Magician

🇺🇸Harry Houdini

Literature

1874–1926

"I'm tired of fighting, Dash. I guess this thing is going to get me."

🇺🇸Penn Jillette

Entertainment

b. 1955

"If you can just convince the dope people that the gun people are right and the gun people that the dope people are right, we could actually live in a lot more freedom."

🇺🇸Orson Welles

Entertainment

1915–1985

"I don't pray really, because I don't want to bore God."

🇺🇸Raymond Smullyan

Philosophy

1919–2017

"Is God a Taoist? by Raymond Smullyan, 1977."

Taliesin

Literature

"The Book of Taliesin, in Welsh, with English translations by W.F. Skene"

🇬🇧Derren Brown

Psychology

b. 1971

"can be poorly presented and surrounded by naffness, and often amounts to little more than childish attempts to fool you. I guess it’s largely to escape those associations that I’ve gone the route I have."

"The deadline was two months earlier, but like myself Mike considered deadlines in financial rather than chronological terms."

🇬🇧Uri Geller

Entertainment

b. 1946

"Like I told you, I'm not a magician," he says. "If something isn't working, I don't try to guess."

🇺🇸James Randi

Psychology

atheism

1928–2020

"Uri Geller may have psychic powers by means of which he can bend spoons; if so, he appears to be doing it the hard way."

W. W. Rouse Ball

Mathematics

1850–1925

"Babbage was one of the founders of the Cambridge Analytical Society whose purpose he stated was to advocate "the principles of pure d-ism as opposed to the dot-age of the university."

🇺🇸Alexander Herrmann

1843–1896

"I have not drawn a very rosy picture of the magician. I did not intend to do so. To the novice entering the life and promising himself ease, indolence, and wealth, I should say, "Don't!"

🇺🇸Martin Gardner

Literature

1914–2010

"Mathematical magic combines the beauty of mathematical structure with the entertainment value of a trick."