Derren Brown: Trending quotes (page 3)

“(When asked about the method for a trick where a member of the public answers a public pay-phone only to immediately slump to the floor as if asleep) I was saying ‘there’s fifty quid under the phone book. Just pretend. You’re on TV’.”

Derren Brown

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Trick of the Mind (2004–2006)

Books

“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

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Trick of the Mind (2004–2006)

Disappointment , Way , Home

“Frankly, I think I’m just a balding, goateed show off.”

Derren Brown

TV recordings of stage shows, Derren Brown: The Gathering (2005) based on Derren Brown: Live, Derren Brown: Live tour brochure

Thinking

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

Derren Brown

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Mind Control (1999–2000) or Inside Your Mind on DVD

Men , Dogs

“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

Books, Tricks of the Mind (2006)

God , People , Strong , Personality

“There is no hypnotic phenomenon, no matter how remarkable it may appear, which cannot be re-created outside of a hypnotic state through such ordinary devices such as suggestion, hype and the exercise of charisma.”

Derren Brown

TV recordings of stage shows, Svengali (2012), Svengali tour brochure

Exercises , Appearance

“I cannot see the word ‘troubled’ prefixing the name of some poor starlet who has been dragged through the mire of tabloid spite without vomiting directly onto the newspaper. Troubled by whom? Troubled by you, you fuckwits.”

Derren Brown

Books, Confessions of a Conjuror (2010)

“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

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Derren Brown: Séance (2004)

Dead

“One of the reasons I enjoy going to the Opera is the spectacle of an audience enraptured. Their emotions are engaged, their passions brought to the fore, they become highly sensitive.”

Derren Brown

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Mind Control (1999–2000) or Inside Your Mind on DVD

Passion

“The single most valuable human trait, the one quality every schoolchild and adult should be taught to nurture, is, quite simply, kindness.”

Derren Brown

Books, Confessions of a Conjuror (2010)

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

Derren Brown

Books, Harry Houdini on Deception (foreword) (2009)

“Many things we misread as meaningful are quite ordinary coincidences. For example, it’s not unlikely that occasionally someone will phone you after you’ve been thinking about them. But we give these things value to make sense of our lives.”

Derren Brown

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Trick of the Mind (2004–2006)

Thinking , Sense

“Séances lost their popularity with the invention of infrared photography when it became possible to see what mediums were doing in the dark. Nowadays, spiritualists’ fakery is more ambiguous and subtle.”

Derren Brown

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Trick of the Mind (2004–2006)

“This is the comforting and lovely Leadenhall Market, an accommodating inter-mammary cleft in the bosom of old Londinium.”

Derren Brown

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Trick of the Mind (2004–2006)

Love

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

Derren Brown

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Trick of the Mind (2004–2006)

Thinking

“The sort of ill-informed armchair moralizing that pours from the permanently outraged, Daily Mail-reading mentality is one of the more revolting and frightening aspects of our society.”

Derren Brown

Books, Tricks of the Mind (2006)

Reading

“The capacity for self-deception, rarely acknowledged or understood by those who offer us supernatural answers to our problems, is huge: as easy as it is to make a medium’s cold-reading statements ‘fit’ our own situation and come to believe that he must have some paranormal insight, it is hardly any more difficult for a would-be psychic with an average ego, upon hearing frequently positive feedback, to believe over time that he must be blessed with a special gift. It’s harder to think you’re doing it for real when you’re tossing tambourines in the dark or have ready-made ectoplasm stuffed into your mouth or bottom.”

Derren Brown

Books, Harry Houdini on Deception (foreword) (2009)

Problem , Thinking , Time , Reading

“There is a real irony to the NLPers I knew who prided themselves on their communication skills yet because of their need to let everyone know how engaging they were, they were among the least engaging”

Derren Brown

Books, Tricks of the Mind (2006)

Communication

“The Sun has come to represent enlightenment and salvation across many cultures. I think that if we remove such comforting concepts we are required to do more soul searching but eventually our eyes become accustomed to the dark and our lives become richer.”

Derren Brown

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Trick of the Mind (2004–2006)

Soul , Search , Thinking , Sun

“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.”

Derren Brown

Other TV and web appearances, The Enemies of Reason (Richard Dawkins)

People , Truth , Books , Thinking