Jillette Quotes & Sayings

In any conflict, the crazier party generally wins. — Penn Jillette

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

Direct confrontation, direct conversation is real respect. And it's amazing how many people get that. — Penn Jillette

I read a lot of books to my children, and they all seem really good. I think people have gotten really good at children's books. — Penn Jillette

I don't want everyone to read anything; I like us all reading different books. — Penn Jillette

Magic is the Special Olympics of entertainment. — Penn Jillette

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.' — Penn Jillette

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.' — Penn Jillette

I have a very specific definition of censorship. Censorship must be done by the government or it's not censorship. — Penn Jillette

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

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. — Penn Jillette

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

I don't speak for all Libertarians any more than Sean Penn speaks for all Democrats. — Penn Jillette

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

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. — Penn Jillette

Exploration of space is worth it because humans need to explore. Knowledge is always good, and it's a really cool thing to see. — Penn Jillette

Believing there is no God means the suffering I've seen in my family, and indeed all the suffering in the world, isn't caused by an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent force that isn't bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to help others with in the future. No God means the possibility of less suffering in the future. — Penn Jillette

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. — Penn Jillette

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. — Penn Jillette

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

Barack Obama is way smarter than Bush - so way, way smarter than me. Obama is way more charismatic than me. — Penn Jillette

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

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

Mentally ill people come from all belief systems. — Penn Jillette

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

I have more contact with people who consume, for lack of a better word, my product than any other performers. — Penn Jillette

TCA pretends to be about raising money for charity. That's true, but only so far. If I had not taken time off from the Penn & Teller show to do The Celebrity Apprentice - if Teller and I had just done our show, gotten usual pay - I could have donated four times the amount of money that Trump had pledged to give my charity if I won the whole damn shooting match. Opportunity Village, "my" charity that helps intellectually disabled adults to enter society, got a lot of attention because I was on The Celebrity Apprentice, and that does count for something. And when I was "fired," my real bosses at Caesars, who own the Rio and the Penn & Teller Theater, said, "Oh, you wanted a quarter million for Opportunity Village? We don't have to do some jive TV show; we'll just write a check." They wrote the full winning amount to Opportunity Village and everyone was happy. — Penn Jillette

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

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

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

You have in Vegas the most heterogeneous audience you're gonna get anywhere in the country. In Boston, Chicago, Miami, you know who goes to the theater. In Vegas, you have people who only see one theater show a year, and it's in Vegas. — Penn Jillette

I'm really happy with all the art that was inspired by religion, and I think I'd be tickled to little tiny pieces if art in the future was inspired by other things. — Penn Jillette

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

Luck is statistics taken personally. — Penn Jillette

Every poker player is smarter than me. — Penn Jillette

It is really funny to see people that you know acting unpleasantly just because there are TV cameras on. — Penn Jillette

There never was a God. 'God is dead' is a halfway measure I won't go with. — Penn Jillette

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. — Penn Jillette

Nobody that has seen a baby born can believe in god for a second. When you see your child born, and the panic, and the amount of technology that is saving the life of the two people you love most in the world, when you see how much stainless steel and money it takes to fight off the fact that god wants both those people dead, no one, no one can look into the eyes of a newborn baby and say there's a god, because I'll tell ya, if we were squatting in the woods, the two people I love most would be dead. There's just no way around that. If I were in charge, no way. We need technology to fight against nature; nature so wants us dead. Nature is trying to kill us. — Penn Jillette

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

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

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

You get no moral credit for forcing other people to do what you think is right. — Penn Jillette

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.' — Penn Jillette

Comedy is taken care of by a free market. — Penn Jillette

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

I think voting for the lesser of two evils in game theory always leads to more evil. — Penn Jillette

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

The vast majority of the world knows there's no reason to circumcise. Someone should tell the doctors. — Penn Jillette

But [he] had lost god, and all his family and friends were staying behind with his imaginary friend. A silly dream goes away and takes with it your whole real life. — Penn Jillette

