Penn Jillette Quotes
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Freedom means the freedom to be stupid, and that's what I want.
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I have a very specific definition of censorship. Censorship must be done by the government or it's not censorship.
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Bob Barr is not crazy enough for my taste.
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Modern American magic, late 20th century magic, is tremendously disrespectful of the audience.
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My love of computers, besides being practical, is very direct and visceral. I love the way things look on the screen.
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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.'
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You don't have to be brave or a saint, a martyr, or even very smart to be an atheist. All you have to be able to say is 'I don't know.'
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The purpose of art is to collide the intellectual and visceral together at the highest speed possible.
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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.
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To drive a car in rural America is freedom. Before I had a car, I'd never seen a rock and roll show, I'd never seen a comic or a show.
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If you just want to help people out you end up being a good person. I mean there’s every single kind of horrible self-help book will tell you if you’re feeling down and you’re feeling depressed just go help someone out and it’s a cliché, you wouldn’t even say it it’s so embarrassing, except it happens to be true.
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It is really funny to see people that you know acting unpleasantly just because there are TV cameras on.
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If you want to talk about magic, the stuff that blows me away is the stuff that's done close up.
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Magic is the Special Olympics of entertainment.
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My body really, really wanted to reproduce when I was 15. It took a lot of civilization, socialization, willpower and some emulsion polymerization technology for me not to reproduce at 15.
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When someone is trying to interpret something for you, they always have an agenda.
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We need a president who realizes that there's no government business in show business.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Poker would have never gotten on TV when we only had three networks.
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Mentally ill people come from all belief systems.
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I don't want people who are in poverty, in pain, or suffering, to suffer because it's for their own good and they can pull themselves up by their bootstraps. I want to help them. I want us all to help them.