I dreamed: I am the fish whose flesh is eaten, and because I am fat, it is good.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the complexity of self-perception and sacrifice, suggesting that one's perceived flaws can also be seen as advantages.
In this quote, Philip K. Dick explores the duality of the human experience through the metaphor of a fish whose fat is consumed. It highlights how from one perspective, being seen as desirable or valuable can lead to exploitation, yet from another perspective, this same quality can be viewed as a source of contentment or worth. It invites the reader to consider how our traits and vulnerabilities can be interpreted in contrasting ways based on individual experiences and societal perspectives.
In practice
During a motivational talk about self-acceptance, one might use this quote to highlight the importance of embracing one's flaws.
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.
A man is an angel that has gone deranged.
The 25th anniversary of the decision ... is a call to people of good will to reflect. Now is the time for recommitment to the building of a culture of absolute respect for life.
I was struck by an awful thought, the kind that cannot be taken back once it escapes into the open air of consciousness; it seemed to me that this was not a place you go to live. It was a place you go to die.
I think that first-person narration is very characteristic of contemporary optics, in which the individual performs the role of subjective center of the world.
If the religious experience were simply some naive impression of the uninformed it would not have resulted in such intellectual insight, such spiritual exaltation, such spectacular religious ritual, or in the immense volume of song and poetry and literature and dance that humans have produced.
I would proclaim that the vast majority of what [say, Scientific American] is true-yet my ability to defend such a claim is weaker than I would like. And most likely the readers, authors, and editors of that magazine would be equally hard pressed to come up with cogent, non-technical arguments convincing a skeptic of this point, especially if pitted against a clever lawyer arguing the contrary. How come Truth is such a slippery beast?
The legislative powers of government reach actions only and not opinions.
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