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From 1985 To 1994, I Lived In Manhattan In A Big Old Loft Right Off Times Square. I Could Walk To Work, Which Was In A Couple Of Broadway Theaters, To Howard Stern's Studio, And To 30 Rock For 'letterman' And 'snl.' Even In New York, Walking To Work Is Homey And Folksy, Like Living In A Small Town.

-Penn Jillette

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From 1985 To 1994,

Penn Jillette

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From 1985 To 1994, I Lived In Manhattan In A Big Old Loft Right Off Times Square. I Could Walk To Work, Which Was In A Couple Of Broadway Theaters, To Howard Stern's Studio, And To 30 Rock For 'letterman' And 'snl.' Even In New York, Walking To Work Is Homey And Folksy, Like Living In A Small Town.

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Someone Who Is A Good Person Should Have No Fear Of The Government Whatsoever.

Well, It's Not Really The Right Word, But Freedom Is Kind Of A Hobby With Me, And I Have Disposable Income That I'll Spend To Find Out How To Get People More Of It.

Never Ascribe To Conspiracy That Which Can Be Attributed To Ignorance.

When 9/11 Hit, The Second Thing I Said To Myself Was, 'this Really Is What Religious People Do.' Those People Flying The Plane Were Very Good, Very Pious, Truly Faithful Believers. There's No Other Way To Paint Them. Of Course, They Are Extremists By Definition, But They Certainly Aren't Going Against Islam In Any Real Way.

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The Tea Party Claims To Want Small Government.

All David Blaine Is Is A Good-looking Magician.

The Definition Of A Stupid Thing Is Something That If You Do Everything Right, You Still Get Hurt. Fire-eating And Love Are Stupid Things.

There Are Two Things That Have Been True Throughout History In Big Hunks. You Can Find Differences In Ten Years, But In 50 Year Hunks, 100 Years Hunks, You'll Find Two Things To Be True. One, The World Is Always Getting Better. Two, People Always Think It's Getting Worse.

If You Want To Talk About Magic, The Stuff That Blows Me Away Is The Stuff That's Done Close Up.

There Is No Reason For The Government To Limit Political Speech.

I'm A Hardcore Libertarian - I Want Everything Legal - But I Also Believe That You Have The Right To Free Association.

When I Buy Windows 98, I'm Not Only Buying Something Useful, I'm Giving Money To Bill Gates, Which Is A Really Good Thing.

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Better To Be Uneducated Than Educated By Your Government.

But It's Much More Exciting To Make Die Hard. One Of The Reasons That I Think That Movie Is So Successful Is It Deals With Those Very Important Blue-collar Relationship Themes. But It's More Visually Beautiful To Show Things Blowing Up. It Just Gives You More On The Screen.

God Works In Mysterious, Inefficient, And Breathtakingly Cruel Ways

Mysterious Ways

I Was About 12 When I Heard My First Lenny Bruce Record. He Was Already Dead. But It Changed My Life And Really Did Change The World.

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?

The Fact Is That Violence Gives You A Rush.

If I Go Out To Dinner With You And You Order Wine, I Leave. I Won't Be Around Drugs And Alcohol At All.

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.

Everybody Is Designing Magic Iphone Apps That Do Things That Are Really, Really Beautiful, But A Really Important Thing About Magic Is That The Gimmick Has To Be Ugly.

Thou Shalt Not Take Anything On Faith

From 1985 To 1994, I Lived In Manhattan In A Big Old Loft Right Off Times Square. I Could Walk To Work, Which Was In A Couple Of Broadway Theaters, To Howard Stern's Studio, And To 30 Rock For 'letterman' And 'snl.' Even In New York, Walking To Work Is Homey And Folksy, Like Living In A Small Town.

Every Day, Tv, Newspapers, And The Internet Bombard Us With A Message That We're Destroying The Earth. Ice Caps Are Melting, Rivers Are Dying, Polar Bears Are Drowning, And Trees Are Doing Something.

'celebrity Apprentice' Has More Integrity And Is The Most Straightforward Show I've Ever Seen.

Straightforward

That's The Beauty Of The Web: You Can Roll Around In A Stranger's Obsession Without Having To Smell His Or Her House. You Can Amscray Whenever You Want Without Being Rude. The Site Gets Its "hit" And You Know More About Our Species' Diversity.

