Top 129 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Magicians

Magic is a faculty of wonderful virtue, full of most high mysteries, containing the most profound contemplation of most secret things, together with the nature, power, quality, substance and virtues thereof, as also the knowledge of whole Nature, and it doth instruct us concerning the differing and agreement of things amongst themselves, whence it produceth its wonderful effects, by uniting the virtues of things through the application of them one to the other.

In magic, today as always, the effect is what counts. The method or methods used are always purely secondary.

As wonderful as it is, not everyone likes magic. Try to only share your magic with people who enjoy it.

I'm a woofer, not a tweeter; a writer, not a telegrapher; an essayist, not an aphorist.

There is no lack in the world. The lack is in you , and if you will stop seeking lack and stop thinking lack... you will make marvelous demonstrations.

All magic is about transformation... the performance magician is telling you that you are the magician in your own life. You are the agent of transformation, your own transformation.

The fact that a trick fooled you is not enough reason to perform it.

...any effect to be successful must first be founded upon a simple method and then be performed with a direct to-the-point presentation.

My last piece of advice to the degenerate slot player who thinks he can beat the one-armed bandit consists of four little words: It can't be done.

You can fool the eyes and minds of the audience, but you cannot fool their hearts.

But not all of them are decorated to the same level of taste.

If I don't fool you, I'm not doing my job as a magician. If I make you feel foolish, I'm not doing my job as a human being.

A magician is an actor playing the part of a magician.

Practice until it becomes boring, then practice until it becomes beautiful.

The current market ecosystem is not sustainable, and significant changes are coming one way or another.

If your sleight of hand causes you to break eye contact with your audience, it is too advanced for your skill level.

A Magician is not a Magician because he knows tricks, but because he knows Magic - the principles, the fundamentals.

Nothing must be left to chance in a magical performance. Everything conducive to enhancing the mystery of the illusions must be arranged with painstaking care and thought.

Good timing is invisible. Bad timing sticks out a mile.

Impact is more important than method.

Mimes were invented to give magicians someone to look down on.

Misdirect ALL the time.

The impossible I do immediately, miracles take a little longer

A good general chooses his battlefield.

We should never allow presentation to become a casualty of method.

The more they pay you the more they will respect you and enjoy your show.

Someone creates a trick, many people perfect it, but its final success in front of an audience depends on the person who presents it.

Please select a card. No I don't have to see the card...I've already seen this trick.

Honest, I only cheat a leetle.

Magic consists of creating, by misdirection of the senses, the mental impression of supernatural agency at work. That, and only that, is what modern magic really is, and that meaning alone is now assignable to the term.

It is the duty of all magicians to give entertainment.

The personality must be bigger than the prop.

You see the clouds in the sky? I made that with Vapr!

I knew I should have cleaned that musket!

Well, if you're going to watch that close, the trick is off.

The better you are, the closer they watch.

The similarities among different kinds of audiences far outweigh the differences.

Whatever you believe and mentally create, you can have.

We see things based on autopilot. Our mind identifies something in a certain way, no matter what the eye sees. The eye tells you one thing and the brain tells you another.

A large movement covers a small movement

If I could climax as many times as a Derek Dingle routine I would be a happy man!

Remember, your not your props, create the magic.

Night and day a picture of the showcase of the Lame Novelty Company and its gambling content would seem to appear before my eyes. Then I realized that I could not rest content and continue practising to become a magician until I knew what those gambling gimmicks in that showcase click.

These are the routines that originally 'put me on the map' in the magic world.

My object is to mystify and entertain. I wouldn't deceive you for the world.

The gambling supply house catalog is distinctly not the safest place to learn about cheating devices, beware of catalog men.

Grammar Checker – A software program that is not needed by those who know grammar and virtually useless for those who don’t.

To think of your creations in terms of better or worse- big mistake. They are your children.

Magicians have taken something intrinsically profound and made it look trivial.

Warranty ? A notice telling the buyer when the product that was just purchased will no longer function.

Only for you, children of doctrine and learning, have we written this work. Examine this book, ponder the meaning we have dispersed in various places and gathered again; what we have concealed in one place we have disclosed in another, that it may be understood by your wisdom.

Comedy born of bewilderment is the only comedy that should be in magic.

Most magicians are nothing more than laymen with rabbits on their business cards

Natural Magick is taken to be nothing else, but the chief power of all the natural Sciences; which therefore they call the top and perfection of Natural Philosophy, and which is indeed the active part of the same; which by the assistance of natural forces and faculties, through their mutual & opportune application, performs those things that are above Human Reason.

Every Alchymist is a Physician or a Sope-boyler.

Be natural and use your head.

Belly strippers! The use of this device is one of the most highly prized - and highly priced - secrets of fast-money winners.

Most magicians consider the palm an easy move to make. They are inclined to believe that they are 'getting away with it,' when they are in fact fortunate enough to have a polite audience.

Every time you think a thought it 'registers', and comes back to you according to the vibrations and wave lengths sent out from your mind.

If your aim is life is pursuing truth, one of the things you might want to study is why deception is so common in life.