Penn Jillette

'Celebrity Apprentice' has more integrity and is the most straightforward show I've ever seen.

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.'

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.

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

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

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 came to magic absolutely hating magic on a very, very deep level.

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

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

If you want to turn out an atheist child, unconditional love constantly is a good way to do it.

If you spend a lot of time lying to people, you think a lot about what the truth means.

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

Bacon is so good by itself that to put it in any other food is an admission of failure. Youre basically saying I cant make this other food taste good so Ill throw in bacon.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Counterintuitive action makes a fellow feel smart.

If there are two things Penn & Teller stand for, it's the truth & lying, although not necessarily in that order.

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.'

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

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

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

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

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.

Bob Saget is the dirtiest comic who's ever lived. Nobody touches him.

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.

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.

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

I never wanted to be a magician. I never wanted to be a comedian. I never wanted to be onstage.

I'm an amazing mama's boy.

For better or worse, in the 21st century, reality shows are the variety show.

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.

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 think the media spends a lot of time fooling itself.

My mom, if you asked her if she was interested in whether or not people gambled, would say no.

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.

I don't know what's best for other people.

Showbiz is just there to give people something to talk about.

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

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.

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.'

Before you can read, you know the difference between a story and reality. And, of course, by the time you're old enough to do any real damage with an Uzi, you've learned that difference.

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

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.

You have to be careful as a libertarian because you can sound very Republican.

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.

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 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.

I'm very happy being big and effeminate.

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

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.

If entertainment ran grocery stores wed NEVER get oil cured olives or blue cheese it would be JUST Coke.

I was always a little embarrassed when there was an act on television that requires a great deal of skill but is a little goofy, and the host comes over and acts like the person doing this skill is some sort of fool for having learned to do something that's very, very difficult.

'Psycho' is fascinating philosophically, because the point of 'Psycho' is that everything that's bad happens because of love.

There is no reason for the government to limit political speech.

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

The Tea Party claims to want small government.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Freedom means the freedom to be stupid, and that's what I want.

Exploration of space is worth it because humans need to explore. Knowledge is always good and its a really cool thing to see.

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.

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.

I'm always fascinated by the use of the first-person plural talking about sports.

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.

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

Janet Reno, during her confirmation hearings, said she would come down harder on porno, and lately she's talked about how violence on television has an effect on violence in the real world.

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.

We need a president who realizes that there's no government business in show business.

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.

Bacon is so good by itself that to put it in any other food is an admission of failure. You're basically saying, 'I can't make this other food taste good, so I'll throw in bacon.'

Comedy is taken care of by a free market.

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

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.

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.

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.

Asking someone else to do something immoral is immoral.

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

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.

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.

Every nut who kills people has a Bible lying 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.

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.

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.

You should think about the world and feel about your heart.

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.

Direct confrontation direct conversation is real respect. And its amazing how many people get that.

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.

I'm not misunderstood. I am brash. I make my living being brash.

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

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

All David Blaine is is a good-looking magician.

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