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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

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The Only Difference Between

Penn Jillette

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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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

For The Most Part, Any Serious Magic Show Is Not Using Very Much Technology Newer Than Theatrical Lights.

Mentally Ill People Come From All Belief Systems.

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

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

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Everyone's Goals Are The Same With Very Small Differences. I Mean, The Goal Of A Socialist And The Goal Of A Libertarian Are Exactly The Same. The Goals Are Happiness And Security And Freedom, And You Balance Those.

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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.

If You Can Just Convince The Dope People That The Gun People Are Right And The Gun People That The Dope People Are Right, We Could Actually Live In A Lot More Freedom.

That Whole 99% Thing, They Are All In The 1% Of The World. Every One Of Them Pays A Cellphone Bill That Is The Yearly Income For A Family In Much Of The Rest Of The World.

I Will Forever Stick Up For Catholics And Christians In General. With A Small Number Of Very Horrible Exceptions, They Do Play By The Rules.

Believing There's No God Stops Me From Being Solipsistic. I Can Read Ideas From All Different People From All Different Cultures. Without God, We Can Agree On Reality, And I Can Keep Learning Where I'm Wrong. We Can All Keep Adjusting, So We Can Really Communicate.

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

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

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.

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.

In Reality, Many People Let Go Of Religion Later In Life.

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.

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.

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World War Ii Proves There's No God.

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Counterintuitive Action Makes A Fellow Feel Smart.

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Bob Barr Is Not Crazy Enough For My Taste.

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Make Deals With People, Not Paper.

I Intend To Do The Penn & Teller Show Until They Pry My Cheesy Magic Wand From My Cold Dead Fingers.

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

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Fear Is The Politicians Dance Partner.

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

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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.

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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.

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

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

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I Came To Magic Absolutely Hating Magic On A Very, Very Deep Level.

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

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.'

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

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All David Blaine Is Is A Good-looking Magician.

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

Luck Is Statistics Taken Personally.

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

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.

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.

Every Poker Player Is Smarter Than Me.

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

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

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The Tea Party Claims To Want Small Government.

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.

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.

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