Atheists

"If a piece of 'alternative medicine' can be shown to work reliably, it ceases to become alternative. It just becomes medicine."

"For a while now I have concerned myself with engaging people’s beliefs. A large part of me wishes to have people retain a scepticism about what I do and apply that to other areas in life where our beliefs are manipulated in ugly ways."

"Most people think themselves kind enough, but rather like a magician thinking he is fooling an audience who can see through his trick, we are the worst judges of the effect we have on others. True, we can mentally point out various kindnesses we have committed and those pleasant aspects of ourselves. Yet by doing so, we ignore the real test cases: how we behave under pressure, how nice we are to people we don’t like, how we deal with other people who seem determined to not live up to our unrealistic expectations."

"If you concern yourself with telling or showing people how interesting you are, you will at best provoke a temporary response of polite interest until even that gives way to annoyance. If you let people find it out for themselves, you become a real source of fascination."

"The appreciation of a painting or a piece of music, for example, or even falling in love, is all about our subjectivity. But to decide that the entire universe operates in such a way, let alone to go to war because we are so convinced we are right that others must agree with us or die, that surely should demand a higher level of argument than 'It's true because I really, really feel it is."

"We are allowed to question people about their politics or ethics and expect them to defend their beliefs, or at least hold their own in any other important matter by recourse to evidence, yet somehow on the massive subject of God and how he might have us behave, all rational discussion must stop the moment we hear 'I believe'."

"One can be a true believer in anything: psychic ability, Christianity or, as Bertrand Russell classically suggested (with irony), in the fact there is a teapot orbiting the earth. I could believe any of those things with total conviction. But my conviction doesn't make them true. Indeed, it is something of an insult to the very truth I might hold dear to say that something is true just because I believe it is."

"Moderate religious people may of course express distaste for such violence, pretending that the clear calls for grotesque and violent behaviour in their sacred book aren't there and cherry-picking the 'nice bits', but they are still guilty of not opening up the subject of belief to rational discourse, and in doing so are part of the machinery that leads to all the ugliness caused by fundamentalism."

"Science is unusual in that it is cumulative. It is a system built over time, wherein useful information is retained and ideas that simply don't stand up are discarded, based on the confirmation of knowledge through testing."

"To forgive purely because it is nicer to forgive, and to do so when it’s a tough call; to try to speak only kindly of those we know because it is preferable to do so; to enjoy the successes of others because living thus is more enjoyable than the stress of living resentfully: such kind things make us better, lovlier people. And to try to live this way for its own merits, without invoking a supernatural reason for doing so, is to celebrate our humanity and to give kindness back its teeth."

"This week, we’re in Whitby on the North-east coast where my great-uncle, Count Dracula, first touched British soil in the shape of a big dog."

"Uninformed strong opinions - and I particularly include religious ones, which for some reason get special treatment - are of course mere clusters of prejudices and no more appropriate than mine, yours or anyone else's are on topics we don't understand - as worthless as my opinions on hockey, Noel Edmonds or rimming."

"I deeply, and widely, believe that performance is a very personal affair, and that one must pursue one’s own sense of integrity and remain a little detached from advice and precedent offered by tradition."

"I decided that my magic had to change. That I had to give serious thought to presentation. That, in fact, my presentation of the effects is where my impact as a magician lies – I realised that it can turn a good effect into something artistic and stunning."

"Magicians do not, as a rule, presume that their audiences are intelligent and sensitive enough to want the magic to be challenging and cathartic. This is not a healthy starting point, for it stultifies magic and leaves it too close to children’s entertainment."

"Few things make me more livid than insulting bad theatre of any sort. Conversely, perfectly realised and exquisitely elegant performance can move me deeply and reduce me to sobbing like a big girl."

"One minute she is a sweet old silly, knitting herself a set of syringe covers and talking about her favourite flowers, and the very next moment she has told you and your friends she has a ring supporting the back of her vagina."

"We form many of our political opinions through reading papers and unconsciously absorbing the rhetoric of the journalists. Later, we spout the same opinions as our own. This parallels the way we respond to any authority and it’s something politicians understand well."

"Not believing in something is not in itself a belief or a philosophy: it is the 'ism' at the end that tends to cause the trouble. Both atheists and believers can be as arrogant and witless as each other in frustrated debate, and people may choose strong and unapologetic words to raise awareness of the agenda. But despite the name-calling, it is still a fair point that to not believe in God is no more a 'belief in itself' than to not believe in the Loch Ness Monster, Poseidon or anything else one might personally consider far-fetched. Beyond that, there is only how you choose to express yourself."

