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.
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.
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.
My tolerance for crazy people is, I think, high a tolerance as you're ever going to find. I love being around David Allen Coe. I would have loved to hang out with Tiny Tim. I can listen to Sun Ra on a tape-recording rant.
The purpose of art is to collide the intellectual and visceral together at the highest speed possible.
Freedom means the freedom to be stupid, and that's what I want.
The only secret of magic is that I'm willing to work harder on it than you think it's worth.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If I go out to dinner with you and you order wine, I leave. I won't be around drugs and alcohol at all.
'Psycho' is fascinating philosophically, because the point of 'Psycho' is that everything that's bad happens because of love.
Cheerios bring back memories. I actually don't think I ate them much as a kid, though; maybe it's some sort of Jungian memory, I don't know. But they have so much sugar, it's great.
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.
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.'
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.
I'm not misunderstood. I am brash. I make my living being brash.
I hate that not everything ever written is on iBooks. Man, I hate paper.
I have more contact with people who consume, for lack of a better word, my product than any other performers.
Tolerance is you saying something crazy and me smiling and saying, 'That's nice.'
Asking someone else to do something immoral is immoral.
'Celebrity Apprentice' has more integrity and is the most straightforward show I've ever seen.
Even if I disagree with Obama on many, many things, he is certainly qualified to be president. He is certainly competent to be president.
I will not counter the insanity of the PATRIOT Act with an overblown fear of my rights being taken away.
There's no job in show business that's harder than any other job outside show business.
Every nut who kills people has a Bible lying around.
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.
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.
Everybody prefers to see a nut - they're more fascinating.
I'm totally against straight marriage - even though I'm married. I don't think heterosexual marriage is any of the government's business.
For the most part, any serious magic show is not using very much technology newer than theatrical lights.
A two-party system is way too good for those two parties.
Bob Saget is the dirtiest comic who's ever lived. Nobody touches him.
My mom, if you asked her if she was interested in whether or not people gambled, would say no.
I've never had a drink of alcohol or any drug in my life.
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.
I get along so much better with fundamentalist Christians than I do with wishy-washy liberals, who want everyone to get along.
You have to be careful as a libertarian because you can sound very Republican.
Whereas you have someone like Houdini, who works really, really hard to get really, really famous, and then has actual intellectual ideas that he puts into the culture that stay there.
You should think about the world and feel about your heart.
I love the idea that horror and fear is a celebration of health and life.
Technology adds nothing to art.
Counterintuitive actions prove we can trust real knowledge and do the opposite of what we feel makes sense.
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.
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.'
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.'
