Penn Jillette quotes:

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.

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.

It wasn't success, because Teller and I, by the time Asparagus Valley got together - within a year, we had achieved all our goals. I mean, our goal was to earn our living doing exactly what we wanted. Which is many people's goal.

Building a professional relationship on respect as opposed to affection is a very good idea. Running your art projects the way you'd run a dry-cleaning business is also a really good idea. You shouldn't go into work like you're going on a date, like you're hanging out with friends.

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.

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.

When 9/11 hit, the second thing I said to myself was, 'This really is what religious people do.' Those people flying the plane were very good, very pious, truly faithful believers. There's no other way to paint them. Of course, they are extremists by definition, but they certainly aren't going against Islam in any real way.

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.

I love the idea that horror and fear is a celebration of health and life.

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.

Everyone's goals are the same with very small differences. I mean, the goal of a socialist and the goal of a libertarian are exactly the same. The goals are happiness and security and freedom, and you balance those.

America was founded on Christians not trusting each other, and they sometimes seemed more willing to reach out to the godless than to someone from another sect.

A two-party system is way too good for those two parties.

It's only the losers named 'Dave' that think having an unusual name is bad, and who cares what they think? They're named 'Dave.'

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.

When you look at the actual numbers, the number of people who died after 9/11 was greater than the number of people who died in 9/11, even if you are talking Americans. But you know, I don't like to talk Americans. I want to talk everybody. More innocent people died after 9/11 because of 9/11 than died in 9/11.

Don't waste too much time wishing, hoping, and being envious; it'll make you bugnutty.

I think voting for the lesser of two evils in game theory always leads to more evil.

No one can tell you the rules of 'Celebrity Apprentice.' No one. Donald Trump just does what he wants, which is mostly pontificating to people who are sucking up to him, while the network people try to manipulate him into making the highest-rated show they can.

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.

The highest ideals are human intelligence, creativity and love. Respect these above all.

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.'

You can't believe how pro-gay and pro-freedom-of-speech I am. I'm way out beyond anyone on the Left.

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'm not bothered by the idea of getting old, or I guess you could say by having arrived at old. I was 10 when my mom turned 55. For 1955, she was a very old mom.

This is going to sound horrible, but I don't even know how much I make in a year. It must be, you know, a couple of million dollars, a few million. I know it's more money than my dad, a jail guard, made in his lifetime; more money than I'll ever need.

I have a very specific definition of censorship. Censorship must be done by the government or it's not censorship.

I don't want anyone as president who promises to take care of me. I may be stupid, but I want a chance to try to be a grown-up and take care of my family.

Counterintuitive actions prove we can trust real knowledge and do the opposite of what we feel makes sense.

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.

But it's much more exciting to make Die Hard. One of the reasons that I think that movie is so successful is it deals with those very important blue-collar relationship themes. But it's more visually beautiful to show things blowing up. It just gives you more on the screen.

Cheerios bring back memories. I actually don't think I ate them much as a kid, though; maybe it's some sort of Jungian memory, I don't know. But they have so much sugar, it's great.

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.

I love when violent, dangerous art is done by people who are not violent and dangerous. I love that when George Romero was making 'Dawn of the Dead,' he was coaching his son's little league team.

The definition of a stupid thing is something that if you do everything right, you still get hurt. Fire-eating and love are stupid things.

I like movies that are scary, but I don't want them to be dirt dumb. I want a movie that gets my blood racing, makes me laugh, but also gives me something to think about, with maybe a little sexy thrown in. Hollywood doesn't make movies like that.

Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.

I think it's pretty cruel to give a kid a name that others are going to have. I think it's very important to have a unique name within any group you're likely to be in.

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.

If I go out to dinner with you and you order wine, I leave. I won't be around drugs and alcohol at all.

In my private life, I'm not around any drugs or alcohol.

I've never had a drink of alcohol or any drug in my life.

From 1985 to 1994, I lived in Manhattan in a big old loft right off Times Square. I could walk to work, which was in a couple of Broadway theaters, to Howard Stern's studio, and to 30 Rock for 'Letterman' and 'SNL.' Even in New York, walking to work is homey and folksy, like living in a small town.

I'm an amazing mama's boy.

My parents were teetotalers and my grandparents were - it's all the way back. It's New English puritanical tradition.

When I was 15, 16, 17 years old, I spent five hours a day juggling, and I probably spent six hours a day seriously listening to music. And if I were 16 now, I would put that time into playing video games.

The purpose of art is to collide the intellectual and visceral together at the highest speed possible.

TV networks are dying. The death throes of religion give us jihads. The death throes of television give us reality shows.

I get along so much better with fundamentalist Christians than I do with wishy-washy liberals, who want everyone to get along.

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.'

Computers absolutely changed my life. Before I had a computer, I had never written one thing. Not one thing. I'm a very bad speller and I was embarrassed by that. When I would type, the little mistakes would make me nutty, and I would never edit anything.

You can't allow people freedom and then change your mind when the things don't go your way.

My love of computers, besides being practical, is very direct and visceral. I love the way things look on the screen.

