Penn Jillette Quotes

[On hearing that 86% of gay teens have experienced harassment] Eighty-six percent? Eighty-six per-fuckin-cent WERE harassed?! That means fourteen per-fuckin-cent WEREN'T harassed? WHAT?!
At MY school a hundred percent of the children - gay, straight, transgendered, bi, sell... or trade - WERE harassed. She's saying that fourteen percent of the gay students were NOT harassed? That seems impossible.
At MY school any one of us would have sucked Elton John's COCK at a mandatory school assembly for a fourteen percent chance of NOT being harassed.

Women do cosplay, of course, and thank god for that, but they don’t go to the local coffee shop dressed as cheerleaders, fuck god for that.

According to W.H. Auden, “We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for, I don’t know.

I love nuts. I'm for nuts. I am nuts.

... if you want to get heavy about it, you can say that every magic show is an exploration of how we determine what’s true.

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.

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

I believe that there is no God. I'm beyond atheism. Atheism is not believing in God. Not believing in God is easy — you can't prove a negative, so there's no work to do

"I was asking people, "Have you ever seen a night launch before?"

One guy answered, "Not from the outside, no."

You have to be careful about trying to be cool at a Rockwell party."

What I am doing is creating ephemera, and I believe that’s not only okay, that’s part of what makes it beautiful. I mean, I am aware it’s likely that in 30 years someone who is deeply interested in magic will dig up recordings of Fool Us and have things to learn, but that’s not what we’re really talking about. That’s excavating a piece of pottery.

The question I get asked by religious people all the time is, without God, what’s to stop me from raping all I want? And my answer is: I do rape all I want. And the amount I want is zero. And I do murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero. The fact that these people think that if they didn’t have this person watching over them that they would go on killing, raping rampages is the most self-damning thing I can imagine. I don't want to do that. Right now, without any god, I don't want to jump across this table and strangle you. I have no desire to strangle you. I have no desire to flip you over and rape you.

There is no god, and that's the simple truth. If every trace of any single religion were wiped out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. There might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense. If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true and someone would find a way to figure it all out again.

My ambitions were always, I think, fairly level-headed. I felt I could earn my living like my dad, who went from jail guard in a small town to supporting his family doing something he really loved — that was my goal. And when people talk to me and Teller about success, the day we were paying our bills doing a magic and juggling show, I was done.

There are really good sociobiological reasons for why we evolved to cooperate. It really is good for all of us. You can be a hard ass and just run common sense, you know, what is the most effective way for people to interact and you do better if you treat people well, you just do. And on top of that the whole world does better if you treat people well. It works out on any level.

We are only here for a little while, and our bodies belong to ourselves and no one else.