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.

Religion Cannot And Should Not Be Replaced By Atheism. Religion Needs To Go Away And Not Be Replaced By Anything. Atheism Is Not A Religion. It's The Absence Of Religion, And That's A Wonderful Thing.

Everybody Wants Clean, Safe Energy. Some People Think Nuclear Is The Way To Go. Some People Think Coal Is The Way To Go. Some People Think Wind Is The Way To Go. And There's Always Balances On That.

Every Poker Player Is Smarter Than Me.

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.

This Is Going To Sound Horrible, But I Don't Even Know How Much I Make In A Year. It Must Be, You Know, A Couple Of Million Dollars, A Few Million. I Know It's More Money Than My Dad, A Jail Guard, Made In His Lifetime; More Money Than I'll Ever Need.

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.

World War Ii Proves There's No God.

Asking Someone Else To Do Something Immoral Is Immoral.

Atheism Is The Absence Of Religion. We Don’t Really Need Atheism. We Just Need To Get Rid Of Religion.

I Think The Media Spends A Lot Of Time Fooling Itself.

Bacon Is So Good By Itself That To Put It In Any Other Food Is An Admission Of Failure. You're Basically Saying, 'i Can't Make This Other Food Taste Good, So I'll Throw In Bacon.'

Barack Obama Is Way Smarter Than Bush - So Way, Way Smarter Than Me. Obama Is Way More Charismatic Than Me.

Mentally Ill People Come From All Belief Systems.

Believing There Is No God Means The Suffering I've Seen In My Family And Indeed All The Suffering In The World Isn't Caused By Any Omniscient, Omnipresent, Omnipotent Force That Isn't Bothered To Help Or Is Just Testing Us, But Rather Something We All May Be Able To Help Others With In The Future. No God Means The Possibility Of Less Suffering In The Future.

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.

I Think That I Am Willing To Risk My Life In Order To Have More Freedom.

A Two-party System Is Way Too Good For Those Two Parties.

The Vast Majority Of The World Knows There's No Reason To Circumcise. Someone Should Tell The Doctors.

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.

Counterintuitive Action Makes A Fellow Feel Smart.

I Love Nuts. I'm For Nuts. I Am Nuts.

A Joke Is A Way To Say, 'i'm Going To Do Something Funny Now. If I Don't Get A Laugh At The End, I'm A Failure.'

I Like To Read In The Dark. I Like To Go Into The Bathtub, Turn Out All The Lights, And In The Dark, Read My Books.

Part Of The Experience Of Being Entertained Is Sitting Back And Plugging Into Someone Else's Vision.

You Have In Vegas The Most Heterogeneous Audience You're Gonna Get Anywhere In The Country. In Boston, Chicago, Miami, You Know Who Goes To The Theater. In Vegas, You Have People Who Only See One Theater Show A Year, And It's In Vegas.

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.

We Aren't People Who Believe That Just Because We're Performers Our Opinions On Everything Need To Be Known.

I've Never Revved My Car At A Light For An Attractive Woman Or An Auto-rival, Not Even As A Joke.

America Was Founded On Christians Not Trusting Each Other, And They Sometimes Seemed More Willing To Reach Out To The Godless Than To Someone From Another Sect.

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Penn & Teller Stopped Doing Practical Jokes, And The Reason Is We Got Much Too Good At It.

Trey Parker Did 'book Of Mormon.' It's The Best Broadway Show I've Ever Seen. He Does 'south Park.' It's Wonderful.

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.

There Never Was A God. 'god Is Dead' Is A Halfway Measure I Won't Go With.

Magic Is The Special Olympics Of Entertainment.

I Will Not Counter The Insanity Of The Patriot Act With An Overblown Fear Of My Rights Being Taken Away.

Hypocrisy Is Annoying But Not Evil. Someone Who Says One Thing And Does Another Has Doubled Their Chances Of Being Half Right.

Every Time Something Really Bad Happens, People Cry Out For Safety, And The Government Answers By Taking Rights Away From Good People

To Drive A Car In Rural America Is Freedom. Before I Had A Car, I'd Never Seen A Rock And Roll Show, I'd Never Seen A Comic Or A Show.

