It's amazing to me how many people think that voting to have the government give poor people money is compassion. Helping poor and suffering people yourself is compassion. Voting for our government to use guns to give money to help poor and suffering people is immoral, self-righteous, bullying laziness.
The purpose of art is to collide the intellectual and visceral together at the highest speed possible.
Freedom means the freedom to be stupid, and that's what I want.
Everybody is designing magic iPhone apps that do things that are really, really beautiful, but a really important thing about magic is that the gimmick has to be ugly.
Behaving morally because of a hope of reward or a fear of punishment is not morality. Morality is not bribery or threats. Religion is bribery and threats. Humans have morality. We don't need religion.
Democracy without respect for individual rights sucks. It's just ganging up against the weird kid, and I'm always the weird kid.
I started out as a juggler, so I know what it means to spend eight hours a day, seven days a week practicing something that people just dismiss with a wave of hand.
I am a huge fan of proselytizing. I am a huge fan of speaking your mind. The only way we can share the universe... is by talking very strongly about what we believe.
The only secret of magic is that I'm willing to work harder on it than you think it's worth.
Religion is faith. Faith is belief without evidence. Belief without evidence cannot be shared. Faith is a feeling. Love is also a feeling, but love makes no universal claims. Love is pure.
If you don't pay your taxes and you don't answer the warrant and you don't go to court, eventually someone will pull a gun. Eventually someone with a gun will show up. I want everything the government does to be done, I just want it to be done voluntarily.
'Moxie' is a name that was created by an American for the first national soft drink and then went on to mean chutzpah, and that's nice.
My tolerance for crazy people is, I think, high a tolerance as you're ever going to find. I love being around David Allen Coe. I would have loved to hang out with Tiny Tim. I can listen to Sun Ra on a tape-recording rant.
Tolerance is you saying something crazy and me smiling and saying, 'That's nice.'
I like things matching. I have an upright bass, a drum kit and a grand piano that's the same color. I tend to overthink things.
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.'
I think people under age 55 come to Vegas with a certain sense of irony.
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. That is the subject that, if you have a brain in your head, is always dealt with in magic. The smarter the tricks you're doing, the more that' s an important thing.
Don't waste too much time wishing, hoping, and being envious; it'll make you bugnutty.
I don't think I'm made of the right stuff to be a politician. I think I'm made to be a loose cannon.
