Penn Jillette Quotes

I believe in individual rights so much that I don't like any sort of 'what's good for the cause'-type questions.

Love and respect all people. Hate and destroy all faith.

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.

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.

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.

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

Make deals with people, not paper.

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.

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

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.

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

If there's something you really want to believe, that's what you should question the most.

Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-O, and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever have.

Asking someone else to do something immoral is immoral.

Tolerance is you saying something crazy and me smiling and saying, 'That's nice.'

I will forever stick up for Catholics and Christians in general. With a small number of very horrible exceptions, they do play by the rules.

So many people say, ‘You know, your taxes aren’t taken by force,’ and that’s foolish. 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.

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 you tell other people to do stuff they don't know how to do, they tend to freak out.

The reason I'm an I.B.M.-type guy today is that I really needed a laptop back in 1986, and I just couldn't wait for the Powerbook.

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.

Modern American magic, late 20th century magic, is tremendously disrespectful of the audience.

Jay-Z, he knows precisely who he's going for - 14-year-old white suburban girls.

I mean, if I believed, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that a truck was coming at you, and you didn’t believe that truck was bearing down on you, there is a certain point where I tackle you. And this is more important than that.

I will not counter the insanity of the PATRIOT Act with an overblown fear of my rights being taken away.

I don't believe in vengeance. Really, when all is said and done, I probably don't believe in punishment.

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.

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

A famous monk once said, I don't always know what the right thing to do is, my Lord, but I think the fact that I want to please you pleases you.

When I buy Windows 98, I'm not only buying something useful, I'm giving money to Bill Gates, which is a really good thing.

Everybody prefers to see a nut - they're more fascinating.

Fear is the politicians dance partner.

I think that I am willing to risk my life in order to have more freedom.

The only difference between Obama and Bush is that Obama is killing more people. He’s about double the numbers now. Can you imagine if McCain had won and did precisely what Obama has done, with every speech and every political maneuver overseas? There’d be riots in the streets about the people we’re killing. And yet because it’s Obama, and he’s better looking and better at reading the teleprompter, we let him get away with it.

Every nut who kills people has a Bible lying around. If you're looking for violent rape imagery, the Bible's right there in your hotel room. If you just want to look up ways to screw people up, there it is, and you're justified because God told you to.

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.

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

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.

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.

My whole take on libertarianism is simply that I don't know what's best for other people.

The whole world is pretending the breakthrough is in technology. The bottleneck is really in art.

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.

People like Bill Maher, who brags about being a cynic, it sickens me. I am the least cynical person I know, and I am very, very skeptical.

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.

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.

I think one of the things about Donald Trump that's interesting is he lives in a rarified atmosphere where it's possible that he doesn't get enough feedback, enough people rolling their eyes at him. It's a danger more in show business than it is with wealth.

Atheism is the absence of religion. We don’t really need atheism. We just need to get rid of religion.

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