Derren Brown quotes

Derren Brown is a British illusionist, mentalist, and author known for his mesmerizing stage shows and television specials. Combining psychology, suggestion, and sleight of hand, his performances challenge the boundaries of perception and belief. He has inspired audiences around the world with his thought-provoking approach to entertainment and mind reading. Here are 134 of his quotes:

I control the conditions so my testers become my testees.

Derren Brown

The desire to impress is an efficient means of bringing out one's least impressive qualities.

Derren Brown

Dull magic is a collection of tricks: great magic should sting.

Derren Brown

A diner having a row with a waiter in a swanky restaurant chills the blood in a way that a quarrel over a pizza order elsewhere would never do. Compassion is rarely the custom of the privileged.

Derren Brown

Each of us is leading a difficult life, and when we meet people we are seeing only a tiny part of the thinnest veneer of their complex, troubled existences. To practice anything other than kindness towards them, to treat them in any way save generously, is to quietly deny their humanity.

Derren Brown

'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.

Derren Brown

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

Derren Brown

By the end of the tonight, all but one of these students will be dead. That's not true. I'd give them about a week.

Derren Brown

Our tendency to think that we're not predictable is probably one of our more predictable traits.

Derren Brown

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.

Derren Brown

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.

Derren Brown

I had to get up at five in the morning to push that man around the market and the only reason why I do this job, my only motivation, is that I don't have to get up early - and I didn't even get a free apple. Bastards.

Derren Brown

Music is arguably the most affecting of the arts; intelligible to all people yet untranslatable into any other idiom. To Schopenhauer it was a direct expression of the ‘world will'... and was good when he had guests over.

Derren Brown

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.

Derren Brown

People are always saying, "Can you use your skills to get extraordinarily beautiful women into bed?” Well... yes, yes I can.

Derren Brown

All told, kindness is not fashionable.

Derren Brown

In the next episode you'll see two people draw a picture of an angel and notice when they do that they draw the angel from a particularly secular perspective. And I'm certainly not one to begin to criticise the religio-artistic viewpoint of my two charming volunteers but it does make you stop and think what spiritually vacuous times we live in when two young people instinctively draw an angel with a halo attached to the back of its head with a stick.

Derren Brown

Paul [McKenna] and I have been working on making each other's hair fall out for years now, with some success.

Derren Brown

Do you think astrologists, palm readers and the like can really tell everything about you? That your personality can be read from your birth date, your hand or from sensing vibrations? Very possible.

Derren Brown

Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, the extraordinary father of modern conjuring, made the salient point that ‘a magician is an actor playing the part of a magician'. This is a very good description. However, an actor takes for granted how to create drama in every word, movement and look. The average magician is barely aware of its existence.

Derren Brown

I should point out that I don't condone gambling of any sort unless you can cheat very effectively and stack the odds at least ninety percent on your favour, which is essentially what I'm doing here.

Derren Brown

How many powerful memories are triggered by smell and taste? Your mother's old perfume, the smell your father's breath, the taste of the soap they'd make you eat.

Derren Brown