Quotes & Sayings About Science And Magic

I have always loved magic realism as a form of writing. I have also been fascinated for a long time with the intersection of science and religion. — Alan Lightman

Magic begins in superstition, and ends in science ... At every step the history of civilization teaches us how slight and superficial a structure civilization is, and how precariously it is poised upon the apex of a never-extinct volcano of poor and oppressed barbarism, superstition and ignorance. Modernity is a cap superimposed upon the Middle Ages, which always remain. — Will Durant

And that's what I don't like about magic, Captain. 'cos it's *magic*. You can't ask questions, it's magic. It doesn't explain anything, it's magic. You don't know where it comes from, it's magic! That's what I don't like about magic, it does everything by magic! — Terry Pratchett

I find it hard to believe that the machine would go into the creative artist's hand even were that magic hand in true place. It has been too far exploited by industrialism and science at expense to art and true religion. — Frank Lloyd Wright

Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic. — Thomas Szasz

It's easy to believe in magic when you're young. Anything you couldn't explain was magic then. It didn't matter if it was science or a fairy tale. Electricity and elves were both infinitely mysterious and equally possible - elves probably more so. — Charles De Lint

Where science is a dignified waltz in three-quarter time, magic is an improvised saxophone solo: all gut checks and synchronicities. — Michael G. Williams

Science is all about proving theories and understanding the universe. Science folds everything into neat logical well-explained packages. The fey are magical capricious illogical and unexplainable. Science cannot prove the existence of faeries so naturally we do not exist. That type of nonbelief is fatal to faries. — Julie Kagawa

The Widdern - the non-magical world, where science rules and many people believe that magic only exists in books. They're wrong. — Caro King

He doesn't understand why Harry is doing this to him, why Harry is trying to pull him apart. He doesn't understand how Harry has seen past his carefully crafted display. Louis has got smoke and mirrors down to a science, he knows how to deflect and he knows how to act and he's managed to keep people at arms length so nobody would ever question how the magic works. He's got his relationship with Zayn and Liam down to an art, how to give enough so that he doesn't have to lie to them, but able to keep them from knowing how close he is to the edge. Yet here is Harry, ready to unravel everything Louis has sewn together. — Tothemoonmydear

Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind that looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago. — John Maynard Keynes

In 2002, four Danish scientists began examining grocery receipts. This may sound like a waste of taxpayer dollars, but in fact it was the kind of experiment other scientists describe as "elegant." For years, science had been grappling with the unexplained health benefits of wine - wine drinkers seemed more resistant to coronary heart disease and certain cancers, but no one knew why. Predictably, there was a large-scale effort to rip wine apart in search of whatever compound was working its peculiar magic on the human body and turn it into a pill. (Resveratrol was one.) The Danish group came at it from a different angle. They didn't need a gas chromatograph. They needed receipts. They wanted to know what else all those healthy wine drinkers were buying when they visited the supermarket. — Anonymous

A hit show takes Hollywood magic indeed, but it also takes a lot of math and science, plus the study of polls and trends to make and sell a TV show. — Kristoffer Polaha

He drank, for the same reason he wrote second-rate science fiction. Not to forget but to remember, to open the past and find himself there again. He opened each bottle, began each story with the secret conviction that here was the magic drought that would restore him. But magic, like wine, needs the right conditions in order to work. — Joanne Harris

I think the rules where different there. It was all about science, but the science was magical. It didn't care about whether something could be done. It was about whether it should be done, and the answer was always, always yes. — Seanan McGuire

Welcome to the Folly," he said. "Official home of English magic since 1775." "And your patron saint is Sir Isaac Newton?" I asked. Nightingale grinned. "He was our founder and the first man to systemize the practice of magic." "I was taught that he invented modern science," I said. "He did both," said Nightingale. "That's the nature of genius." Nightingale — Ben Aaronovitch

