free Albemuth

“Because of an imaginary voice, Nicholas had become a whole person; rather than the partial person he had been in Berkeley. If he had remained in Berkeley he would have lived and died a partial person, never knowing completeness.”
― Philip K. Dick, Radio Free Albemuth

“Never walk over a writer, I said to myself, unless you're positive he can't rise us behind you. If you're going to burn him, make sure he's dead. Because if he's alive, he will talk: talk in written form, on the printed, permanent page.”
― Philip K. Dick, Radio Free Albemuth

“When you attack a tyranny you must expect it to fight back. Why not? Why shouldn't it?”
― Philip K. Dick, Radio Free Albemuth

“The human being has an unfortunate tendency to wish to please.”
― Philip K. Dick, Radio Free Albemuth

“Ferris Fremont hasn't just taken over the country,' I said, 'He's also taken over human minds. And debased them.' ¶ 'The Bible says don't judge,' Nicholas said. ¶ 'The Bible says, "My kingdom is not of this world,"' I answered angrily.”
― Philip K. Dick, Radio Free Albemuth

“I'm sorry," Leon said. "I can see you loved your two friends and you miss them, and maybe they're flying around somewhere in the sky, zipping here and there and being spirits and happy. But you and I and three billion other people are not, and until it changes here it won't be enough, Phil; not enough. Despite the supreme heavenly father. He has to do something for us here, and that's the truth. If you believe in the truth--well, Phil, that's the truth. The harsh, unpleasant truth.”
― Philip K. Dick, Radio Free Albemuth

“Gli americani leali potevano tornare a respirare tranquillamente: la loro libertà di fare ciò che gli veniva detto di fare era stata salvaguardata.”
― Philip K. Dick, Radio Free Albemuth

“The mind is strange, but it has its reasons. The mind sees in a single glimpse life unlived, hopes unrewarded, emptiness and silence where there should have been noise and love. . . . my mind had the solemn task of rearranging past reality in order that I could go on, and it was not doing a good job.”
― Philip K. Dick, Radio Free Albemuth

“Ruh, farklı renklerdeki ışıklar boyunca rasgele hareket ediyordu, her renk farklı tür bir rahmi, farklı bir yeniden doğuşu simgeliyordu. Bütün kötü rahimlerden uzak durup sonunda açık beyaz ışığa gelmek göçmüş ruhun işiydi. Bunu Nicholas’a anlatmaya karar verdim, çünkü kafası zaten yeterince karışıktı.”
― Philip K. Dick, Albemuth Özgür Radyosu

“Evidently, behind his nondescript figure a powerful White House staff lurked, never seen, who fed him an infinitude of typed information on every topic bearing on his rule. Fremont did not appear to regard all this as dull. “Iron production,” he would stumble along, reading half the words off the cue card wrong, “is up three percent, giving rise to a justified optimism in agricultural quarters.” I”
― Philip K. Dick, Radio Free Albemuth

“Most people did not appear to notice. Since there were no literal bars or barbed wire, since they had committed no crimes, had not been arrested or taken to court, they did not grasp the change, the dread transformation, of their situation. It was the classic case of a man kidnapped while standing still. Since they had been taken nowhere, and since they themselves had voted the new tyranny into power, they could see nothing wrong. Anyhow, a good third of them, had they known, would have thought it was a good idea.”
― Philip K. Dick, Radio Free Albemuth

“I signed this document and then sat back to consider the situation I was in. It wasn’t good. I recognized this red-white-and-blue plastic kit; it was the notorious “voluntary information” kit, the first step in drawing a citizen into the active intelligence system of the government. Like an income tax audit, sooner or later every citizen got one. This was our lifestyle under F.F.F.”
― Philip K. Dick, Radio Free Albemuth

“I opened the kit and began looking through the instruction booklet, which was printed on fine glossy paper. It bore the Presidential seal and the printed signature of F.F.F. Dear American: You have been invited to write a short article on the subject you know best: yourself! It is entirely up to you what matters you consider pertinent and what you feel should be left out. However, you will be graded not only on your inclusions but on what you omit.”
― Philip K. Dick, Radio Free Albemuth

“For this purpose the government began to hire and employ what they called “Friends of the American People,” agents out of uniform who went around and checked up on anyone suspected of being a threat to security, either for what he had once done, such as Nicholas, or what he was doing now, such as me, or for what he might do in the future, as was possible with all of us. Thus no one was entirely ruled out. The FAPers wore white armbands with a star-in-a-circle on it, and pretty soon they were seen everywhere in the United States, diligently investigating the moral state of hundreds of thousands of citizens.”
― Philip K. Dick, Radio Free Albemuth

“The King was visible only as mist itself, mist dancing in the mist, to bring the new crop to life; as if no men but only the corn now heard his voice.”
― Philip K. Dick, Radio Free Albemuth

“The Empire had never died; it had only receded out of sight.”
― Philip K. Dick, Radio Free Albemuth

“I said. “What you want is evil and immoral; this is what is destroying the fabric of our society. Mutual spying by friend upon friend is the most insidious wickedness that Ferris Fremont has inflicted on a formerly free people. You can write that down, Miss Kaplan, and put it in my file; better yet, you can paste it on the outside of my file as my official statement to all of you.”
― Philip K. Dick, Radio Free Albemuth