Archive

Quotes

To ensure the adoration of a theorem for any length of time, faith is not enough; a police force is needed as well.

—Albert Camus, 1951

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

Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.

—Saint Augustine, c. 400

God is alive. Magic is afoot.

—Leonard Cohen, 1966

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 fact is certain because it is impossible.

—Tertullian, c. 200

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

A miracle entails a degree of irrationality—not because it shocks reason, but because it makes no appeal to it.

—Emmanuel Lévinas, 1952

Egypt was the mother of magicians.

—Clement of Alexandria, c. 200

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

—Tom Robbins, 1976

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

Nothing is so easy to fake as the inner vision.

—Robertson Davies, 1985

Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.

—Lucretius, c. 58 BC