Wealth & Money Quote by Woody Allen

Piety, in Woody Allen's hands, becomes a consumer complaint: God isn't silent, He's just failing customer service. The joke hinges on the collision between the language of spiritual longing ("some clear sign") and the grubby specificity of offshore finance. It's not that the speaker doubts God; it's that he doubts God's willingness to communicate in the only dialect that really counts in a secular, anxious modern life: money with documentation.

Swiss bank is doing heavy lifting here. It's shorthand for secrecy, privilege, and a certain cosmopolitan shadiness - a place where wealth goes to hide while its owner pretends not to need it. Allen turns the classic prayer for meaning into an audition for ethical loopholes. The sign requested isn't a burning bush; it's a wire transfer. That substitution exposes the subtext: we often treat transcendence as a means to personal reassurance, and we measure "blessing" in ways that would embarrass us if spoken aloud. So he says it aloud.

The line also carries Allen's familiar persona: the neurotic rationalist who wants metaphysics to submit to a receipt. There's a sly cynicism about faith and a matching cynicism about himself. He isn't condemning greed from a moral pulpit; he's confessing it as a punchline, implicating the audience in the bargain. The humor works because it flatters our self-awareness while refusing to absolve it: even our spirituality can be a transaction, and we'd like the confirmation in writing.