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

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.

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.

Every time something really bad happens, people cry out for safety, and the government answers by taking rights away from good people

I think if you're going to be committed to doing anything, you really have to care about it, and I suppose that is a romantic idea.

We are fools to depend upon the society of our fellow-men. Wretched as we are, powerless as we are, they will not aid us; we shall die alone.

A free man must not be told how to think, either by the government or by social activists. He may certainly be shown the right way, but he must not accept being forced into it.

Writing's not always a pleasure to me, but if I'm not writing every other pleasure loses its savour.

I was to Japanese visitors to Washington what the Mona Lisa is to Americans visiting Paris.

Kids never get pissed at their parents. Unheard of.

You think that just because it's already happened, the past is finished and unchangeable? Oh no, the past is cloaked in multicolored taffeta and every time we look at it we see a different hue.

The beauty of New York is unintentional; it arose independent of human design, like a stalagmite cavern.

What is the body? That shadow of a shadow of your love, that somehow contains the entire universe.

I am your servant. You have the right to dismiss me when you please. What you have no right to do is ask me to bear responsibility without the power of action.