Top 288 Quotes & Sayings by Penn Jillette
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American entertainer Penn Jillette.
Last updated on December 25, 2024.
Part of the experience of being entertained is sitting back and plugging into someone else's vision.
Religion cannot and should not be replaced by atheism. Religion needs to go away and not be replaced by anything. Atheism is not a religion. It's the absence of religion, and that's a wonderful thing.
I've never had a drink of alcohol or any drug in my life.
Everybody wants clean, safe energy. Some people think nuclear is the way to go. Some people think coal is the way to go. Some people think wind is the way to go. And there's always balances on that.
I'm a hardcore libertarian - I want everything legal - but I also believe that you have the right to free association.
Freedom means the freedom to be stupid, and that's what I want.
My hair is way, way long. I've hitchhiked across the country a zillion times. I've ridden in every car. I was never a hippie. It takes more than long hair.
Bacon is so good by itself that to put it in any other food is an admission of failure. You're basically saying, 'I can't make this other food taste good, so I'll throw in bacon.'
A lot of older parents worry about being older parents. I hear people say, 'I don't want to be too old to play baseball with my son.' They worry that their kids will be embarrassed by their parents' age.
You have two choices with Obama. You either believe that he is a man of Christ... or you think he's a liar. And I'm surprised by the number of atheist free thinkers that support Obama, and their argument is essentially, 'He's lying about being religious 'cause you have to do that to get elected.' It's a horrible reason to like somebody.
If you want to turn out an atheist child, unconditional love constantly is a good way to do it.
The first thing I said to myself on 9/11 was, 'There go our civil rights.' I found out by comparing notes later that George Carlin and I both said that at the exact same time. That's the first thing that popped into our head.
I think people under age 55 come to Vegas with a certain sense of irony.
When you're watching Psycho, there' s that moment when you have a visceral reaction to watching someone being stabbed. And then you have the intellectual revelation that you're not, and that's where the celebration comes in.
Having a Hummer is stupid. It's stupid to waste that much gas. It's stupid to waste that much money on gas. It's stupid to parade your insecurities on public roads. Hummers are stupid-looking.
I have a very specific definition of censorship. Censorship must be done by the government or it's not censorship.
Counterintuitive action makes a fellow feel smart.
I'm a big fan of gospel music, and you cannot be a fan of rock and roll, you cannot be a fan of country western music, and you can't really be a fan of jazz without listening to a lot of music that's religious.
The only place we were really told to tone it down - where other people would use the word censorship, but I wouldn't - was when we did MTV right after the Beavis and Butt-head thing.
The one kind of person I have a lot of trouble understanding is the kind of person that says the existence of God or religion doesn't matter, it's not an important decision. I think it's vitally important; it's what all our lives are based on.
Poker has the feeling of a sport, but you don't have to do push-ups.
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.
I love the idea that horror and fear is a celebration of health and life.
The highest ideals are human intelligence, creativity and love. Respect these above all.
There is this tremendous amount of arrogance and hubris, where somebody can look at something for five minutes and dismiss it. Whether you talk about gaming or 20th century classical music, you can't do it in five minutes. You can't listen to 'The Rite of Spring' once and understand what Stravinsky was all about.
The only secret of magic is that I'm willing to work harder on it than you think it's worth.
A lot of people, to attack an outspoken atheist, one of the things they'll do is say, 'You are as bad as the fundamentalist Christians.' And my answer is always, 'I hope so.'
When I was a kid, politicians wanted to avoid talking about religion if they could. John F. Kennedy couldn't duck the issue, being Catholic and all. So how did he address it? By reminding Americans that religion shouldn't be an issue, that he was concentrating on big things like poverty and hunger and leading the space race.
I believe the fast track to atheism is reading the Bible. I've read it three times all the way through. It's a big part of our culture, a big part of our history. I don't just read things I agree with.
The fact is that violence gives you a rush.
The vast majority of people who have guns never hurt anybody.
I'm very happy being big and effeminate.
Magic is the Special Olympics of entertainment.
If there are two things Penn & Teller stand for, it's the truth & lying, although not necessarily in that order.
Once you have somebody that is telling you, 'We are interpreting God for you,' it seems like you either agree or you don't. You either say, like Martin Luther, 'I'm going to have a direct relationship with the word of God,' or I'm going to go through a conduit of God on Earth,' which would be the Pope.
The skills that we have are the actual magic skills - not the performing skills. We have to separate those. But the actual skills that make the tricks work, we don't get to use again.
Someone who is a good person should have no fear of the government whatsoever.
I believe very much that the most damning thing you can say about Muslims is that you're afraid to say anything because they'll hurt you.
I believe in individual rights so much that I don't like any sort of 'what's good for the cause'-type questions.
Bob Saget is the dirtiest comic who's ever lived. Nobody touches him.
We knew that we were kind of odd and creeps, and we wanted to do odd, creepy stuff for people who wanted to see that.
Teller and I worked Renaissance Festivals and street performing - actually more real, no kidding around, Philadelphia street performing than we did Renaissance Festivals.
We aren't people who believe that just because we're performers our opinions on everything need to be known.
If you like the stuff I do, my chances of liking you go up.
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.
The vast majority of people who have mental illness problems never hurt anybody.
I think voting for the lesser of two evils in game theory always leads to more evil.
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.
I like to read in the dark. I like to go into the bathtub, turn out all the lights, and in the dark, read my books.
I don't know what's best for other people.
The medium is not the message - the message is the message.
The purpose of art is to collide the intellectual and visceral together at the highest speed possible.
I'm a big fan of huge populations of people, so you'd think with 300 million people in the country, you don't even have to please 1% to be phenomenally successful.
Democracy without respect for individual rights sucks. It's just ganging up against the weird kid, and I'm always the weird kid.
There's no job in show business that's harder than any other job outside show business.
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.
'Psycho' is fascinating philosophically, because the point of 'Psycho' is that everything that's bad happens because of love.
Whereas you have someone like Houdini, who works really, really hard to get really, really famous, and then has actual intellectual ideas that he puts into the culture that stay there.
The First Amendment says nothing about your getting paid for saying anything. It just says you can say it. I don't believe that if a corporation pulls all the money out of you or a network pulls their money away or you get fired, you're being censored.
You have in Vegas the most heterogeneous audience you're gonna get anywhere in the country. In Boston, Chicago, Miami, you know who goes to the theater. In Vegas, you have people who only see one theater show a year, and it's in Vegas.
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