Counterintuitive action makes a fellow feel smart.
— Penn Jillette
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.
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 get along so much better with fundamentalist Christians than I do with wishy-washy liberals, who want everyone to get along.
I've been fired from a situational comedy with a script they wrote specifically for me because of my voice.
You can't allow people freedom and then change your mind when the things don't go your way.
You should think about the world and feel about your heart.
The most important part of life is work, it's the flow, it's getting stuff done, feeling like you're doing something.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I intend to do the Penn & Teller show until they pry my cheesy magic wand from my cold dead fingers.
We need a president who realizes that there's no government business in show business.
A two-party system is way too good for those two parties.
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.
Someone who is a good person should have no fear of the government whatsoever.
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.
Obama is a great leader. He can fire people up and get them to do what he wants.
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.
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.
Mentally ill people come from all belief systems.
I grew up as a Christian. I suppose at some level I wanted to believe someone was watching over me.
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'm always surprised when the corporate world does stupid things, because they're often not very stupid in hindsight.
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 often just tribalism: pride in a group one was born into, a group that is often believed to have 'God' on its side.
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.
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.
If I were trying to avoid embarrassment, I wouldn't have stumbled my way through 'Dancing with the Stars.'
Showbiz is just there to give people something to talk about.
It's amazing to me how many people think that voting to have the government give poor people money is compassion. Helping poor and suffering people yourself is compassion. Voting for our government to use guns to give money to help poor and suffering people is immoral, self-righteous, bullying laziness.
I don't speak for all Libertarians any more than Sean Penn speaks for all Democrats.
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.
Freedom means the freedom to be stupid, and that's what I want.
Barack Obama is way smarter than Bush - so way, way smarter than me. Obama is way more charismatic than me.
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.
There never was a God. 'God is dead' is a halfway measure I won't go with.
I have more contact with people who consume, for lack of a better word, my product than any other performers.
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 will forever stick up for Catholics and Christians in general. With a small number of very horrible exceptions, they do play by the rules.
Everybody wants clean, safe energy. Some people think nuclear is the way to go. Some people think coal is the way to go. Some people think wind is the way to go. And there's always balances on that.
Juggling is very, very straightforward; very, very black and white; you're manipulating objects, not people. And that's always appealed to me.
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.
My love of computers, besides being practical, is very direct and visceral. I love the way things look on the screen.
Penn & Teller don't know jack about global warming.
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.
There is no reason for the government to limit political speech.
Asking someone else to do something immoral is immoral.
