Egypt was the mother of magicians.
—Clement of Alexandria, c. 200Quotes
There 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, 1965Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one’s bath like a lump of sugar.
—Pablo Picasso, 1929One thing alone not even God can do: to make undone whatever has been done.
—Aristotle, c. 350 BCMen willingly believe what they wish.
—Julius Caesar, c. 50 BCThe 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, 1878Nothing is so easy to fake as the inner vision.
—Robertson Davies, 1985There is not so contemptible a plant or animal that does not confound the most enlarged understanding.
—John Locke, 1689The mind is led on, step by step, to defeat its own logic.
—Dai Vernon, 1994Man is always a wizard to man, and the social world is at first magical.
—Jean-Paul Sartre, 1939There 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, 1960God is alive. Magic is afoot.
—Leonard Cohen, 1966In the past, men created witches; now they create mental patients.
—Thomas Szasz, 1970