The Magician archetype is an archetype associated with mystery, alchemy and transformation. Magician archetypes are thinkers, creators of sacred space, and a visionaries.
100 Inspirational Quotes for Magicians
We’ve collected the best quotes about magicians for you to read through.
This selection of quotations are based solely on my personal taste and are in no particular order. You are welcome to browse the entire collection and look for your own favourite quotes.
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Checkout this list of magician quotes:
1. James Randi
Magicians are the most honest people in the world; they tell you they’re gonna fool you, and then they do it.
2. Doug Henning
The art of a magician is to create wonder. If we live with a sense of wonder, our lives become filled with joy.
3. David Blaine
You don’t get into magic. Magic gets into you.
4. Franz Hartmann
Before one can become a magician he must learn to control his own mind; for mind is the substance with which the magician acts, and the power to control it is the beginning of magic.
5. John Travolta
Misdirection. What the eyes see and the ears hear, the mind believes.
6. Sol Stein
The expert magician seeks to deceive the mind, rather than the eye.
7. Sidney Sheldon
There is magic, but you have to be the magician. You have to make the magic happen.
8. Ben Hecht
Love is the magician that pulls him out of his own hat.
9. David Copperfield
The real secret of magic lies in the performance.
10. Leonard Cohen
Do not be a magician – be magic!
11. Harry Houdini
My Brain is the key that sets me free.
12. Dick Christian
Hookers do tricks, magicians make magic.
13. Michael Caine
Every magic trick consists of three parts, or acts. The first part is called the Pledge. The magician shows you something ordinary. The second act is called the Turn. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it into something extraordinary. But you wouldn’t clap yet, because making something disappear isn’t enough. You have to bring it back.
14. Ben Okri
The magician and the politician have much in common: they both have to draw our attention away from what they are really doing.
15. Rick Riordan
What’s the point of being a magician if you can’t wave your wand and make the people you care about feel better?
16. David Copperfield
When people say you can’t do it – that it’s impossible – never lose hope. Just because they couldn’t doesn’t mean you can’t.
17. Jim Steinmeyer
Unlike a mere deception or a simple secret, which gives the impression that something’s been taken away, a great magician makes you feel like something’s been given to you.
18. John Henry Anderson
It is the duty of all magicians to give entertainment.
19. Dai Vernon
In magic, today as always, the effect is what counts. The method or methods used are always purely secondary.
20. David Blaine
To most magicians, cards themselves are marvels…For one thing, they feel special in your hand. Touching them, holding them, shuffling – the whole process is almost poetic. If you’re in a room full of magicians and someone just mentions the word cards, within seconds, everyone is digging into their pockets and pulling out a deck of cards. It’s one of the most amazing feelings ever.
21. Marco Tempest
Magicians will always tell you the trick is the most important thing, but Im more interested in telling a story.
22. Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin
A magician is an actor playing the part of a magician.
23. Harlan Tarbell
A Magician is not a Magician because he knows tricks, but because he knows Magic – the principles, the fundamentals.
24. Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin
A fundamental understanding of the human psyche is the essential key to successful magic.
25. David Copperfield
It is the unspoken ethic of all magicians to not reveal the secrets.
26. David Copperfield
Magic is the only profession where it’s easy to lie about your talent. If you do a trick and you can learn it very quickly, you can fool somebody into thinking you’re a great magician.
27. Max Maven
Most magicians are afraid of magic.
28. Jerry Andrus
Magic is something that seems like it goes against how the world works and its us magicians job to be doing that.
29. Harry Houdini
The great trouble with magicians is the fact that they believe when they have bought a certain trick or piece of apparatus, and know the method of procedure, that they are full-fledged mystifiers.
30. Sharon Stone
I’ve never thought of myself as a great beauty — just a great magician.
31. Adam Gopnik
Frauds master our minds; magicians, like poets and lovers, engage them in a permanent maze of possibilities.
32. Tanith Lee
The soul is a magician. Only living flesh hampers it.
33. Penn Jillette
I never wanted to be a magician. I never wanted to be a comedian. I never wanted to be onstage.
34. Jerry Andrus
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.
35. W. Somerset Maugham
Yet magic is no more than the art of employing consciously invisible means to produce visible effects. Will, love and imagination are magic powers that everyone possesses; and whoever knows how to develop them to their fullest extent is a magician. Magic has but one dogma, namely, that the seen is the measure of the unseen.
36. Tom Robbins
Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.
37. Eugene Burger
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.
38. David Blaine
As a magician, I think everything is possible. And I think if something is done by one person it can be done by others.
39. Harry Houdini
A magician is only an actor – an actor pretending to be a magician.
40. Dai Vernon
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.
41. David Copperfield
From the very beginning, I studied acting, directing, lighting, dance and movement. I didn’t rely on just the magic to take place. It’s a shame that a lot of magicians just rely on the trick itself and they have no other abilities. They get away with the wonder factor, and I don’t think that’s enough. It’s great, but it’s not enough.
