James Randi Quotes

The whole world is run on bluff.

When a magician lets you notice something on your own, his lie becomes impenetrable.

I misdirect the audience, so they have no idea where they are or who they're listening to.

Hope is such a bait, it covers any hook.

Magicians have done controlled testing in human perception for thousands of years.

The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies.

Everything that deceives does so by casting a spell.

Deception is a sort of seduction. In love and war, adultery and espionage, deceit can only succeed if the deceived party is willing, in some way, to be deceived.

Lies were only as strong as the suckers that believed them.

I like being fooled. When I watch someone who does sleight-of-hand and fools me, it's a great feeling.

Son, the greatest trick the Devil pulled was convincing the world there was only one of him.

We like to be deceived.

It's not about fooling somebody, it's actually giving somebody a measure of their own belief: how much you want to be fooled. That's why we pay to go to magic shows and things like that.

Phony psychics like Uri Geller have had particular success in bamboozling scientists with ordinary stage magic, because only scientists are arrogant enough to think that they always observe with rigorous and objective scrutiny, and therefore could never be so fooled while ordinary mortals know perfectly well that good performers can always find a way to trick people.

Where there's smoke, there's bound to be mirrors.

I believe in low lights and trick mirrors.

If there was a trick, there must be a trickster.

A smiling lie is a whirlwind, easy to enter, but hard to escape.

I learned a lot that night. For example, that part of being the magician's assistant means coming face-to-face with illusion. That invisibility is really just knotting your body in a certain way and letting the black curtain fall over you. That people don't vanish into thin air; that when you can't find someone, it's because you've been misdirected to look elsewhere.

It is wise to remember that you are one of those who can be fooled some of the time.

Those who are overreached by our cunning are far from appearing to us as ridiculous as we appear to ourselves when the cunning of others has overreached us.

The gift of words is the gift of deception and illusion.

False fancy brings real misery.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!

There are three species of creatures who when they seem coming are going, when they seem going they come: diplomats, women, and crabs.