James Randi Quotes

For me, the most exciting thing is to create good magic that's entertaining for an audience, and it would be lovely if a magician was fooled as well.

I don't think you can say something is or isn't magic. That's what was cool about Houdini, because he was a magician who had a magic show, but he was also an escape artist, and they kind of, over time, blended together. They both kind of enhance each other, I think.

The problem with stage magic is that it looks really good, but everyone knows there's a trick box.

A clever conjurer is welcome anywhere, and those of us whose powers of entertainment are limited to the setting of booby-traps or the arranging of apple-pie beds must view with envy the much greater tribute of laughter and applause which is the lot of the prestidigitator with some natural gift for legerdemain.

We all enjoy a magic show, but we don't demand a Q&A afterward explaining how it was done.

If you do magic, it's the quickest most fraudulent route to impressing people.

All magic is 'Here’s a quarter, now it’s gone. You’re a jerk. Now it’s back. You’re an idiot. Show’s over.'

But when I go off stage I don't have a deck of cards with me all the time.

When we go to play, you flip around and flash around and everything, and then they're not gonna see nothin' but what their eyes see. Forget about their ears.

If there are two things Penn & Teller stand for, it's the truth & lying, although not necessarily in that order.

Hey, I fool the camera. I'm a liar, a magician.

One of the best sleight-of-hand guys I know is a plumber.

I think there's a huge amount of magic on television, which is slightly vapid: there's no real meaning or message behind it; it is simply a trick.

Well, I also love magic, which is, you know, different than showmanship. Magic's an art where you use slight of hand or illusion to create wonder.

In a movie we try to deceive. In theaters, as they say, the deceived are the wisest.

I grew up like Athena - covered with playing cards instead of armor - and, at the age of seven, materialized on a TV show, doing magic.

My grandmother's first husband was a spiritualist medium. What fascinates me about that is the balance between conviction and sincerity and trickery, which is also something that novelists are very familiar with.

As a kid, I kind of spent my life being amazed by being tricked. I love being tricked. I still love it today.

Magic's an art where you use slight of hand or illusion to create wonder. And I was just intrigued with that idea.

But the whole idea of the transformation... mystery, transformation, and manipulations - those were the things that Marcel was a magician at. That's his magic.

To obfuscate the reconstruction of the effect - when a magician is fooled by another magician doing magic. In my career that's not been the major passion, but it's been the passion of a number of my mentors. The crowning achievement for them would be to create magic good enough to fool other magicians.

As a kid, I always was obsessed with Houdini.

You can fool a person into going to see a movie with a good trailer.

I'm doing everything I can to take the magician out of the equation of magic.

I've always performed magic as a kid.