William knows that science and magic are the same thing; magic is only science that hasn't been explained yet. Tonight he has made chemistry into magic for her. — Joshilyn Jackson

In our haste to modernize under the banner of science, we seem to have gone too far in casting out all mystery and magic from our world. — Denny Sargent

This is a collection of dexterous, loving, beautifully optimistic work that left me breathless and delighted ... Hannu Rajaniemi's magnificent science fiction - as is paradoxically appropriate - is pure magic. — Amal El-Mohtar

Today, for the mass of humanity, science and technology embody 'miracle, mystery, and authority'. Science promises that the most ancient human fantasies will at last be realized. Sickness and ageing will be abolished; scarcity and poverty will be no more; the species will become immortal. Like Christianity in the past, the modern cult of science lives on the hope of miracles. But to think that science can transform the human lot is to believe in magic. Time retorts to the illusions of humanism with the reality: frail, deranged, undelivered humanity. Even as it enables poverty to be diminished and sickness to be alleviated, science will be used to refine tyranny and perfect the art of war. — John N. Gray

Did you ever face Death and let it stare back at you right in the Eyes? — Luis Marques

This is magic we're talking about. It's supposed to go places science can't, defy logic, wink at technology, fill us all with the sensawunda that comes of gazing upon a fictional world and seeing something truly different from our own. — N.K. Jemisin

The folktale world is oriented positively toward its protagonist; a folktale is defined by the hero's triumph: magic weapons and helpers are, with the necessary narrative retardation, at his beck and call. — Darko Suvin

We know what wood is and what earth and stone are and that they have a color and texture, a smell and even a taste, but matter as a perceptible material substance independent of the nature of the wood, earth and stone composed of it seems incomprehensible. In order for us to regard a thing as real it must possess at least some distinctive physical qualities. We must be able to experience it as a physical thing before we can decide it is real. Matter as proposed by modern science, however, has no distinctive or definite physical qualities at all. Matter is simply some unimaginable stuff possessing no conceivable definition whatsoever. The concept of matter, then, proves to be just as elusive and abstract as the concepts of spirit, soul or the life-principle. — Ojo Blacke

Today's science is yesterday's magic, friend Oak. Today's magic is tomorrow's science. All disciplines are tangent and the differences between them often nothing more substantial than semantics. Scientists or laibon who dismiss conclusions out of hand because they do not countenance the methodology utilized to reach them forfeit their title. — Alan Dean Foster

Our diagnosis and treatment of of tension myositis syndrome represent yet another instance of what is possible when the power of the mind is mobilized for healing the body. It's not magic; it is as scientific as the appropriate use of antibiotics, for science encompasses everything that is true in nature. — John E. Sarno

It turns out that knitting isn't about the yarn or the softness or needing a hat (although we really can't argue with these secondary motivators). It's really about this: Knitting is a magic trick. In this day and age, in a world where science and technology take more and more wonder and work out of our lives , and our planet is quickly becoming a place running out of magic, a knitter takes silly, useless string, mundane sticks, waves her hands around (many, many times ... nobody said this was fast magic), and turns one thing into another: string into a hat, string into a sweater, string into a blanket for a baby. It really is a very reliable magic. — Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

My mind was spinning from the symmetry of this equation I suddenly faced: magical on one side, scientific on the other, a dark pulsing myth and an acceptable reality ... The explanations were like two sides of the same coin, and the side that I favored revealed something essential about the person I was. Prior to investigating Ashley, with little hesitation I'd have believed the side most others would, the side that was logical, rational, exact. But now, much to my own shock, like a man who suddenly realized he was no longer a person he recognized, that other impossible, illogical, mad side still had a very firm grip on me. — Marisha Pessl

things like how to tell the age of a tree, the dances of the moon and tides, and the names of the clouds-like cumulonimbus and nimbosttratus-that sounded lie magic spells on his tongue. — Michelle Cuevas

The belief that rational and quantifiable disciplines such as science can be used to perfect human society is no less absurd than a belief in magic, angels, and divine intervention. — Chris Hedges