"There are people who have the ability to wake up a minute or even seconds before their alarm goes off or to know what time they’ve woken up without even looking at a clock. Now, thank God, I don’t have to get up in the mornings but the potential of the body to keep such accurate time is remarkable."

"He’s Derren, a charming, bearded buffoon. He’ll read your brain, and make it slushy. – Sung by Andy Nyman, Trick of the Mind, Series 1, DVD extras"

"Derren Brown has taken the cheese out of showbiz magic and restored the sense of wonder - Time Out"

"Essential viewing... difficult not to be dazzled... boggles the mind - The Times"

"Brown is jaw-droppingly good - Radio Times"

"Mind-blowing. His tricks are amazing - The Guardian"

"Brown’s version of magic is not merely entertaining, it challenges you to examine your own beliefs - Fortean Times"

"A hundred years ago they would have burnt him at the stake - Bizarre Magazine"

"From the moment Brown strode energetically on to the stage, all thoughts of what he is – mystic or magician – or how he accomplishes such mind-bending feats are forgotten. Everybody is transported into a weird world of wonder. It’s spooky, but it’s also a whole heap of fun. The first half of the show is everything that Brown has become renowed for. His unfailing ability to work out in advance what people are going to think or how they are going to act is uncanny, drawing gasps from the crowd at every turn. It’s theatre and entertainment at its best. – Edinburgh Evening News"

"Clearly the greatest dinner party guest in history – he’s either a balls-out con artist or the scariest man in Britain -The Guardian"

"How wonderful that there are still people around who’ll put in the hours of thought and hard slog so that people like me can simply sit back and lap it all up without being blinded by fire and brimstone and a vast array of visible trickery. How wonderful that there are still those who rely on performance rather than props, on delivery rather than pure end-result. How marvellous to enjoy a mere handful of props and, to be crude, a truckload of talent. – MagicWeek"

"Part James Bond, part Yoda - Guardian Guide"

"Yet what makes the show what it is - a truly mesmerising theatrical event that should live forever in the memory - is the magic and the variety, speed and dexterity with which Brown performs it. Looking around the auditorium of this sold-out theatre, with everyone on their feet at the show’s climax, it’s probably the most fun they’re likely to have this year. Derren Brown is simply astonishing to witness on stage. – The Stage"

"The closest our galaxy can boast to a Jedi Master – Empire Magazine"

"The greatest dinner party guest in history…or the scariest man in Britain – The Guardian"

"He’s a creepy one. – Reece Shearsmith"

"Brown’s real talent is for taking a single effect and turning it into a drama that has you on the edge of your seat. A lesser mind-reader would simply reveal the name, picture or number of which you’re thinking and take their bow. Brown stretches it to its limit, though at no time does it become tedious or tiring. His sense of timing is perfect and his comic asides at times produce belly laughs. Yet he ensures his volunteers are the stars of the show. – MagicWeek"

"From psychics to spiritualists to palm readers to graphologists to astrologists, the ‘expert’ in question either just simply deluded and naive or they’re using a skill called cold-reading."

"Being open minded isn’t about accepting things mindlessly. Being open minded is about having the information and then making the best decisions you can. A chap called Ian Rowland who wrote a good book on cold-reading made the point that if you’re a chef and you think, ‘well I know if I put poison in this soup and give it to these 200 people it’s going to kill them but, hey, I’ll be open minded’, that’s not being open minded, that’s just being ignorant. That’s just not working with the information you’ve got. So we have information on things like placebo effect and information about cold-reading. These things exists – false memories and anecdotal [evidence], all those things that are important – and taking that on board is just about being able to make better decisions. That’s about being truly open minded. Ignoring them and putting them to one side in this pursuit of easy answers and ‘intuition is the be-all and end-all of truth’, that’s not being open minded at all. I think that’s very narrow minded and certainly to laugh at people who say that evidence is important, I think that’s hypocrisy of the worst kind, to call them narrow minded."

"While on TV Brown downplays his role in proceedings – which may be a sleight of hand in itself – here his personality is to the fore, helped by a witty script and some unobtrusive direction. And what comes across strongest, aside from the unfailingly impressive feats of memory and suggestion, is a wryly self-aware sense of humour. Here he knocks the ponderous, self-aggrandising stunts of closest peer David Blaine’s into a cocked hat. – The Stage"

"It’s almost like a bad shock. You kind of think no, no. Your mind wants to think no, this is not happening, it’s not real, it’s not true, I reject it, I reject everything about it. Fantastic. Quite brilliant. I could sit down and try and work out how it was done and various elements of it. I just don’t want to. I just want to burn him at a stake and watch his witch's heart bubble. It’s extraordinary. Great trick. – Stephen Fry - Trick of the Mind", series 1, episode 1."