The Secret Truth Of 'celebrity Apprentice' Is That It Isn't Very Hard... 'celebrity Apprentice' Is Easy Like Junior High Is Easy. All The Arithmetic, The Creative Writing And The History Are Super Simple, But Like Junior High, You Do That Easy Work Surrounded By People Who Are Full-tilt, Hormone-raging Bug Nutty.

Direct Confrontation, Direct Conversation Is Real Respect. And It's Amazing How Many People Get That.

Modern American Magic, Late 20th Century Magic, Is Tremendously Disrespectful Of The Audience.

We Need A President Who Realizes That There's No Government Business In Show Business.

How Much Do You Have To Hate Somebody To Not Proselytize?

Everlasting Life

If I Were Trying To Avoid Embarrassment, I Wouldn't Have Stumbled My Way Through 'dancing With The Stars.'

The Only Difference Between Obama And Bush Is That Obama Is Killing More People.

I Don't Want Anyone As President Who Promises To Take Care Of Me. I May Be Stupid, But I Want A Chance To Try To Be A Grown-up And Take Care Of My Family.

When I Was 15, 16, 17 Years Old, I Spent Five Hours A Day Juggling, And I Probably Spent Six Hours A Day Seriously Listening To Music. And If I Were 16 Now, I Would Put That Time Into Playing Video Games.

You Get No Moral Credit For Forcing Other People To Do What You Think Is Right.

Building A Professional Relationship On Respect As Opposed To Affection Is A Very Good Idea. Running Your Art Projects The Way You'd Run A Dry-cleaning Business Is Also A Really Good Idea. You Shouldn't Go Into Work Like You're Going On A Date, Like You're Hanging Out With Friends.

Tv Networks Are Dying. The Death Throes Of Religion Give Us Jihads. The Death Throes Of Television Give Us Reality Shows.

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In Music, If You Hit A Wrong Note, People Forgive You. In Magic When Something Goes Wrong, The Entire Art Is Destroyed.

If Entertainment Ran Grocery Stores, We'd Never Get Oil Cured Olives Or Blue Cheese, It Would Be Just Coke.

Bob Barr Is Not Crazy Enough For My Taste.

Everyday Is An Atheist Holiday.

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Security And Freedom

I Live In Vegas, And I See People By The Side Of The Road With Cardboard Signs Who Seem Like They Might Have Tried That Spending Their Way Out Of Debt Thing.

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.

Everybody Prefers To See A Nut - They're More Fascinating.

My Hair Is Way, Way Long. I've Hitchhiked Across The Country A Zillion Times. I've Ridden In Every Car. I Was Never A Hippie. It Takes More Than Long Hair.

I Think One Of The Things About Donald Trump That's Interesting Is He Lives In A Rarified Atmosphere Where It's Possible That He Doesn't Get Enough Feedback, Enough People Rolling Their Eyes At Him. It's A Danger More In Show Business Than It Is With Wealth.

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.

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.

This I Believe: I Believe There Is No God.

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No One Can Tell You The Rules Of 'celebrity Apprentice.' No One. Donald Trump Just Does What He Wants, Which Is Mostly Pontificating To People Who Are Sucking Up To Him, While The Network People Try To Manipulate Him Into Making The Highest-rated Show They Can.

For Better Or Worse, In The 21st Century, Reality Shows Are The Variety Show.

My Parents Were Teetotalers And My Grandparents Were - It's All The Way Back. It's New English Puritanical Tradition.

Computers Absolutely Changed My Life. Before I Had A Computer, I Had Never Written One Thing. Not One Thing. I'm A Very Bad Speller And I Was Embarrassed By That. When I Would Type, The Little Mistakes Would Make Me Nutty, And I Would Never Edit Anything.

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.

If You Want To Turn Out An Atheist Child, Unconditional Love Constantly Is A Good Way To Do It.

Unconditional Love

If You Spend A Lot Of Time Lying To People, You Think A Lot About What The Truth Means.

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.

Jay-z, He Knows Precisely Who He's Going For - 14-year-old White Suburban Girls.