To face a real daemon, you must first look inwards and conquer your own darkness. — Luis Marques

Magic could not be measured and explained in scientific terms, for magic grew through destroying the very natural principles that made science as people knew it impossible. — Ilona Andrews

A layman will no doubt find it hard to understand how pathological disorders of the body and mind can be eliminated by 'mere' words. He will feel that he is being asked to believe in magic. And he will not be so very wrong, for the words which we use in our everyday speech are nothing other than watered-down magic. But we shall have to follow a roundabout path in order to explain how science sets about restoring to words a part at least of their former magical power. — Sigmund Freud

For us necessity is not as of old an image without us, with whom we can do warfare; it is a magic web woven through and through us, like that magnetic system of which modern science speaks, penetrating us with a network subtler than our subtlest nerves, yet bearing in it the central forces of the world. — Walter Pater

Magic is the art and science of forcing things to behave in ways that are not in their nature. — Joe Abercrombie

True magic therefore is the high knowledge of the more subtle powers that have not yet been acknowledged by science up to this date because the methods of scrutiny that have been applied so far do not suffice for their grasping, understanding and utilization, although the laws of magic are analogous to all official sciences of the world. — Franz Bardon

The Nevernever is dying, human. It grows smaller and smaller every decade. Too much progress, too much technology. Mortals are losing their faith in anything but science. Even the children of man are consumed by progress. They sneer at the old stories and are drawn to the newest gadgets, computers, or video games. They no longer believe in monsters of magic. As cities grown and technology takes over the world, belief and imagination fade away, and so do we."
"What can we do to stop it?" I whispered.
"Nothing." Grimalkin raised a hind leg and scratched an ear. "Maybe the Nevenever will hold out till the end of the world. Maybe it will disappear in a few centuries. Everything dies eventually, human. — Julie Kagawa

The Victorian era was perhaps the last point in Western history when magic and science were allowed to coexist. — Jonathan Auxier

Virality isn't luck. It's not magic. And it's not random. There's a science behind why people talk and share. A recipe. A formula, even. — Jonah Berger

Poetry is a sort of inspired mathematics, which gives us equations, not for abstract figures, triangles, squares, and the like, but for the human emotions. If one has a mind which inclines to magic rather than science, one will prefer to speak of these equations as spells or incantations; it sounds more arcane, mysterious, recondite.
— Ezra Pound

The Secoya are trapped between the devastating effects of the colonization frontier and their rich traditional past, which is proving to be as fragile a reality and as fleeting a memory as the most powerful visions of their esoteric science. But instead of detailing that sad scene, in this chapter I have attempted to portray my image of this culture as I see it in its fading colors, magic, and awe-inspiring mystery. — Jonathon Miller Weisberger

It is significant comment on the victory of science over magic that were someone to say 'if I put this pill in your beer it will explode,' we might believe them; but were they to cry 'if I pronounce this spell over your beer it will go flat,' we should remain incredulous and Paracelsus, the Alchemists, Aleister Crowley and all the Magi have lived in vain. Yet when I read science I turn magical; when I study magic, scientific. — Cyril Connolly

Owen remarked The basis of science and art is magical - vice versa, magic is art and science. It goes both ways. There's not ever black and white ... in magic or in anything to my way of thinking. — Luvelle Raevan

But then in middle school science, Mr. Martinez asked who among us had ever fantasized about living in the clouds, and everyone raised their hand. Then Mr. Martinez told us that up in the clouds the wind blew one hundred and fifty miles an hour and the temperature was thirty below zero and there was no oxygen and we'd all die within seconds."
"Sounds like a nice guy."
"He specialized in the murder of dreams, Hazel Grace.let me tell you. You think volcanoes are awesome? Tell that to the ten thousand screaming corpses at Pompeii. You still secretly believe that there is an element of magic to this world? It's all just soulless molecules bouncing against each other randomly. Do you worry about who will take care of you if your parents die? As well you should, because they will be worm food in the fullness of time. — John Green

