Derren Brown quotes - page 2

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:

Language is a gift that puts lyrics to the music of our lives. Without spoken language we wouldn't be able to say, ‘I love you'. We'd have to say ‘uuurrrgghh' or hold up a sign. And whether it's one person's gentle English or another's muddy, arrogant French, it's our language that makes us unapproachable and difficult to understand.

Derren Brown

I'm here at Sandown Racecourse in Surrey. They're expecting fifteen thousand people here today and half a million pounds to be exchanged in cash. I'm here because I've developed a guaranteed system for winning at the horses. This system allows me to predict twenty four hours in advance, quite openly, which horse will win in big, high profile races. Now to prove this, six weeks ago I took a woman, a random member of the public and I told her which horse was going to win in a certain race. It did win, she was intrigued. I then did it again and again and again and she started to bet larger and larger amounts of money. Now today that woman has scraped together every last penny that she can find and she's risking it all on one final race. Is it really possible to accurately predict the winner of a horse race again and again and again? I'm going to tell you exactly how that's done. Welcome to The System.

Derren Brown

Remember how you used to try and make kids turn round at school by staring at the back of their heads? And how they used to go home early crying with blood coming out of their ears?

Derren Brown

I have retained a belief that it is the popular sporty kids at school who grow up to have the least interesting lives, and the unhappy young souls who develop into the most extraordinary adults. Whoever heard of a creative genius being understood as a child and well loved by his class mates? Who like to imagine an artist who emerged into adulthood content with his lot? And, conversely, how satisfying to hear that almost without exception, the untroubled, popular kids at school have ended up blandly as accountants, solicitors or ‘in IT'. Hold on, misfits, your day will come.

Derren Brown

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.

Derren Brown

Some people might think I could play Russian Roulette safely with a blank bullet. Our armourer took us outside to demonstrate the damage a blank causes at close range. (The demonstration showed the significant damage caused by firing a blank at a plastic bottle)

Derren Brown

Even though it's dark sometimes or it's scary for the people involved, ultimately I always make sure they're exhilarated by it. It's genuinely a real pleasure to take people to that place.

Derren Brown

When we are customarily annoyed by what we see as the failings of others, we are judging them by a ludicrous standard: we are assuming that they fully understand our desires, quite possibly better than we do, and that they have nothing to do but arrange things to fall seamlessly into place around our probably ill-communicated wishes.

Derren Brown

Since the 1920s, grand illusion on stage has been synonymous with the restraint and mutilation of female assistants, as if the first act a lucky mortal, newly endowed with the ability to overturn the laws of the universe, would wish to carry out would be the casual torture of the fairer sex for our entertainment.

Derren Brown

The Ouija board is a really interesting phenomenon. It works by something called idiomotor suggestion. You do actually push the glass yourself you just have no awareness of doing it.

Derren Brown

One area which shows how unknowingly predictable we are, is the way we decorate our houses. We all feel we make unique and distinct choices, yet we all conform to a cultural standard.

Derren Brown

This program fuses magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship. I achieve all the results you'll see here through a varied mixture of those techniques. At no point are actors or stooges used in the show.

Derren Brown

Fingers: We've all got them and we shouldn't be embarrassed about them.

Derren Brown

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.

Derren Brown

[one part of the show is] a reenactment of a powerful experiment conducted by Stanley Milgram in 1963 to look at how normal people can commit atrocious acts, simply because they're following orders. Milgram's parents were Jewish refugees in World War II and his pioneering work speaks volumes about the nature of responsibility.

Derren Brown

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.

Derren Brown

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.

Derren Brown

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.

Derren Brown

Well, it took me over two hours to find Frencesco's keys which was disappointing but I did go to Venice for free and I didn't fall into the canal on the way home like a twat.

Derren Brown

Frankly, I think I'm just a balding, goateed show off.

Derren Brown

Walthamstow Stadium: Where hundreds of men, who all look like my dad, come to watch some thin dogs running around.

Derren Brown

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.

Derren Brown