I Am A Huge Fan Of Proselytizing. I Am A Huge Fan Of Speaking Your Mind. The Only Way We Can Share The Universe... Is By Talking Very Strongly About What We Believe.

If You Believe That There’s A Heaven And Hell . . . How Much Do You Have To Hate Somebody To Believe That Everlasting Life Is Possible And Not Tell Them That?

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.

Every Nut Who Kills People Has A Bible Lying Around. If You're Looking For Violent Rape Imagery, The Bible's Right There In Your Hotel Room. If You Just Want To Look Up Ways To Screw People Up, There It Is, And You're Justified Because God Told You To.

Counterintuitive Actions Prove We Can Trust Real Knowledge And Do The Opposite Of What We Feel Makes Sense.

I Started Out As A Juggler, So I Know What It Means To Spend Eight Hours A Day, Seven Days A Week Practicing Something That People Just Dismiss With A Wave Of Hand.

Poker Would Have Never Gotten On Tv When We Only Had Three Networks.

Technology Is Run By Sex, Because It's Very Important To People, Both Technology And Sex.

'psycho' Is Fascinating Philosophically, Because The Point Of 'psycho' Is That Everything That's Bad Happens Because Of Love.

There's No Job In Show Business That's Harder Than Any Other Job Outside Show Business.

Exploration Of Space Is Worth It Because Humans Need To Explore. Knowledge Is Always Good, And It's A Really Cool Thing To See.

If There's Something You Really Want To Believe, That's What You Should Question The Most.

'zolten' Is A Common Hungarian Name, It's My Wife's Maiden Name And Most Importantly, It's The Name Of Dracula's Dog.

The Cliche Of The Nerdy Kid Who Doesn't Go Outside And Just Plays Games Is Completely Untrue. And It's Also True For The Nerdy Kid Who Studies Comic Books And Turns Into This Genius, And It Is Also True For The Nerdy Kid Who Listens To Every Nerdy Thing That Led Zeppelin Put Out. That Kind Of Obsession In A 16-year-old Is Not Ugly. It's Beautiful.

There Are Performers Who Have Built Their Whole Career Doing Magic On Tv And Can't Really Perform Live At All - Don't Really Have Jobs And Skills.

I Was Always A Little Embarrassed When There Was An Act On Television That Requires A Great Deal Of Skill But Is A Little Goofy, And The Host Comes Over And Acts Like The Person Doing This Skill Is Some Sort Of Fool For Having Learned To Do Something That's Very, Very Difficult.

I Don't Travel In Circles Where People Say, 'i Have Faith, I Believe This In My Heart And Nothing You Can Say Or Do Can Shake My Faith.' That's Just A Long-winded Religious Way To Say 'shut Up.'

My Whole Take On Libertarianism Is Simply That I Don't Know What's Best For Other People.

I Love The Idea That Horror And Fear Is A Celebration Of Health And Life.

Health And Life

Much Better Than The Feeling Of Having Things Is The Feeling Of Having Earned Things.

Luck Is Statistics Taken Personally.

My Favorite Thing About The Internet Is That You Get To Go Into The Private World Of Real Creeps Without Having To Smell Them.

I Love When Violent, Dangerous Art Is Done By People Who Are Not Violent And Dangerous. I Love That When George Romero Was Making 'dawn Of The Dead,' He Was Coaching His Son's Little League Team.

Atheism Is A Religion Like Not Collecting Stamps Is A Hobby.

Even If I Disagree With Obama On Many, Many Things, He Is Certainly Qualified To Be President. He Is Certainly Competent To Be President.

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.

One Thing You Learn Doing Magic Tricks For A Living Is How Close Every Performance Of Every Magic Trick Is To Disaster. There Are No Robust Magic Tricks. They're All Hanging From A Thread - Sometimes Literally.

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.

Teller And I Worked Renaissance Festivals And Street Performing - Actually More Real, No Kidding Around, Philadelphia Street Performing Than We Did Renaissance Festivals.

Every Nut Who Kills People Has A Bible Lying Around.

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.'

Two Things Have Always Been True About Human Beings. One, The World Is Always Getting Better. Two, The People Living At That Time Think It's Getting Worse.