With magic, you can turn a frog into a prince. With science, you can turn a frog into a Ph.D and you still have the frog you started with. — Terry Pratchett

Evil people relate more to the black pole. It's - this is not exact, of course, as the science of magic is as complex as the magic of electronics - it's like traveling past a mountain. The white pole is at the apex, and it is an exhilarating height, but it takes a lot of work and few missteps to ascend it. The black pole is at the nadir, and it is easy to walk downhill; sometimes you can just sit down and slide or roll and, if you fall, you can get there very fast indeed. If you don't pay attention to where you're going, you'll tend to go down, because it is the course of least resistance. Since the average person has only the vaguest notion where he is going and tends to shut out awareness of the consequence of evil, he inevitably drifts downward. There is much more space at the base of the mountain than at the peak! — Piers Anthony

What the hell did magic wands have to do with helping girls learn math and science? He'd been good at both. He could have helped them with math and science. Weren't these girls supposed to be building skills? Screw magic wands. He'd have handed out some fucking calculators. — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Humans are naturally scared and confused beings. They not only fear the unknown, as they live fearing themselves ... — Luis Marques

The SF genre, of course, is really an organically evolved, marketplace-determined, idiosyncratic grab bag of themes and signifiers and characters and icons and gadgets, some of which hew to the realistic parameters and paradigms embraced by science, others of which partake more of fantasy and magic. — Paul Di Filippo

In the hands of a genius, engineering turns to magic, philosophy becomes poetry, and science pure imagination. — Benjamin Disraeli

And at the last, a war between magic and science that would leave the world in ashes. At the center of all this were a man and a woman, who were still children now. — Charlie Jane Anders

Science taps the power of human understanding to look at the world and figure out how it works. It can't fail without humanity itself failing. Your magic could turn off, and you would hate that, but you would still be you. You would still be alive to regret it. But because science rests upon my human intelligence, it is the power that cannot be removed from me without removing me. Even if the laws of the universe change on me, so that all my knowledge is void, I'll just figure out the new laws, as has been done before. It's not a Muggle thing, it's a human thing, it just refines and trains the power you use every time you look at something you don't understand and ask 'Why? — Eliezer Yudkowsky

If only the choice of whom you fall for were that easy. None of us choose who we love, Jask. If it were about reason and logic and choice, it would be science, not emotion. It would stop being magic. — Lindsay J. Pryor

It is only rather recently that science has begun to make peace with its magical roots. Until a few decades ago, it was common for histories of science either to commence decorously with Copernicus's heliocentric theory or to laud the rationalism of Aristotelian antiquity and then to leap across the Middle Ages as an age of ignorance and superstition. One could, with care and diligence, find occasional things to praise in the works of Avicenna, William of Ockham, Albertus Magnus, and Roger Bacon, but these sparse gems had to be thoroughly dusted down and scraped clean of unsightly accretions before being inserted into the corners of a frame fashioned in a much later period. — Philip Ball

Life is a chance at Evolution. Overcome yourself and Become. — Luis Marques

[In] the post-Enlightenment world, science [has] taken the place of magic, miracles, and superstition. — Jonah Goldberg

There are no peoples however primitive without religion and magic. Nor are there, it must be added at one, any savage races lacking in either the scientific attitude, or in science, though this lack has been frequently attributed to them. — Bronislaw Malinowski

We want union with something, even if the opposite seems true. Bring two atomic nuclei together and their positive electrostatic forces will repel each other, but, with the patience and strength of the blind god of the galaxies, there comes a point where something bigger takes over and welds them together. Physicists call it the Strong Nuclear Force; I've called this magic glue God. All the elements heavier than hydrogen were so formed, forged in the great hearts of the stars: sulphur, potassium, gold, radium. Everything you can think of. — Sean J Halford