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

Having a Hummer is stupid. It's stupid to waste that much gas. It's stupid to waste that much money on gas. It's stupid to parade your insecurities on public roads. Hummers are stupid-looking. — Penn Jillette

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

Well, it's not really the right word, but freedom is kind of a hobby with me, and I have disposable income that I'll spend to find out how to get people more of it. — Penn Jillette

Thou shalt not take anything on faith — Penn Jillette

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

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

One of the things that Teller and I are obsessed with, one of the reasons that we're in magic, is the difference between fantasy and reality. That is the subject that, if you have a brain in your head, is always dealt with in magic. The smarter the tricks you're doing, the more that' s an important thing. — Penn Jillette

If you can just convince the dope people that the gun people are right and the gun people that the dope people are right, we could actually live in a lot more freedom. — Penn Jillette

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. — Penn Jillette

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. — Penn Jillette

The only secret of magic is that I'm willing to work harder on it than you think it's worth. — Penn Jillette

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

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

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

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

If you've gotten yourself into a situation when Clay Aiken is going to talk about his feelings with you, it's time to kill yourself. — Penn Jillette

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. — Penn Jillette

I grew up as a Christian. I suppose at some level I wanted to believe someone was watching over me. — Penn Jillette

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. — Penn Jillette

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. — Penn Jillette

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

I've never revved my car at a light for an attractive woman or an auto-rival, not even as a joke. — Penn Jillette

Most atheists bristle at the thought that atheism has anything to do with faith, but not Penn Jillette. — Ray Comfort

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. — Penn Jillette

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

It's not arrogant to say that you can't figure out the answers to the universe with your internal faith. It's not arrogant to know that there's no omniscient, omnipotent prime mover in the universe who loves you personally. It's not sad to feel that life and the love of your real friends and family is more than enough to make life worth living. Isn't it much sadder to feel that there is a more important love required than the love of the people who have chosen to spend their limited time with you? — Penn Jillette

Everyday is an atheist holiday. — Penn Jillette

I don't believe the majority always knows what's best for everyone. — Penn Jillette

I'm totally clean and sober my whole life. — Penn Jillette

There's no job in show business that's harder than any other job outside show business. — Penn Jillette

Poker would have never gotten on TV when we only had three networks. — Penn Jillette

I've always wanted to make the world a more rational place. I'm still working on it. — Penn Jillette

Has any non-dipshit man ever used the word "ladies" not followed by the word "room"? — Penn Jillette

A lot of older parents worry about being older parents. I hear people say, 'I don't want to be too old to play baseball with my son.' They worry that their kids will be embarrassed by their parents' age. — Penn Jillette

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. — Penn Jillette

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. — Penn Jillette

Better to be uneducated than educated by your government. — Penn Jillette

If you believe that there's a heaven and hell and people could be going to hell - or not getting eternal life or whatever - and you think that, well, it's not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward ... How much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize? How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that? — Penn Jillette

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

My whole family is missing that sports gene. I hope I didn't screw that up by marrying a great golfer. — Penn Jillette

Every time something really bad happens, people cry out for safety, and the government answers by taking rights away from good people. We have no proof that the bad, stupid crazy people who have planted bombs in the past few years used the phone much for their stupid bad crimes, let alone logged on the Internet. Yet when those kind of bad things happen nowadays, the government tries to do bad things to phones and the Net. The phones and the Internet are just good smart things, and the government should leave them alone. You have to watch the government all the time on everything. Thomas Jefferson didn't say that, but he said something very close to that. — Penn Jillette

I'm very happy being big and effeminate. — Penn Jillette

Hypocrisy is annoying but not evil. Someone who says one thing and does another has doubled their chances of being half right. — Penn Jillette

You can't stop insane people from doing insane things with insane laws. That's insane! — Penn Jillette

Counterintuitive actions prove we can trust real knowledge and do the opposite of what we feel makes sense. — Penn Jillette

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. — Penn Jillette

Penn & Teller don't know jack about global warming. — Penn Jillette

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

The vast majority of people who have mental illness problems never hurt anybody. — Penn Jillette