A Quote by Penn Jillette

If you believe that there’s a heaven and hell and people could be going to hell—or not getting eternal life or whatever—and you think that, well, it’s not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward. . . . How much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize? How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that?
If you believe that there’s a heaven and hell . . . how much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that?
I don't think I can really believe in doomsday; I could hardly believe in rewards and punishments, in heaven or hell. As I wrote down in one of my sonnets - I seem to be always plagiarizing, imitating myself or somebody else for that matter - I think I am quite unworthy of heaven or of hell, and even of immortality.
How much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize?
Your so-called religions have made you very tense. Because they have created guilt in you. My effort here is to help you get rid of all guilt and all fear. I would like to tell you: there is no hell and no heaven. So don't be afraid of hell and don't be greedy for heaven. All that exists is this moment. You can make this moment a hell or a heaven - that certainly is possible - but there is no heaven or hell somewhere else. Hell is when you are all tense, and heaven is when you are all relaxed. Total relaxation is paradise.
I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.
Be undeniably good. When people ask me how do you make it in show business or whatever, what I always tell them & nobody ever takes note of it 'cause it's not the answer they wanted to hear-what they want to hear is here's how you get an agent, here's how you write a script, here's how you do this-but I always say, “Be so good they can't ignore you.” If somebody's thinking, “How can I be really good?” people are going to come to you. It's much easier doing it that way than going to cocktail parties.
It's tough to make music and make it your own, and not have somebody call it something you don't agree with but can't control. Sometimes the press doesn't realize how much power they have and how they can shape somebody's life. I think there's a lot of people just trying to make music and get their art out there, and their heads get f**ked by the press calling them this or calling them that.
I don't understand my feelings. I really don't. I don't understand how I could hate you so much after so much time. How, no matter how much I'd like to not hate you, I hate you even more. It grows.
By means of shrewd lies, unremittingly repeated, it is possible to make people believe that heaven is hell - and hell heaven. The greater the lie, the more readily it will be believed.
I catch as much hell from the hard-core conservative people as I do the far left. The only difference is that the far right don't bring the hate to the table that the far left does. And that's my party. They just deal in so much hate. I mean the far left, not the Democrats, the far left really deal in hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.
There are so many things in my life that would be completely not on within the conservative church. And yet I think of myself as a reasonably decent human being. With all sorts of flaws, you know, but still reasonably decent. If I did believe in Heaven and Hell, I would really, honestly, believe I was going to go to Heaven.
The left have taken a really beautiful thing, male-female relationships, and turned them into a battle, a political battle, an ideological war. And if you doubt me, what is the War on Women? What the hell is it? How crazy is that entire concept, that there is a political party conducting a War on Women because they hate them. And the fact that they can sell that to their voters and make political gain on that basis is damn amazing to me. And yet how many people do you know who really believe that there's a War on Women, that Republicans/conservatives don't like women?
I'm friends with a lot of writers and so many of them say how much they hate signings and how they leave after a certain period of time. But what is so hard about sitting there while people tell you how much they love you? And if you don't like it, well, learn to like it. I try to take one person at a time. I never look down the line to see how many more people are left. And I always try to make people talk about something besides whatever they planned to say.
I think most people, if I asked, would say, "Yes, of course I believe." But I think for a great many of them it doesn't really make much difference in terms of either what they do with their lives or with their own inner well-being. They believe because so did grandfather, and that's the same church they've been going to all these years.
I think cable television is wobbling and I think people aren't going to forget what happened - because you had a situation where one of the candidates was hated, not just disagreed with, hated. You can't have that. If you hate somebody, I've got to step aside or I need tell the audience look, I hate this person. You know I'm not going to give you an objective view of them. But they didn't do that about Donald Trump.
I've never been much to believe that my Creator will judge me or anyone at their final days. I don't really know if I believe in going to Heaven or Hell.
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