Magic Systems Quotes & Sayings

I'm always fighting to make the team anyway. I'm always preparing like I'm one of the bottom guys, trying to make the team. — Champ Bailey

Americans claimed to be following a higher law, even when this higher law only turned out to be a personal preference. — Mark A. Noll

(Q: From an outsider's perspective, what you call "chaos magick" has a lot of rules, discipline, and order involved, and doesn't seem very chaotic at all. What would you say to such a person?)
A: I differentiate sternly between Chaos and Entropy. Only highly ordered and structured systems can display complex creative and unpredictable behaviour, and then only if they have the capacity to act with a degree of freedom and randomness. Systems which lack structure and organisation usually fail to produce anything much, they just tend to drift down the entropy gradient. This applies both to people and to organisations. — Peter J. Carroll

We find that alchemy has to do with magicians or magic and may even have roots in the Chaldean people who lived in the land that we now call Iraq.Abraham emerged and took a flock of people with him into Egypt. They were later called the Hebrews because of the valleys that they came out of. The alchemy that they saw was a transformative power within the individuals to affect the "out there" reality - and that, of course, is the basis of shamanism and is the basis for most magical and so-called Third World belief systems. — Fred Alan Wolf

Suggested that Gnosticism expressed a specific religious experience, which was frequently turned into a myth ... It seems clear that at least some of the major Gnostic systems were inspired by vivid emotions and personal experience. And it is now generally accepted that Gnosticism was not a philosophy, or even a Christian heresy, but a religion with its own specific views about God, the world, and man. ("Gnosticism," in Cavendish, Man, Myth, and Magic 1115) And, we might add, Gnosticism is a religion replete with sacraments that liberate the soul. — Stephan A. Hoeller

Chiron, I don't think the attic is the proper place for our new Oracle, do you?"
"No, indeed." Chiron looked a lot better now that Apollo had worked some medical magic on him. "Rachel may use a guest room in the Big House for now, until we give the matter more thought."
"I'm thinking a cave in the hills," Apollo mused. "With torches and a big purple curtain over the entrance ... really mysterious. But inside, a totally decked-out pad with a game room and one of those home theater systems. — Rick Riordan

I had thought that the magic of the information age was that it allowed us to know more, but then I realized the magic of the information age is that it allows us to know less. It provides us with external cognitive servants-silicon memory systems, collaborative online filters, consumer preference algorithms and networked knowledge. We can burden these servants and liberate ourselves. — David Brooks

It's an old magical principle - it's even filtered down into RPG systems - that magic, while taking a lot of effort, can be 'stored' - in a staff, for example. No doubt a wizard spends a little time each day charging up his staff, although you go blind if you do it too much, of course. — Terry Pratchett

I've been voted one of Australia's 50 national treasures. I've even had my face on an Australian stamp - the only non-Australian to do so, apart from the Queen, of course. — Russell Crowe

Too many people confuse real magic with magical thinking. Real magic isn't a trick and it transforms our lives. Magical thinking is denial.
Real magic is what happens when we break old belief patterns and have the courage to employ the native laws of the Universe — Jacob Nordby

I have lost my faith in goals. At one time, they were like a religion to me. But I am starting to realize that goals by themselves are nothing more than an arrow pointing in a certain direction. The real magic is in the systems you create. — Mark Edward

When I write my books, actually, I'm known for very logical rule-based magic systems. I write with one foot in fantasy and one foot in science fiction. — Brandon Sanderson

This is the awe-inspiring universe of magic: There are no atoms, only waves and motions all around. Here, you discard all belief in barriers to understanding. You put aside understanding itself. This universe cannot be seen, cannot be heard, cannot be detected in any way by fixed perceptions. It is the ultimate void where no preordained screens occur upon which forms may be projected. You have only one awareness here - the screen of the magi: Imagination! Here, you learn what it is to be human. You are a creator of order, of beautiful shapes and systems, an organizer of chaos. — Frank Herbert

Needless to say, under either system [socialism or fascism], the inequalities of income and standard of living are greater than anything possible under a free economy
and a man's position is determined, not by his productive ability and achievement, but by political pull and force. Under both systems, sacrifice is invoked as a magic, omnipotent solution in any crisis
and "the public good" is the altar on which victims are immolated. — Ayn Rand

The combination of GNU and Linux created an operating system that has been ported to more hardware platforms, ranging from the world's ten biggest supercomputers to embedded systems in mobile phones, than any other operating system. "Linux is subversive," wrote Eric Raymond. "Who would have thought that a world-class operating system could coalesce as if by magic out of part-time hacking by several thousand developers scattered all over the planet, — Walter Isaacson

Magic works best for me when it aligns with scientific principles. — Brandon Sanderson

I love magic and playing with magic systems. But to me, good fantasy like all fiction comes down to good character and plotting. — David B. Coe

All things, good and evil, come out, it seems, of the East. The Illuminati, like the Ismailites, dealt in allegories; and like the Mazdakites, they played with fire. — Ameen Rihani

Ktaadnis an Indian word signifying highest land, ... very few, even among backwoodsmen and hunters, have ever climbed it, andit will be a long time before the tide of fashionable travel sets that way. — Henry David Thoreau

Rather than trying to recover and maintain a tradition that links back to the past (and former glories), Chaos Magick is an approach that enables the individual to use anything that s/he thinks is suitable as a temporary belief or symbol system. What matters is the results you get, not the 'authenticity' of the system used. So Chaos Magic then, is not a system - it utilises systems and encourages adherents to devise their own, giving magic a truly Postmodernist flavour. — Phil Hine

Procrastination is the best friend of depression. — Debasish Mridha

a dream world, a world of magic and ritual, yet there are images there of the burning cars and radar systems, which remind you there is a price to be paid in order to gain this dream in the face of a world of violence. — Derek Jarman

Some dreams tell us what we wish to believe. Some dreams tell us what we fear. Some dreams are of what we know though we may not know we know it. The rarest dream is the dream that tells us what we have not known. — Ursula K. Le Guin

A lot of the strength of an RPG world lies in its foundation: its systems, lore, and when appropriate, its magic systems. While there are elements tied to 'Project: Eternity' that at first glance seem to be classic fantasy, that's intentional - we do want to recreate some elements of a High Fantasy experience. — Chris Avellone