Penn Jillette
Penn Jillette
Penn Fraser Jilletteis an American magician, juggler, comedian, musician, inventor, actor, and best-selling author known for his work with fellow magician Teller as half of the team Penn & Teller. He is also known for his advocacy of atheism, scientific skepticism, libertarianism and free-market capitalism...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMagician
Date of Birth5 March 1955
CityGreenfield, MA
CountryUnited States of America
mysterious-ways way mysterious
God works in mysterious, inefficient, and breathtakingly cruel ways
kids rights democracy
Democracy without respect for individual rights sucks. It's just ganging up against the weird kid, and I'm always the weird kid.
religious atheist liars
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.
atheist smart brave
You don’t have to be brave or a saint, a martyr, or even very smart to be an atheist. All you have to be able to say is “I don’t know”.
hate people love-and-respect
Love and respect all people. Hate and destroy all faith.
halfway god-is-dead
There never was a God. 'God is dead' is a halfway measure I won't go with.
way charismatic barack
Barack Obama is way smarter than Bush - so way, way smarter than me. Obama is way more charismatic than me.
spring arrogance looks
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.
intellectual psycho celebration
When you're watching Psycho, there' s that moment when you have a visceral reaction to watching someone being stabbed. And then you have the intellectual revelation that you're not, and that's where the celebration comes in.
mom ideas bothered
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.
ideas intellectual culture
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.
thinking compassion people
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.
atheist holiday mean
The word ‘holiday’ comes from ‘holy day’ and holy means ‘exalted and worthy of complete devotion.’ By that definition, all days are holy. Life is holy. Atheists have joy every day of the year, every holy day. We have the wonder and glory of life. We have joy in the world before the lord is come. We’re not going for the promise of life after death; we’re celebrating life before death…For atheists, everything in the world is enough and every day is holy. Every day is an atheist holiday. It’s a day that we’re alive.
taken gun people
So many people say, ‘You know, your taxes aren’t taken by force,’ and that’s foolish. 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.