I'm an Atheist. I don't believe in God, Gods, Godlets or any sort of higher power beyond the universe itself, which seems quite high and powerful enough to me. I don't believe in life after death, channeled chat rooms with the dead, reincarnation, telekinesis or any miracles but the miracle of life and consciousness, which again strike me as miracles in nearly obscene abundance. I believe that the universe abides by the laws of physics, some of which are known, others of which will surely be discovered, but even if they aren't, that will simply be a result, as my colleague George Johnson put it, of our brains having evolved for life on this one little planet and thus being inevitably limited. I'm convinced that the world as we see it was shaped by the again genuinely miraculous, let's even say transcendent, hand of evolution through natural selection. — Natalie Angier

True majorities, in a TV-dominated and anti-intellectual age, may need sound bites and flashing lights and I am not against supplying such lures if they draw children into even a transient concern with science. But every classroom has one [Oliver] Sacks , one [Eric] Korn, or one [Jonathan] Miller , usually a lonely child with a passionate curiosity about nature, and a zeal that overcomes pressures for conformity. Do not the one in fifty deserve their institutions as well magic places, like cabinet museums, that can spark the rare flames of genius? — Stephen Jay Gould

Both poet and painter want to reach the silence behind the language, the silence within the language. Both painter and poet want their work to shine not only in daylight but (by whatever illusionist magic) from within. — Howard Nemerov

back in the middle ages
they burned unruly women at the stake
and out of the ashes of their bones and flesh
rose the Enlightenment and Reason fresh
and the white men declared
there's no such thing as witches
they're just crazy psycho-bitches
but we certainly can't let them run free
lock 'em up and throw away the key
yeah they said: lock 'em up and throw away the key

cause there's nothing scarier than a woman mad and/or
aware of her own magic
tragic how much violence is done
in the name of science
to ensure our silence

in Victorian times they located suffering in our uterus
in the blood in the soft internal organs
took our pain our righteous rage
they called it 'hysteria'
and then Dr. Freud ignored women's horror stories
herstories of abuse and rape and
took a justified hatred of the penis and called it
envy (he sold more books that way) — Leah Harris

Science is taking over magic's place in the world, and magic is fighting back. — Steven Walker

The heightened sanity of science and the sheer lunacy of magic. It's in the area where they overlap that we both are able to find... ecstasy! — Matt Kindt

Predator and prey move in silent gestures, on the seductive dance of death, in the shadows cast by the vultures of the night. — Luis Marques

Victor wondered about lots of things. He wondered about himself (whether he was broken, or special, or better, or worse) and about other people (whether they were all really as stupid as they seemed). He wondered about Angie - what would happen if he told her how he felt, what it would be like if she chose him. He wondered about life, and people, and science, and magic, and God, and whether he believed in any of them. — Victoria Schwab

I realize that, to many readers, Hard Fantasy may seem to be a contradiction in terms. Fantasy, according to most generally recognized definitions, differs from both 'real world' fiction and 'science fiction' in that magic or magical creatures are active elements. — Jane Lindskold

Hence the strong attraction which magic and science alike have exercised on the human mind; hence the powerful stimulus that both have given to the pursuit of knowledge. They lure the weary enquirer, the footsore seeker, on through the wilderness of disappointment in the present by their endless promises of the future: they take him up to the top of an exceeding high mountain and show him, beyond the dark clouds and rolling mists at his feet, a vision of the celestial city, far off, it may be, but radiant with unearthly splendour, bathed in the light of dreams. — James G. Frazer

Here was a revelation which no one could doubt or deny; here, seen by unknown magic of Overlord science, were the true beginnings of all the world's great faiths. Most of them were noble and inspiring, but that was not enough. Within a few days, all mankind's multitudinous messaihs had lost their divinity. Beneath the fierce and passionless light of truth, faiths that had sustained millions for twice a thousand years vanished like morning dew. All the good and all the evil they had wrought were swept suddenly into the past, and could touch the minds of men no more. — Arthur C. Clarke