I didn't learn fire-eating to conquer my fears. I learned fire-eating because I desperately wanted to be in show business.

Direct confrontation, direct conversation is real respect. And it's amazing how many people get that.

Someone who is a good person should have no fear of the government whatsoever.

I love the feeling of shredded wheat. I love healthy bird food with a fun-to-eat feel. Then you spray them with sugar, and I'm there.

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.

My whole family is missing that sports gene. I hope I didn't screw that up by marrying a great golfer.

Juggling is very, very straightforward; very, very black and white; you're manipulating objects, not people. And that's always appealed to me.

Trey Parker did 'Book of Mormon.' It's the best Broadway show I've ever seen. He does 'South Park.' It's wonderful.

Every nut who kills people has a Bible lying around.

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.

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 hate that not everything ever written is on iBooks. Man, I hate paper.

The only difference between Obama and Bush is that Obama is killing more people.

I have more contact with people who consume, for lack of a better word, my product than any other performers.

I live in Vegas, and I see people by the side of the road with cardboard signs who seem like they might have tried that spending their way out of debt thing.

I'm very happy being big and effeminate.

Every day, TV, newspapers, and the Internet bombard us with a message that we're destroying the earth. Ice caps are melting, rivers are dying, polar bears are drowning, and trees are doing something.

I don't want everyone to read anything; I like us all reading different books.

The most important part of life is work, it's the flow, it's getting stuff done, feeling like you're doing something.

World War II proves there's no God.

There are performers who have built their whole career doing magic on TV and can't really perform live at all - don't really have jobs and skills.

I grew up as a Christian. I suppose at some level I wanted to believe someone was watching over me.

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.

The vast majority of people who have mental illness problems never hurt anybody.

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.

For the most part, any serious magic show is not using very much technology newer than theatrical lights.

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.

In reality, many people let go of religion later in life.

I do believe that a belief in God is crazy, but that doesn't mean that the people who believe in it are crazy. Those are two different things. Ideas can be stupid and crazy, and the people who hold those ideas are not necessarily stupid and crazy.

I'm always surprised when the corporate world does stupid things, because they're often not very stupid in hindsight.

The Tea Party claims to want small government.

When someone is trying to interpret something for you, they always have an agenda.

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.

Mentally ill people come from all belief systems.

If you want to talk about magic, the stuff that blows me away is the stuff that's done close up.

There never was a God. 'God is dead' is a halfway measure I won't go with.

I was about 12 when I heard my first Lenny Bruce record. He was already dead. But it changed my life and really did change the world.

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.

Democracy without respect for individual rights sucks. It's just ganging up against the weird kid, and I'm always the weird kid.

It's fair to say that the Bible contains equal amounts of fact, history, and pizza.

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.

I'm a hardcore libertarian - I want everything legal - but I also believe that you have the right to free association.

If every trace of any single religion were wiped out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. There might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense. If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true and someone would find a way to figure it all out again.

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.

That's the beauty of the Web: You can roll around in a stranger's obsession without having to smell his or her house. You can amscray whenever you want without being rude. The site gets its "hit" and you know more about our species' diversity.

Twelve magicians and two carnies have been shot dead doing the bullet catch. That's cool enough, but every night when we close our show with that trick and the loaded gun gets pointed in my face, it goes so far beyond cool. All I can think is 12 magicians, two carnies.

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.

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.

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.

Fear is the politicians dance partner.

If I were trying to avoid embarrassment, I wouldn't have stumbled my way through 'Dancing with the Stars.'

Teller and I worked Renaissance Festivals and street performing - actually more real, no kidding around, Philadelphia street performing than we did Renaissance Festivals.

If the bible were published as fiction, no reviewer would give it a passing grade. There are some vivid scenes and quotable phrases but there's no plot, no structure, a tremendous amount of filler and the characters are painfully one dimensional. Whatever you do, don't read the bible for a moral code. It advocates prejudice, cruelty, superstition and murder. Read it because we need more atheists.

The fact that the majority wants something good does not give them the right to use force on the minority that don't want to pay for it. If you have to use a gun, it's not really a very good idea. Democracy without respect for individual rights sucks. It's just ganging up on the weird kid, and I'm always the weird kid.

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.

I'm not greedy. I have love, blue skies, and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be enough, but it's everything in the world - and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more.

Believing there's no God stops me from being solipsistic. I can read ideas from all different people from all different cultures. Without God, we can agree on reality, and I can keep learning where I'm wrong. We can all keep adjusting, so we can really communicate.

My favorite thing about the Internet is that you get to go into the private world of real creeps without having to smell them.

I have no evidence that libertarianism leads to a better life. I just think it is morally right.

Zolten' is a common Hungarian name, it's my wife's maiden name and most importantly, it's the name of Dracula's dog.

The medium is not the message - the message is the message.

God works in mysterious, inefficient, and breathtakingly cruel ways

We aren't people who believe that just because we're performers our opinions on everything need to be known.

Penn & Teller stopped doing practical jokes, and the reason is we got much too good at it.

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.

Only Atheists have morals, the religious have reward and punishment. That's not morality, that's sucking up.

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.