Penn Jillette > Quotes

“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.”
― Penn Jillette, God, No! Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales

“What I have a problem with is not so much religion or god, but faith. When you say you believe something in your heart and therefore you can act on it, you have completely justified the 9/11 bombers. You have justified Charlie Manson. If it's true for you, why isn't it true for them? Why are you different? If you say "I believe there's an all-powerful force of love in the universe that connects us all, and I have no evidence of that but I believe it in my heart," then it's perfectly okay to believe in your heart that Sharon Tate deserves to die. It's perfectly okay to believe in your heart that you need to fly planes into buildings for Allah.”
― Penn Jillette

“Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.”
― Penn Jillette

“Nobody that has seen a baby born can believe in god for a second. When you see your child born, and the panic, and the amount of technology that is saving the life of the two people you love most in the world, when you see how much stainless steel and money it takes to fight off the fact that god wants both those people dead, no one, no one can look into the eyes of a newborn baby and say there's a god, because I'll tell ya, if we were squatting in the woods, the two people I love most would be dead. There's just no way around that. If I were in charge, no way. We need technology to fight against nature; nature so wants us dead. Nature is trying to kill us.”
― Penn Jillette

“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”.”
― Penn Jillette, God, No! Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales

“Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around”
― Penn Jillette

“It's not arrogant to say that you can't figure out the answers to the universe with your internal faith. It's not arrogant to know that there's no omniscient, omnipotent prime mover in the universe who loves you personally. It's not sad to feel that life and the love of your real friends and family is more than enough to make life worth living. Isn't it much sadder to feel that there is a more important love required than the love of the people who have chosen to spend their limited time with you?”
― Penn Jillette, God, No! Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales

“The only difference between Obama and Bush is that Obama is killing more people. He’s about double the numbers now. Can you imagine if McCain had won and did precisely what Obama has done, with every speech and every political maneuver overseas? There’d be riots in the streets about the people we’re killing. And yet because it’s Obama, and he’s better looking and better at reading the teleprompter, we let him get away with it.”
― Penn Jillette

“Once you've condoned faith in general, you've condoned any crazy shit done because of faith.”
― Penn Jillette, God, No! Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales

“If there's something you really want to believe, that's what you should question the most.”
― Penn Jillette

“Luck is statistics taken personally.”
― Penn Jillette

“Read everything and be kind.”
― Penn Jillette

“Love and respect all people. Hate and destroy all faith.”
― Penn Jillette, God, No! Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales

“Every time something really bad happens, people cry out for safety, and the government answers by taking rights away from good people. We have no proof that the bad, stupid crazy people who have planted bombs in the past few years used the phone much for their stupid bad crimes, let alone logged on the Internet. Yet when those kind of bad things happen nowadays, the government tries to do bad things to phones and the Net. The phones and the Internet are just good smart things, and the government should leave them alone. You have to watch the government all the time on everything. Thomas Jefferson didn't say that, but he said something very close to that.”
― Penn Jillette, Penn & Teller's How to Play in Traffic

“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. The smiles of children. The screaming, the bitching, the horrific whining of one’s own children. The glory of giving or receiving a blow job. Sunsets, rock and roll, bebop, Jell-O, stinky cheese, and offensive jokes.
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.”
― Penn Jillette, Every Day is an Atheist Holiday!

“It's fair to say that the Bible contains equal amounts of fact, history, and pizza.”
― Penn Jillette

“As I’m fond of saying, if you want to find utopia, take a sharp right on money and a sharp left on sex and it’s straight ahead.”
― Penn Jillette

“We all have friends we love dearly that couldn't pass for human in a strict Turing test.”
― Penn Jillette

“Democracy without respect for individual rights sucks. It's just ganging up against the weird kid, and I'm always the weird kid.”
― Penn Jillette

“If stupid hippies hadn't killed nuclear power, we'd have nuclear power plants, safer and cheaper than coal-fired plants, all over, and electric cars really would be zero emissions.”
― Penn Jillette, Presto!: How I Made Over 100 Pounds Disappear and Other Magical Tales

“I love nuts. I'm for nuts. I am nuts.”
― Penn Jillette, God, No! Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales

“Technology adds nothing to art. Two thousand years ago, I could tell you a story, and at any point during the story I could stop, and ask, Now do you want the hero to be kidnapped, or not? But that would, of course, have ruined the story. Part of the experience of being entertained is sitting back and plugging into someone else's vision.”
― Penn Jillette

“[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.”
― Penn Jillette

“I, my own damn self, am not a Tea Party supporter. I disagree with them on social liberties, our overseas wars, Obama's birthplace, Sarah Palin, and the conspicuous absence of tea at their rallies.”
― Penn Jillette, God, No! Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales

“My favorite thing about the Internet is that you get to go into the private world of real creeps without having to smell them.”
― Penn Jillette

“Exploration of space is worth it because humans need to explore. Knowledge is always good, and it's a really cool thing to see.”
― Penn Jillette, Penn & Teller's How to Play in Traffic

“I don’t think anything gives your life joy and meaning. I think your life simply has joy and meaning. The love for my children, the love for my parents and the love for my friends is the end in itself. The meaning is life.”
― Penn Jillette

“We are only here for a little while, and our bodies belong to ourselves and no one else.”
― Penn Jillette, God, No! Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales

“In the late twentieth century we consider solitude our natural condition. Mates divorce, and even friendship is diagnosed as a disorder - co-dependency. So the concept of living a life interlocked with another human is unthinkable”
― Penn Jillette, Penn & Teller's How to Play in Traffic

“So no one cares - and that protects your personal privacy. At least most of the time no one cares. I'm not making the argument that if we're doing nothing wrong, then we shouldn't be afraid of the government monitoring us. That's a stupid, bad argument. We should always be afraid of any government monitoring us. The fact that no one cares what we're talking about is an argument for keeping it that way. We don't want the government to be able to care. Any power you give the government, the government will abuse. George Washington almost said that.”
― Penn Jillette, Penn & Teller's How to Play in Traffic