42. Susanna Clarke
I know magicians and I know magic and I say this: all magicians lie and this one more than most.
43. Lev Grossman
A magician is strong because he feels the pain between what the world is and what he would make of it.
44. David K Shipler
Watching foreign affairs is sometimes like watching a magician; the eye is drawn to the hand performing the dramatic flourishes, leaving the other hand – the one doing the important job – unnoticed.
45. David Copperfield
Magicians are the people who began to use film as an illusion on stage.
46. Jamy Ian Swiss
Magicians have taken something intrinsically profound and made it look trivial.
47. David Copperfield
Magicians lose the opportunity to experience a sense of wonder.
48. Richard Wiseman
We’re starting to realize that magicians have a lot of implicit know-ledge about how we perceive the world around us because they have to deceive us in terms of controlling attention, exploiting the assumptions we make when we do and don’t notice a change in our environment. There is an enormous amount of really detailed instruction on how to perform magic. People are always blown away by how detailed a description you’ll have.
49. Criss Angel
I came up with the term ‘mindfreak’ because I didn’t like the word ‘magician.’ I felt like I wanted to coin a term that would be basically the reaction to my art. It would be a mindfreak and so that’s why I came up with that. But, many people say I’m really a student of humanity and psychology.
50. Alan Moore
For me, there is very little difference between magic and art. To me, the ultimate act of magic is to create something from nothing: It’s like when the stage magician pulls the rabbit from the hat.
51. Jostein Gaarder
A lot of people experience the world with the same incredulity as when a magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat.…We know that the world is not all sleight of hand and deception because we are in it, we are part of it. Actually we are the white rabbit being pulled out of the hat. The only difference beween us and the white rabbit is that the rabbit does not realize it is taking part in a magic trick.
52. Naomi Novik
The Magicians brilliantly explores the hidden underbelly of fantasy and easy magic, taking what’s simple on the surface and turning it over to show us the complicated writhing mess beneath. It’s like seeing the worlds of Narnia and Harry Potter through a 3-D magnifying glass.
53. Laurell K Hamilton
One of my rules is never explain. A writer is a lot like a magician, if you explain how the trick works then a lot of the magic turns mundane.
54. Kenneth Grant
In all forms of magick, the imagination or image-making faculty is the most important factor
55. Edward Steichen
I was coming to realize that the real magician was light itself.
56. Marcel Marceau
Mime makes the invisible, visible and the visible, invisible.
57. Christopher Plummer
How you prepare for a role is entirely your business in my point of view. There is little enough mystery anymore left in the world in the part of our profession, which should be clouded in mystery because it isn’t in the public. You don’t want the magician to show his tricks or how he did them do you? So I do think that is a very private thing that we actors should protect ourselves from.
58. Charles Dickens
Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.
59. Andrew Mayne
Some of the best ideas I’ve gotten for my act have come from comedians and not magicians.
60. Richard Wiseman
Magicians are manipulating your consciousness. They are showing you something impossible. They’re getting you to construct a narrative, which simply isn’t true. So that means they know how to make you aware of certain things and blind to other things. What I’m hoping is that magic, this entertainment vehicle that has been around for a long time, will give us a real insight into the deep mysteries of consciousness
61. Jason Mraz
I still go through stages of wanting to try other trades. When I was young I thought I’d be a magician. And then a cartoonist. Or a professional roller-skater. But there wasn’t much support for those on career day.
62. Roberto Benigni
I remember in the circus learning that the clown was the prince, the high prince. I always thought that the high prince was the lion or the magician, but the clown is the most important.
63. Darwin Ortiz
Most magicians are nothing more than laymen with rabbits on their business cards.
64. Franz Bardon
According to the universal laws, the magician will form his own point of view about the universe which henceforth will be his true religion.
65. Greg Behrendt
I always say that I love magic but I hate magicians. I like being fooled. If you wave your hands in front of my face and I think you’re doing a trick, I’m easily impressed. If you pull a quarter out of my ear, I’m quite certain you’re a wizard. But I don’t like the way most magicians don’t act like they’re magical; they act like show business dicks.
66. Giordano Bruno
Magicians can do more by means of faith than physicians by the truth.
67. John Maynard Keynes
Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind that looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago.
68. David Lynch
Through the darkness of future past, the magician longs to see, one chance out between two worlds, fire walk with me!
69. Orson Welles
Good evening, ladies and gentleman. My name is Orson Welles. I am an actor. I am a writer. I am a producer. I am a director. I am a magician. I appear onstage and on the radio. Why are there so many of me and so few of you?
70. Janette Turner Hospital
I’ve found you can go on writing in the dark, and that the act of writing itself, that mysterious, dangerous, intoxicating, absorbing, nourishing magician’s trick, that act of creation is its own light.
