There are no private lives. This a most important aspect of modern life. That one of the biggest transformations we have seen in human life in our society is the diminution of the sphere of the private. That we must reasonably now all regard the fact that there are no secrets and nothing is private. Everything is public.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the loss of privacy in modern society, suggesting that everything is publicly accessible.
Philip K. Dick highlights a crucial change in contemporary life, where the boundaries of privacy have diminished significantly. He suggests that in today's world, individuals can no longer maintain secrets, and the notion of a private life is fundamentally altered, emphasizing the pervasive nature of public scrutiny and the transparency of personal lives in a connected society.
In practice
In a discussion about the implications of social media on personal lives, this quote serves to illustrate the lack of privacy.
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.
Although a man may have no jurisdiction over the fact of his existence, he can hold supreme command over the meaning of existence for him.
Geese are white, crows are black. No argument will change this.
A scientist may not be sure of the answer, but he's often sure he can find one. And that's a condition which is clearly not enjoyed by philosophy.
On the whole, the longing for solitude is a sign that there still is spirit in a person and is a measure of what spirit there is.
We are the product of 4.5 billion years of fortuitous, slow biological evolution. There is no reason to think that the evolutionary process has stopped. Man is a transitional animal. He is not the climax of creation.
I believe in truths, but I don't believe in the Truth. Furthermore, I think that vision of an underlying Truth, with as capital T, that scientists are privy to, has been a very counterproductive vision. It has served scientists very well, but what it has done, above all, is encloses the world of science and immunize it from criticism.
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