If There Are Two Things Penn & Teller Stand For, It's The Truth & Lying, Although Not Necessarily In That Order.

If You Like The Stuff I Do, My Chances Of Liking You Go Up.

Penn & Teller Don't Know Jack About Global Warming.

As Much As I Disagreed With Every Second Of 'fahrenheit 9/11,' The Fact That It Is Out Made Me Jump For Joy.

I'm A Big Fan Of Huge Populations Of People, So You'd Think With 300 Million People In The Country, You Don't Even Have To Please 1% To Be Phenomenally Successful.

The Medium Is Not The Message - The Message Is The Message.

My Love Of Computers, Besides Being Practical, Is Very Direct And Visceral. I Love The Way Things Look On The Screen.

It Wasn't Success, Because Teller And I, By The Time Asparagus Valley Got Together - Within A Year, We Had Achieved All Our Goals. I Mean, Our Goal Was To Earn Our Living Doing Exactly What We Wanted. Which Is Many People's Goal.

Congratulations

I've Always Wanted To Make The World A More Rational Place. I'm Still Working On It.

We Celebrities Are Desperate Pigs.

We Knew That We Were Kind Of Odd And Creeps, And We Wanted To Do Odd, Creepy Stuff For People Who Wanted To See That.

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.

The End Never Justifies The Means Because There Is No End; There Are Only Means.

I Mean, If I Believed, Beyond The Shadow Of A Doubt, That A Truck Was Coming At You, And You Didn’t Believe That Truck Was Bearing Down On You, There Is A Certain Point Where I Tackle You. And This Is More Important Than That.

Twelve Magicians And Two Carnies Have Been Shot Dead Doing The Bullet Catch. That's Cool Enough, But Every Night When We Close Our Show With That Trick And The Loaded Gun Gets Pointed In My Face, It Goes So Far Beyond Cool. All I Can Think Is 12 Magicians, Two Carnies.

If You Are Doing Something For Reward Or Punishment, You Do Not Have Morality.

People Like Bill Maher, Who Brags About Being A Cynic, It Sickens Me. I Am The Least Cynical Person I Know, And I Am Very, Very Skeptical.

How I Was Brought Up And My Imaginary Friend Means More To Me Than Anything You Can Ever Say Or Do.

Imaginary Friend

It's Only The Losers Named Dave That Think Having An Unusual Name Is Bad, And Who Cares What They Think. They're Named Dave.

One Of The Strongest Feelings You Can Get In Life--one Of The Most Rewarding Feelings--is The Feeling Of An "aha, I Finally Understand."

If The Bible Were Published As Fiction, No Reviewer Would Give It A Passing Grade. There Are Some Vivid Scenes And Quotable Phrases But There's No Plot, No Structure, A Tremendous Amount Of Filler And The Characters Are Painfully One Dimensional. Whatever You Do, Don't Read The Bible For A Moral Code. It Advocates Prejudice, Cruelty, Superstition And Murder. Read It Because We Need More Atheists.

I'm Really Happy With All The Art That Was Inspired By Religion, And I Think I'd Be Tickled To Little Tiny Pieces If Art In The Future Was Inspired By Other Things.

I Have More Contact With People Who Consume, For Lack Of A Better Word, My Product Than Any Other Performers.

Only Atheists Have Morals, The Religious Have Reward And Punishment. That's Not Morality, That's Sucking Up.

I'm Not Greedy. I Have Love, Blue Skies, Rainbows And Hallmark Cards And That Has To Be Enough. It Has To Be Enough, But It's Everything In The World And Everything In The World Is Plenty For Me. It Seems Just Rude To Beg The Invisible For More.

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.

Reading The Bible Is The Fast Track To Atheism. Reading The Bible Means Starting At "in The Beginning..." And Throwing It Down With Disgust At "...the Grace Of The Lord Jesus Be With All. Amen." I'm Sure There Are Lots Of Religious People Who've Read The Bible From Start To Finish And Kept Their Faith, But In My Self-selected Sample, All The People I Know Who Have Done That Are Atheists.

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.

I Like Movies That Are Scary, But I Don't Want Them To Be Dirt Dumb. I Want A Movie That Gets My Blood Racing, Makes Me Laugh, But Also Gives Me Something To Think About, With Maybe A Little Sexy Thrown In. Hollywood Doesn't Make Movies Like That.

