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
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.
skills magic use
The skills that we have are the actual magic skills - not the performing skills. We have to separate those. But the actual skills that make the tricks work, we don't get to use again.
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.
reality differences magic
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.
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.
christian atheist people
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.'
sex want utopia
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.
stupid insecurity waste
Having a Hummer is stupid. It's stupid to waste that much gas. It's stupid to waste that much money on gas. It's stupid to parade your insecurities on public roads. Hummers are stupid-looking.
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.
blue oil coke
If entertainment ran grocery stores, we'd NEVER get oil cured olives or blue cheese, it would be JUST Coke.
atheism needs absence
Atheism is the absence of religion. We don’t really need atheism. We just need to get rid of religion.
jobs mean writing
I had e-mail in 1984! I had an e-mail address then, which means that all you could write to was Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. There were three of us, writing to each other.
country religious rocks
I'm a big fan of gospel music, and you cannot be a fan of rock and roll, you cannot be a fan of country western music, and you can't really be a fan of jazz without listening to a lot of music that's religious.