Penn Jillette Quotes
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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.
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I'm always surprised when the corporate world does stupid things, because they're often not very stupid in hindsight.
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I get along so much better with fundamentalist Christians than I do with wishy-washy liberals, who want everyone to get along.
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Tolerance is you saying something crazy and me smiling and saying, 'That's nice.'
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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.
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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.
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Performers have the right to say what they want to, and anyone paying money has the right to accept or reject the art and entertainment that's available.
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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.
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The medium is not the message - the message is the message.
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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.
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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.
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I have no evidence that libertarianism leads to a better life. I just think it is morally right.
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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.
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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.
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Penn & Teller stopped doing practical jokes, and the reason is we got much too good at it.
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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.
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People still seem to think that they should vote themselves money. They seem to think there is stuff which they think is the government's job, when it's really the individual's job.
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I don't question things that go against what I believe very much. But boy, the stuff that I really want to believe, I really question a lot.
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'Morality, Religion And Bullsh*T: An Interview With Penn Jillette' by Ryan Shaffer, at the American Humanist Association (December 2012)
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I've voted Libertarian as long as I can remember, but I don't really remember much before the Clintons and the Bushes. Those clans made a lot of us bugnutty.
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I think voting for the lesser of two evils in game theory always leads to more evil.
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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.
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I don't believe in vengeance. Really, when all is said and done, I probably don't believe in punishment.
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Teller and I worked Renaissance Festivals and street performing - actually more real, no kidding around, Philadelphia street performing than we did Renaissance Festivals.