Penn Jillette

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

“I don't think I'm made of the right stuff to be a politician. I think I'm made to be a loose cannon.”

“Poker has the feeling of a sport, but you don't have to do push-ups.”

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

“The First Amendment says nothing about your getting paid for saying anything. It just says you can say it. I don't believe that if a corporation pulls all the money out of you or a network pulls their money away or you get fired, you're being censored.”

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

“Modern American magic, late 20th century magic, is tremendously disrespectful of the audience.”

“Barack Obama is way smarter than Bush - so way, way smarter than me. Obama is way more charismatic than me.”

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

“When I was a kid, politicians wanted to avoid talking about religion if they could. John F. Kennedy couldn't duck the issue, being Catholic and all. So how did he address it? By reminding Americans that religion shouldn't be an issue, that he was concentrating on big things like poverty and hunger and leading the space race.”

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

“I don't want everyone to read anything; I like us all reading different books.”

“A lot of older parents worry about being older parents. I hear people say, 'I don't want to be too old to play baseball with my son.' They worry that their kids will be embarrassed by their parents' age.”

“I believe very much that the most damning thing you can say about Muslims is that you're afraid to say anything because they'll hurt you.”

“I do believe that a belief in God is crazy, but that doesn't mean that the people who believe in it are crazy. Those are two different things. Ideas can be stupid and crazy, and the people who hold those ideas are not necessarily stupid and crazy.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The Tea Party claims to want small government.”

“Penn & Teller stopped doing practical jokes, and the reason is we got much too good at it.”

“Comedy is taken care of by a free market.”