Magic is that which it is; it is by itself, like the mathematics; for it is the exact and absolute science of Nature and its laws . Magic is the science of the Ancient Magi: and the Christian religion, which has imposed silence on the lying oracles, and put an end to the prestiges of the false Gods , itself reveres those Magi who came from the East, guided by a Star , to adore the Saviour of the world in His cradle. — Albert Pike

From the earliest times man has been engaged in a search for general rules whereby to turn the order of natural phenomena to his own advantage, and in the long search he has scraped together a great hoard of such maxims, some of them golden and some of them mere dross. The true or golden rules constitute the body of applied science which we call the arts; the false are magic. — James G. Frazer

The world of the everyday suddenly seemed nothing but an inverted magic act, lulling its audience into believing in the usual, familiar conceptions of space and time, while the astonishing truth of quantum reality lay carefully guarded by nature's sleights of hand. — Brian Greene

George Bernard Shaw, in a toast at a dinner feting Albert Einstein, proclaimed, "Science is always wrong. It never solves a problem without creating 10 more." Isn't that glorious? Science (and I think this applies to all kinds of research and scholarship) produces ignorance, possibly at a faster rate than it produces knowledge. Science, then, is not like the onion in the often used analogy of stripping away layer after layer to get at some core, central, fundamental truth. Rather it's like the magic well: no matter how — Stuart Firestein

Sometimes the dim veil between sanity and insanity is perception. — Luis Marques

Science comforting man's animal poverty and leisuring his toil, hath humanized manners and social temper, and now above her globe-spredd net of speeded intercourse hath outrun all magic, and disclosing the secrecy of the reticent air hath woven a web of invisible strands spiriting the dumb inane with the quick matter of life ... — Robert Bridges

If, as Max Weber contended, science, modernity and rationalism have disenchanted the world and swept it clean of gods, spirits and magic (or, at least, problematised believing in them), then psychedelics offer a potential way out of the ensuing existential impasse. -Andy Letcher — Cameron Adams

This is fucking magic, she thought. This isn't some story out of one of Tommy's books. This isn't something you can experiment with in the bathroom. This is not natural, and whatever I am, it isn't natural. A vampire is magic, not science. — Christopher Moore

It is a curious thought that the earliest description of the steam-engine in antiquity describes its use for the magic opening of the temple doors, when the priests lit the fires on the altars, to deceive the populace into ascribing to a deity what was the work of the engineer. In much the same way today, the almost boundless fecundity of the creative scientific discoveries and inventions of the age are being appropriated for the purpose of the mysterious opening of doors into the holy of holies of the temples of mammon by a hierarchy of imposters and humbugs, whom it is the first task of a sane civilization to expose and clear out. — Frederick Soddy

Men-kind shared this world for but a blink, then, sadly, they became enlightened, found science and religion. The new world of men left little room for magic or the magical creatures of old. Earth's first children were driven into the shadows by flame and cold iron, by man's insatiable need of conquest. — Brom

What is superstition , but misguided, unobjective science? And when it comes down to that, is it to be wondered if people grasp at superstition in this rotten, hate-filled, half-doomed world of today? Lord knows, I'd welcome the blackest of black magic, if it could do anything to stave off the atom bomb. — Fritz Leiber

I am not a fan of the magical quick fix in any fiction, including fantasy, scifi and comic books. Unless Dr. Who is involved, and then only because we get to use the phrase 'Timey-wimey wibbliness' which, I'm sure you'll agree, there are not enough occasions to drop into ordinary adult conversation. — Chris Dee

What terrible questions we are learning to ask! The former men believed in magic, by which temples, cities, and men were swallowed up, and all trace of them gone. We are coming on the secret of a magic which sweeps out of men's minds all vestige of theism and beliefs which they and their fathers held and were framed upon. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The very hope of experimental philosophy, its expectation of constructing the sciences into a true philosophy of nature, is basedon induction, or, if you please, the a priori presumption, that physical causation is universal; that the constitution of nature is written in its actual manifestations, and needs only to be deciphered by experimental and inductive research; that it is not a latent invisible writing, to be brought out by the magic of mental anticipation or metaphysical mediation. — Chauncey Wright

