A miracle entails a degree of irrationality—not because it shocks reason, but because it makes no appeal to it.
—Emmanuel Lévinas, 1952Quotes
To blow and to swallow at the same time is not easy; I cannot at the same time be here and also there.
—Plautus, c. 200 BCSuperstitions are habits rather than beliefs.
—Marlene Dietrich, 1962Man is always a wizard to man, and the social world is at first magical.
—Jean-Paul Sartre, 1939Nothing worth knowing can be understood with the mind.
—Woody Allen, 1979One thing alone not even God can do: to make undone whatever has been done.
—Aristotle, c. 350 BCNothing is so easy to fake as the inner vision.
—Robertson Davies, 1985Watch 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, 1990The Mughal’s nature is such that they demand miracles, but if a miracle were to be performed by some upright follower of our religion, they would say that it had been brought about by magic and sorcery. They would strike him down with spears or would stone him to death.
—Fr. Antonio Monserrate, 1590Nothing is so easy as to deceive one’s self; for what we wish, that we readily believe.
—Demosthenes, 349 BCNothing from nothing ever yet was born.
—Lucretius, c. 58 BCThere 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 that deceives does so by casting a spell.
—Plato, c. 375 BC