Top 100 Penn Jillette Quotes
#1. Most atheists bristle at the thought that atheism has anything to do with faith, but not Penn Jillette.
Ray Comfort
#2. [Penn Jillette] said, 'If a truck is barreling toward you, no amount of positiveness will stop it from hitting you.' I needed to hear that I didn't have to be enthusiastic all the time. Some days you just need to be in a bad mood.
Julia Sweeney
#3. I'm not misunderstood. I am brash. I make my living being brash.
Penn Jillette
#5. Counterintuitive actions prove we can trust real knowledge and do the opposite of what we feel makes sense.
Penn Jillette
#6. I intend to do the Penn & Teller show until they pry my cheesy magic wand from my cold dead fingers.
Penn Jillette
#7. 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.
Penn Jillette
#9. Trump tried to book Penn & Teller once in Vegas at one of his casinos, but we were priced out of his budget.
Penn Jillette
#10. I don't speak for all Libertarians any more than Sean Penn speaks for all Democrats.
Penn Jillette
#11. Penn & Teller don't know jack about global warming.
Penn Jillette
#12. 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.
Penn Jillette
#13. 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.
Penn Jillette
#14. 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.
Penn Jillette
#15. We have to fight for the freedom to be stupid, and smoking is one of the best ways to fight for your freedom, to be just as stupid as you can be.
Penn Jillette
#16. 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.
Penn Jillette
#17. Direct confrontation, direct conversation is real respect. And it's amazing how many people get that.
Penn Jillette
#18. 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.
Penn Jillette
#19. 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.
Penn Jillette
#20. You can't stop insane people from doing insane things with insane laws. That's insane!
Penn Jillette
#21. I don't believe the majority always knows what's best for everyone.
Penn Jillette
#22. 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.
Penn Jillette
#23. 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.
Penn Jillette
#24. 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.
Penn Jillette
#25. Even one person's misunderstanding [of a blue joke] may not be worth the next guy's laugh.
Penn Jillette
#26. Every nut who kills people has a Bible lying around.
Penn Jillette
#27. Teller and I worked Renaissance Festivals and street performing - actually more real, no kidding around, Philadelphia street performing than we did Renaissance Festivals.
Penn Jillette
#28. Religion is often just tribalism: pride in a group one was born into, a group that is often believed to have 'God' on its side.
Penn Jillette
#29. In reality, many people let go of religion later in life.
Penn Jillette
#30. 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.
Penn Jillette
#32. I think the media spends a lot of time fooling itself.
Penn Jillette
#33. I, my own damn self, am not a Tea Party supporter. I disagree with them on social liberties, our overseas wars, Obama's birthplace, Sarah Palin, and the conspicuous absence of tea at their rallies.
Penn Jillette
#34. In my private life, I'm not around any drugs or alcohol.
Penn Jillette
#35. I had e-mail in 1984! I had an e-mail address then, which means that all you could write to was Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. There were three of us, writing to each other.
Penn Jillette
#36. God works in mysterious, inefficient, and breathtakingly cruel ways
Penn Jillette
#37. Even if I disagree with Obama on many, many things, he is certainly qualified to be president. He is certainly competent to be president.
Penn Jillette
#38. I believe in individual rights so much that I don't like any sort of 'what's good for the cause'-type questions.
Penn Jillette
#40. 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.
Penn Jillette
#41. Democracy without respect for individual rights sucks. It's just ganging up against the weird kid, and I'm always the weird kid.
Penn Jillette
#44. 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.
Penn Jillette
#45. If you like the stuff I do, my chances of liking you go up.
Penn Jillette
#46. The nightmare of Trump is not that he doesn't care what people think; it's that he desperately cares what people think.
Penn Jillette
#47. Trey Parker did 'Book of Mormon.' It's the best Broadway show I've ever seen. He does 'South Park.' It's wonderful.
Penn Jillette
#48. 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.
Penn Jillette
#49. The highest ideals are human intelligence, creativity and love. Respect these above all.
Penn Jillette
#50. Hypocrisy is annoying but not evil. Someone who says one thing and does another has doubled their chances of being half right.
Penn Jillette
#51. There is no reason for the government to limit political speech.
Penn Jillette
#52. The evidence shows you that two things have been true throughout mankind's history: One, things always get better. Two, people always think they're getting worse.
Penn Jillette
#53. I didn't learn fire-eating to conquer my fears. I learned fire-eating because I desperately wanted to be in show business.