71. Jonathan Stroud
Haven’t you done enough for a lifetime? Think about it – two power – crazed magicians killed, a hundred power – crazed magicians saved.
72. Patti Smith
In the war of magic and religion, is magic ultimately the victor? Perhaps priest and magician were once one, but the priest, learning humility in the face of God, discarded the spell for prayer.
73. Sasa Stanisic
If I were a magician who could make things possible, I’d have lemonade always tasting as it did on the evening Francesco explained how right it was for the Italian moon to be a feminine moon. If I were a magician who could make things possible, we’d be able to understand all languages every evening between eight and nine. If I were a magician who could make things possible, all dams would keep their promises. If I were a magician who could make things possible, we’d be really brave.
74. Zeena Schreck
The core practice of magic is: The execution of a willed intent to create change in the material world, which either defies, hastens or purifies the consequences of natural cause and effect
75. Rebecca McNutt
The role of a sorcerer’s apprentice is to understand that power is unlimited, power is chaos, power is energy, power is everything… but also to never forget that your Master found that power first.
76. Orville Wright
Learning the secret of flight from a bird was a good deal like learning the secret of magic from a magician.
77. Amit Kalantri
Magic is the stunning art of surprising your audience, so that nothing else surprises them
78. F.K. Preston
The greatest magicians know every single thought their audience is thinking. They know every thought their audience could think and might think and will think. They choose to either prove them right or trick them again and again. A mixture of the two, however, is perfect. There are no greater storytellers in the world then magicians. Who could make you question your reality as well as a magician can disappear and reappear in the seat beside you? Who else, other than a magician, could bring their final act into your dreams? Who could build a narrative and finish it with as big a finale than a magician?
79. Amit Kalantri
Performing magic takes dedicated practice, no one became a magician just by reading its secrets.
80. Bangambiki Habyarimana
Magic always happens when you direct your inner powers to the object you want to change.
81. Stella Stark
Artist is a magician who manifests order into reality.
82. Ouida
Familiarity is a magician that is cruel to beauty but kind to ugliness.
83. James Weldon Johnson
Labor is the fabled magician’s wand, the philosophers stone, and the cap of good fortune.
84. John Wooden
I’m no wizard, and I don’t like being thought of in that light at all. I think of a wizard as being some sort of magician or something, doing something on the sly or something, and I don’t want to be thought of in that way.
85. Gore Vidal
Until very recently, the artist was a magician who did his magic in public view but kept himself and his effects a matter of mystery.
86. Adam Grant
Being a magician taught me how powerful the element of surprise can be. In each book, I’ve tried to work that in – an unexpected twist in a story that reveals an insight, a counter intuitive study that turns your beliefs upside-down.
87. Chris Van Allsburg
The whole idea of being mesmerized and not in control of your own actions is fascinating and a little spooky. I remember hearing about someone who’d gone to a magic act, and a person in the audience had become hypnotized by observing too closely what magician was doing on stage, and thought it was spooky to lose your consciousness that way.
88. Teller
Indian street magic tends to be very gory, blood and guts. One trick is for a magician to take a knife and appear to cut his kid’s head almost off. The magician then says to the crowd, ‘Well I can continue to cut off my son’s head or you can all give me some money.’ Then he wanders around and takes 10 rupees from everyone and restores his son.
89. Teller
When a magician lets you notice something on your own, his lie becomes impenetrable.
90. Caroline Flack
I was a magician’s assistant and had to go in the box that they put the swords through, and there’s no trick to it. You literally have to dodge the swords.
91. Ashton Kutcher
I think people know Steve Jobs the showman. I think people know the guy who stood up and gave the keynotes. The magician. The salesman.
92. Will Arnett
Because ‘Gob’ was a terrible magician, he was always, in great comedic moments, messing up his magic act. We used to have magicians come in to work on these tricks to actually get them wrong. But they still had to work. We had to bring magicians on to make magic not work.
93. Kailash Kher
When the audience enjoys your performance, you feel like a magician who is doing magic. It’s a great feeling!
94. Hans Rosling
My best friend in medical school was a magician. And we were shown an X-ray of a sword-swallower, and I tried it and failed. Then I got a sword-swallower as a patient, and he taught me.
95. Ruud Gullitt
People have expectations of me but I’m not a magician.
96. Tim Duncan
The only nickname I’ve ever had is Merlin, like the magician. I don’t know why.
97. David Pogue
My interest was magic, believe it or not. I became an amateur magician and did something like 400 magic shows through my teen years.
98. Janice Dickinson
Hey, I fool the camera. I’m a liar, a magician.
99. Ira Glass
I’m a big Penn & Teller fan. But I myself was never very good; I was a teenage magician who performed at kids’ parties. I can still perform a vanish, credibly, and I still, in special circumstances, will make a balloon animal.
100. Ricky Jay
I was considered a comedy magician. And – how do I put this without sounding egotistical? – it didn’t take me long to realize that comedy magicians usually couldn’t do comedy or magic.
