The true measure of a man is not his intelligence or how high he rises in this freak establishment. No, the true measure of a man is this: how quickly can he respond to the needs of others and how much of himself he can give.
Interpretation
A person's worth is defined not by their success or intellect, but by their willingness to help others.
Philip K. Dick emphasizes the importance of empathy and service to others as the true indicators of a person's character. In a society that often values achievements and intelligence, he suggests a deeper evaluation based on compassion and the ability to support those in need, thereby redefining what it means to be truly 'great'.
In practice
A motivational speech about community service could include this quote to highlight the importance of giving back.
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.
Are we not all shipwrecked,...condemned to death?... However impatient our neighbours make us, however much indignation our race arouses, we are all bound together, and the companions of a chain-gang have everything to lose by mutual insults.
Evil, by definition, is that which endangers the good, and the good is that which we perceive as a value.
No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses.
The simplest thought, like the concept of the number one, has an elaborate logical underpinning.
I have never once feared the devil, but I tremble every time I enter the pulpit.
The goal of my work is to make visible the inevitable racist assumptions held, and patterns displayed, by white people conditioned from living in a white supremacist culture.
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