Archive

Quotes

Any serious attempt to do anything worthwhile is ritualistic.

—Derek Walcott, 1986

Man is always a wizard to man, and the social world is at first magical.

—Jean-Paul Sartre, 1939

Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.

—Tom Robbins, 1976

All things are filled full of signs, and it is a wise man who can learn about one thing from another.

—Plotinus, c. 255

The mind is led on, step by step, to defeat its own logic.

—Dai Vernon, 1994

God is alive. Magic is afoot.

—Leonard Cohen, 1966

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

—Gaston Bachelard, 1960

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

—Thomas Szasz, 1970

Many are the wonders of the world, and none so wonderful as man.

—Sophocles, c. 441 BC

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

—Demosthenes, 349 BC

Nothing worth knowing can be understood with the mind.

—Woody Allen, 1979

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

Superstitions are habits rather than beliefs.

—Marlene Dietrich, 1962