Archive

Quotes

Nothing is so easy as to deceive one’s self; for what we wish, that we readily believe.

—Demosthenes, 349 BC

Have you ever, looking up, seen a cloud like to a centaur, a leopard, a wolf, or a bull?

—Aristophanes, 423 BC

Egypt was the mother of magicians.

—Clement of Alexandria, c. 200

Everything that deceives does so by casting a spell.

—Plato, c. 375 BC

The fact is certain because it is impossible.

—Tertullian, c. 200

In the past, men created witches; now they create mental patients.

—Thomas Szasz, 1970

Watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you, because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.

—Roald Dahl, 1990

The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears the truth.

—Gaston Bachelard, 1960

Nothing worth knowing can be understood with the mind.

—Woody Allen, 1979

The fear of the Lord is true wisdom, and he who hath it not can in no way penetrate the true secrets of magic.

—Abraham the Jew, c. 1400

The believer in magic and miracles reflects on how to impose a law on nature—and, in brief, the religious cult is the outcome of this reflection.

—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1878

There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown. He wants to see what is reaching toward him and to be able to recognize or at least classify it. Man always tends to avoid physical contact with anything strange.

—Elias Canetti, 1960

Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one’s bath like a lump of sugar.

—Pablo Picasso, 1929