"The Barnum Statements are very famous and well known about and there’s a great experiment... There’s a terrific experiment that was done on this with students. I’ve filmed this myself. We did it with three different groups of people across the world, where you have... everybody in the group is given a reading, a personality reading. Normally beforehand there’s some nonsense about asking for their birth date or getting some objects off them - so there’s some sort of process apparently involved - and they’re given a reading. And it’s a long reading, it’s a very detailed personality reading and they all get one individually, they’re all asked to read it and, invariably, they will all say afterwards that it’s very, very accurate, that it was not at all vague or ambiguous or what people might expect and they’ll give it 85, 90, 95 percent accuracy. I’ve seen this happen and people are amazed by it. And then you get them to swap with each other and say “perhaps you can identify someone else by their reading”. Then they realise they’ve all been given exactly the same thing which was written months ago before I even met them and the statements that fill those sorts of readings are generally Barnum Statements. Barnum statements are things which essentially apply to anybody – this is only part of the cold-reading skill but it’s a major part of it... PT Barnum... “something for everyone” and, famously “a sucker is born every minute”"

"A lot of the justification psychics give is that ‘well, it comforts people’ and my feeling on that is, well, if they’re lies, who are you to decide that your lies are what people need to hear to comfort them. I think it’s a twisted logic. And I think that the reasons... if you’ve lost somebody dear to you and I’m trampling all over those memories telling you that they’re here now saying this and that, that’s none of my business. And if I’m just doing it because I can earn some money out of it... and when you watch these people at work so much of it is ego. Some of mediums at these spiritualist churches – especially the ones that aren’t so good – they just look like second rate stage hypnotists that you might see in a pub in Corfu. It’s horrendous. That I find really quite ugly."

"Now for Heaven’s sake go to bed. Don’t worry about how it was done just go straight to bed. Leave the washing-up and get into bed fully clothed. If any of you want to know how any of it was done, please feel free to write in to me at my home address which will come up on the screen in a moment and I will give you a full and honest explanation of anything you may ask."

"If you approach any psychic with any sort of scepticism you’ll see through pretty much all of it unless they happen to get lucky."

"Just talking about the illogicality behind so many of these systems: Tarot cards, which are obviously very, very popular. The deck is mixed and you choose a number of cards, they’re laid out and then your fortune and fate is read from them. Of course, the interesting conundrum there is that if you did the same thing five minutes later you’d pick out very different cards so presumably your fate and the reading would be necessarily very different if it’s relying on those cards. Five minutes later it would be completely different and when there have been questions about this the answer is ‘oh, that’s because your fate changes from minute to minute’. But then you have to think, presumably, to get a Tarot reading you’d have to constantly be having a Tarot reading over and over again in order to know what the accurate situation is, if it constantly changes from minute to minute."

"His greatest achievement is in taking the fusty world of magic and dragging it by its faded velvet lapels into the 21st century. For in many ways Brown is an old-fashioned illusionist, something to which both his set – with its vaudeville atmosphere – and his patter attests, but, by giving his tricks the veneer of science and psychology, he makes them appeal to a modern, and supposedly more savvy, audience. – The Stage"

"’By a man’s boots, by his trouser knee, by his cuffs, by his coat tails, by all of these things a man’s calling is plainly revealed.’ Words spoken there by Sherlock Holmes, I believe... although it may have been Westlife."

"Hello and welcome to Mind Control Night. Three hours of watching my smug balding head so make sure you have plenty of night time snacks, depilatory cream and really good drugs to hand."

"Now I know what you are thinking; “how did he know what was drawn in the envelope?” Clearly, I must have detected in his voice the accent of my home town, Bristol, so he’s only going to be thinking of a tractor or marrying your own sister. A tractor's easier to draw so Bob's your uncle... and your Dad. And you'd be right."

"The miracle here is not the healing power of the Lord or magic tricks, or floating people in the air. The miracle is the fact that a lifetime of chronic pain can just disappear in an instant when we tell ourselves a different story. The moment you entertain a notion that a healing might be moving through the room, those symptoms can just go. And that is so much more beautiful and resonant to me because it isn’t about the power of God, it’s about the power of us, as human beings, so it’s real. That’s a miracle."