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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.

-Penn Jillette

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There Are Two Things

Penn Jillette

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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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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.

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

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

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Magic Is The Special Olympics Of Entertainment.

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Every Nut Who Kills People Has A Bible Lying Around.

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We Have To Fight For The Freedom To Be Stupid, And Smoking Is One Of The Best Ways To Fight For Your Freedom, To Be Just As Stupid As You Can Be.

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A Famous Monk Once Said, I Don't Always Know What The Right Thing To Do Is, My Lord, But I Think The Fact That I Want To Please You Pleases You.

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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.

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

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Everlasting Life

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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.

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Buying Something

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

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

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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.

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

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

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I Believe That The Best Way To Become An Atheist Is To Read The Bible

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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.

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

This I Believe: I Believe There Is No God.

There Is No God

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

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

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

Read Everything And Be Kind.

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

All David Blaine Is Is A Good-looking Magician.

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.

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

Health And Life

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

The Tea Party Claims To Want Small Government.

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.

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

I'm Always Surprised When The Corporate World Does Stupid Things, Because They're Often Not Very Stupid In Hindsight.

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

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.

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

Comedy Is Taken Care Of By A Free Market.

World War Ii Proves There's No God.

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.

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.

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.'

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.

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

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.

Once You Have Somebody That Is Telling You, 'we Are Interpreting God For You,' It Seems Like You Either Agree Or You Don't. You Either Say, Like Martin Luther, 'i'm Going To Have A Direct Relationship With The Word Of God,' Or I''m Going To Go Through A Conduit Of God On Earth,' Which Would Be The Pope.

We Are Only Here For A Little While, And Our Bodies Belong To Ourselves And No One Else.

Better To Be Uneducated Than Educated By Your Government.

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

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

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

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It Seems Just Rude To Beg The Invisible For More.

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.

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

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Imaginary Friend

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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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Thou Shalt Not Take Anything On Faith

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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.

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

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

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