A joke is a way to say, 'I'm going to do something funny now. If I don't get a laugh at the end, I'm a failure.'

One of the things that Teller and I are obsessed with, one of the reasons that we're in magic, is the difference between fantasy and reality.

Channeling is just bad ventriloquism. You use another voice, but people can see your lips moving.

You get no moral credit for forcing other people to do what you think is right.

Atheism is the absence of religion. We don’t really need atheism. We just need to get rid of religion.

If you are doing something for reward or punishment, you do not have morality.

In music, if you hit a wrong note, people forgive you. In magic when something goes wrong, the entire art is destroyed.

I think voting for the lesser of two evils in game theory always leads to more evil.

Much better than the feeling of having things is the feeling of having earned things.

Better to be uneducated than educated by your government.

Behaving morally because of a hope of reward or a fear of punishment is not morality.

A 21st century poet is a woman who can speak her mind and stand upright like a mountain with her convictions, but can adapt like water in an ever changing season without losing her genuine elements.

...It is a sad truth in life that when someone has lost a loved one, friends sometimes avoid the person, just when the presence of friends is most needed.

My father is sure that Israel keeps the Holocaust from happening again. I worry that it might hasten its recurrence.

But this road doesn't go anywhere,” I told him. “That doesn't matter.” “What does?” I asked, after a little while. “Just that we're on it, dude,” he said.

I never wrote music or arranged songs or lyrics when I was under the influence of anything but coffee. That's not gone away.

I think about what I say. I don't give stock answers. I'm not trying to cultivate an image with the public, like several of the top players do.

The law of the heart is thus the same as the law of muscular tissue generally, that the energy of contraction, however measured, is a function of the length of the muscle fibre.

The truly creative individual stands ready to abandon old habits and to acknowledge that life, particularly his own unique life, is rich with possibilities.

If the people should elect, they will never fail to prefer some man of distinguished character, or services; some man, if he might so speak of continental reputation.

In elite, primarily white institutions, there are many blacks who have white wives. So much so that sometimes there is almost the assumption that I would be married to a white woman.