Everything that deceives does so by casting a spell.
—Plato, c. 375 BCQuotes
Superstitions are habits rather than beliefs.
—Marlene Dietrich, 1962The fact is certain because it is impossible.
—Tertullian, c. 200The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears the truth.
—Gaston Bachelard, 1960Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear.
—William Shakespeare, 1592Many are the wonders of the world, and none so wonderful as man.
—Sophocles, c. 441 BCOnce something becomes discernible, or understandable, we no longer need to repeat it. We can destroy it.
—Robert Wilson, 1991The more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts.
—Italo Calvino, 1967The mind is led on, step by step, to defeat its own logic.
—Dai Vernon, 1994Nothing worth knowing can be understood with the mind.
—Woody Allen, 1979A miracle entails a degree of irrationality—not because it shocks reason, but because it makes no appeal to it.
—Emmanuel Lévinas, 1952There are times when reality becomes too complex for oral communication. But legend gives it a form by which it pervades the whole world.
—Jean-Luc Godard, 1965There 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