Penn Jillette
#54. 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.
Penn Jillette
#55. If you want to turn out an atheist child, unconditional love constantly is a good way to do it.
Penn Jillette
#56. TV networks are dying. The death throes of religion give us jihads. The death throes of television give us reality shows.
Penn Jillette
#57. We all have friends we love dearly that couldn't pass for human in a strict Turing test.
Penn Jillette
#59. We are only here for a little while, and our bodies belong to ourselves and no one else.
Penn Jillette
#60. In my run-ins with Christians ... I find that they really are good moral people. And we overlap on everything, and they don't seem to be the kind of people that are waiting to hear voices to tell them what to do.
Penn Jillette
#61. I came to magic absolutely hating magic on a very, very deep level.
Penn Jillette
#63. I think people under age 55 come to Vegas with a certain sense of irony.
Penn Jillette
#64. When someone is trying to interpret something for you, they always have an agenda.
Penn Jillette
#65. One thing you learn doing magic tricks for a living is how close every performance of every magic trick is to disaster. There are no robust magic tricks. They're all hanging from a thread - sometimes literally.
Penn Jillette
#66. 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".
Penn Jillette
#67. The pure unadulterated disgust of Washington seems to me to be a really good thing.
Penn Jillette
#68. Much better than the feeling of having things is the feeling of having earned things.
Penn Jillette
#69. I've never had a drink of alcohol or any drug in my life.
Penn Jillette
#70. 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.
Penn Jillette
#71. 'Zolten' is a common Hungarian name, it's my wife's maiden name and most importantly, it's the name of Dracula's dog.
Penn Jillette
#72. Bob Saget is the dirtiest comic who's ever lived. Nobody touches him.
Penn Jillette
#73. 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.
Penn Jillette
#74. 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.
Penn Jillette
#76. 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.
Penn Jillette
#77. 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.
Penn Jillette
#79. For better or worse, in the 21st century, reality shows are the variety show.
Penn Jillette
#80. 'Celebrity Apprentice' has more integrity and is the most straightforward show I've ever seen.
Penn Jillette
#81. We know what racist people look like. They don't deny it. They just don't!
Penn Jillette
#82. How much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize?
Penn Jillette
#83. I don't believe in vengeance. Really, when all is said and done, I probably don't believe in punishment.
Penn Jillette
#84. As I'm fond of saying, if you want to find utopia, take a sharp right on money and a sharp left on sex and it's straight ahead.
Penn Jillette
#85. If entertainment ran grocery stores, we'd NEVER get oil cured olives or blue cheese, it would be JUST Coke.
Penn Jillette
#86. I've been told by professional drug users that if I did the drugs, I would like the Dead. It seems like the most effective PSA against drugs could just play some Dead jams and say, "If you do drugs, you will like this kind of music." What other deterrent would one need?
Penn Jillette
#87. There are two things that have been true throughout history in big hunks. You can find differences in ten years, but in 50 year hunks, 100 years hunks, you'll find two things to be true. One, the world is always getting better. Two, people always think it's getting worse.
Penn Jillette
#88. I've always wanted to make the world a more rational place. I'm still working on it.
Penn Jillette
#89. The best way to fight the terrorists is to have the freest country on earth. You should be able to get on an airplane, and people - that will not possibly happen again.
Penn Jillette
#90. Showbiz is just there to give people something to talk about.
Penn Jillette
#91. If I go out to dinner with you and you order wine, I leave. I won't be around drugs and alcohol at all.
Penn Jillette
#92. Jay-Z, he knows precisely who he's going for - 14-year-old white suburban girls.
Penn Jillette
#93. The purpose of art is to collide the intellectual and visceral together at the highest speed possible.
Penn Jillette
#94. Mentally ill people come from all belief systems.
Penn Jillette
#95. People need to be fed, medicated, educated, clothed, and sheltered, and if we're compassionate we'll help them, but you get no moral credit for forcing other people to do what you think is right. There is great joy in helping people, but no joy in doing it at gunpoint.
Penn Jillette
#96. My mom, if you asked her if she was interested in whether or not people gambled, would say no.
Penn Jillette
#97. 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.
Penn Jillette
#98. If I had to imagine omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent power in the universe that chose to make my mother suffer, I don't know how I would make that make sense in the universe.
Penn Jillette
#99. You don't have freedom unless you have the freedom to do stupid self-destructive things.
Penn Jillette
#100. 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.
Penn Jillette
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