The only difference between magic and science . . . is time. — Sue Duff

An evolved and balanced Ego can be a valuable tool for the Self. But a blinding one is always among the first footsteps into Oblivion. — Luis Marques

To become an Asetian is to die and be reborn. To forget all you have learned and learn all you have forgotten. — Luis Marques

I'm very into science-fantasy, that kind of swordfights and magic and technology thing. — Gary Numan

Learn about the light and science. The magic will happen. — Fil Hunter

You know on crime shows where they put a sample in a machine, push a button, and it magics them up a description of what it is?"
"Ahh yes. I'm familiar"
"Like that, but with less magic" Amy squinted, blinked, and shook her head at the screen. "I take it back; this one might actually contain magic — Bella Bancroft

And sometimes I believe your relentless analysis of June leaves something out, which is your feeling for her beyond knowledge, or in spite of knowledge. I often see how you sob over what you destroy, how you want to stop and just worship; and you do stop, and then a moment later you are at it again with a knife, like a surgeon.
What will you do after you have revealed all there is to know about June? Truth. What ferocity in your quest of it. You destroy and you suffer. In some strange way I am not with you, I am against you. We are destined to hold two truths. I love you and I fight you. And you, the same. We will be stronger for it, each of us, stronger with our love and our hate. When you caricature and nail down and tear apart, I hate you. I want to answer you, not with weak or stupid poetry but with a wonder as strong as your reality. I want to fight your surgical knife with all the occult and magical forces of the world. — Anais Nin

I saw the logic that they used, and the death of a thousand cuts as experimental scientists slowly chipped away at the belief that the world was an inexplicably powerful, magical place. Ultimately they failed, though. The magic never really went away. It waited, quietly, for people to return to it when they found the science wanting. — Deborah Harkness

You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making. As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses ... I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death - if you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach. — J.K. Rowling

An optimist and a gentleman, I like that in my men. — Karen Azinger

The thinnest thing in the world is the border between good and evil ... my next The Opposite Of Magic. — Ivan Stoikov

Everything is being transformed under the magic influence of science and technology. And every day, if we want to live with open eyes, we have a problem to study, to resolve. — Pope Pius VI

All the terms used in the science books, 'law,' 'necessity,' 'order,' 'tendency,' and so on, are really unintellectual ... The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in the fairy books, 'charm,' 'spell,' 'enchantment.' They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery. A tree grows fruit because it is a magic tree. Water runs downhill because it is bewitched. The sun shines because it is bewitched. I deny altogether that this is fantastic or even mystical. We may have some mysticism later on; but this fairy-tale language about things is simply rational and agnostic. — G.K. Chesterton

The answers lie in not just hard science or philosophical rhetoric but in experiments of the imagination as well. Human perspective must be re-examined through an almost whimsical fount of imagination of species, magic, and clear creative thinking. — Leviak B. Kelly

If one could only discover the unwritten bases of black magic and apply formulae to them, we would find that they were merely another form of science ... perhaps less advance, perhaps more. — Charles Beaumont

Science,' said Mr Anders Anders. 'Science, not magic. I told you before: when things are not as they appear to be, it's because they're actually simpler than you think them to be. Things are never as difficult and complicated as folk believe. You'd be surprised just how straightforward and obvious things really are. The secret is in knowing how to look at them the right way. — Robert Rankin

Regardless of its purpose, the humpback-whale song is the most complex piece of nonhuman composition on earth. Whether it's art, prayer, or booty call, the humpback song is an amazing thing to experience firsthand, and I suspect that even once the science of it is put to bed, it will remain, as long as they sing, magic. — Christopher Moore