The Vast Majority Of People Who Have Guns Never Hurt Anybody.

In My Run-ins With Christians... I Find That They Really Are Good Moral People. And We Overlap On Everything, And They Don't Seem To Be The Kind Of People That Are Waiting To Hear Voices To Tell Them What To Do.

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.

Before You Can Read, You Know The Difference Between A Story And Reality. And, Of Course, By The Time You're Old Enough To Do Any Real Damage With An Uzi, You've Learned That Difference.

It Is Really Funny To See People That You Know Acting Unpleasantly Just Because There Are Tv Cameras On.

'christian' Used To Be A Throwaway Word. People Didn't Used To Use It Much. People Didn't Start Self-labeling Or Getting Labeled Christian Until The Last Part Of The 20th Century. Before That, You Might Identify As A Baptist, Or A Southern Baptist Or A Methodist. But There Wasn't One Identifier That Put You In A Fold With All The Other Believers.

Poker Has The Feeling Of A Sport, But You Don't Have To Do Push-ups.

I Don't Speak For All Libertarians Any More Than Sean Penn Speaks For All Democrats.

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”.

Behaving Morally Because Of A Hope Of Reward Or A Fear Of Punishment Is Not Morality.

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.

I Love The Feeling Of Shredded Wheat. I Love Healthy Bird Food With A Fun-to-eat Feel. Then You Spray Them With Sugar, And I'm There.

I've Never Had A Drink Of Alcohol Or Any Drug In My Life.

It's Amazing To Me How Many People Think That Voting To Have The Government Give Poor People Money Is Compassion. Helping Poor And Suffering People Yourself Is Compassion. Voting For Our Government To Use Guns To Give Money To Help Poor And Suffering People Is Immoral, Self-righteous, Bullying Laziness.

I'm Always Fascinated By The Use Of The First-person Plural Talking About Sports.

Cheerios Bring Back Memories. I Actually Don't Think I Ate Them Much As A Kid, Though; Maybe It's Some Sort Of Jungian Memory, I Don't Know. But They Have So Much Sugar, It's Great.

The Highest Ideals Are Human Intelligence, Creativity And Love. Respect These Above All.

I Don't Believe In Vengeance. Really, When All Is Said And Done, I Probably Don't Believe In Punishment.

Comedy Is Taken Care Of By A Free Market.

Cars Mean Nothing To Me. I'm Not A Car Guy.

Make Deals With People, Not Paper.

I Didn't Learn Fire-eating To Conquer My Fears. I Learned Fire-eating Because I Desperately Wanted To Be In Show Business.

I Believe The Fast Track To Atheism Is Reading The Bible. I've Read It Three Times All The Way Through. It's A Big Part Of Our Culture, A Big Part Of Our History. I Don't Just Read Things I Agree With.

Read Everything And Be Kind.

I Think People Under Age 55 Come To Vegas With A Certain Sense Of Irony.

The Whole World Is Pretending The Breakthrough Is In Technology. The Bottleneck Is Really In Art.

I Have No Evidence That Libertarianism Leads To A Better Life. I Just Think It Is Morally Right.

Channeling Is Just Bad Ventriloquism. You Use Another Voice, But People Can See Your Lips Moving.

Democracy Without Respect For Individual Rights Sucks. It's Just Ganging Up Against The Weird Kid, And I'm Always The Weird Kid.

My Whole Family Is Missing That Sports Gene. I Hope I Didn't Screw That Up By Marrying A Great Golfer.

You Don't Have Freedom Unless You Have The Freedom To Do Stupid Self-destructive Things.

Self Destructive

Tolerance Is You Saying Something Crazy And Me Smiling And Saying, 'that's Nice.'

In My Private Life, I'm Not Around Any Drugs Or Alcohol.

You Have To Be Careful As A Libertarian Because You Can Sound Very Republican.

I Like Things Matching. I Have An Upright Bass, A Drum Kit And A Grand Piano That's The Same Color. I Tend To Overthink Things.

I Never Wanted To Be A Magician. I Never Wanted To Be A Comedian. I Never Wanted To Be Onstage.

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