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

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

Money Men Government

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.

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Time Car UN

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.

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Design Very 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.

Penn Jillette

Love You Would

The purpose of art is to collide the intellectual and visceral together at the highest speed possible.

Penn Jillette

Art Visceral Together

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

Penn Jillette

Freedom Want Up

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

Penn Jillette

Work You 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.

Penn Jillette

Art Your You

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

Religion Love Faith

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

War Men Government

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

Happiness Freedom You

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.

Penn Jillette

Work War Time

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

Life Change 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.

Penn Jillette

Your You Way

If I go out to dinner with you and you order wine, I leave. I won't be around drugs and alcohol at all.

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You Won Wit

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

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Love Very Use

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.

Penn Jillette

Great UN Though

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

Technology Power Will

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.'

Penn Jillette

Car Who Cares Who

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

Time You Very

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

Penn Jillette

I hate that not everything ever written is on iBooks. Man, I hate paper.

Penn Jillette

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

Penn Jillette

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

Penn Jillette

Asking someone else to do something immoral is immoral.

Penn Jillette

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

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

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

Penn Jillette

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

Penn Jillette

Every nut who kills people has a Bible lying around.

Penn Jillette

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

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.

Penn Jillette

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

Penn Jillette

I'm totally against straight marriage - even though I'm married. I don't think heterosexual marriage is any of the government's business.

Penn Jillette

For the most part, any serious magic show is not using very much technology newer than theatrical lights.

Penn Jillette

A two-party system is way too good for those two parties.

Penn Jillette

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

Penn Jillette

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

Penn Jillette

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

Penn Jillette

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.

Penn Jillette

I get along so much better with fundamentalist Christians than I do with wishy-washy liberals, who want everyone to get along.

Penn Jillette

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

Penn Jillette

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.

Penn Jillette

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

Penn Jillette

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

Penn Jillette

Technology adds nothing to art.

Penn Jillette

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

Penn Jillette

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.

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

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