Penn Jillette

Democracy without respect for individual rights sucks. It's just ganging up against the weird kid, and I'm always the weird kid.

Nobody that has seen a baby born can believe in god for a second. When you see your child born, and the panic, and the amount of technology that is saving the life of the two people you love most in the world, when you see how much stainless steel and money it takes to fight off the fact that god wants both those people dead, no one, no one can look into the eyes of a newborn baby and say there's a god, because I'll tell ya, if we were squatting in the woods, the two people I love most would be dead. There's just no way around that. If I were in charge, no way. We need technology to fight against nature; nature so wants us dead. Nature is trying to kill us.

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.

As I__ fond of saying, if you want to find utopia, take a sharp right on money and a sharp left on sex and it__ straight ahead.

The only difference between Obama and Bush is that Obama is killing more people. He__ 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__ be riots in the streets about the people we__e killing. And yet because it__ Obama, and he__ better looking and better at reading the teleprompter, we let him get away with it.

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.

I'm a hardcore libertarian - I want everything legal - but I also believe that you have the right to free association.

Cars mean nothing to me. I'm not a car guy.

I've never revved my car at a light for an attractive woman or an auto-rival, not even as a joke.

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.

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.

We need a president who realizes that there's no government business in show business.

My mom, if you asked her if she was interested in whether or not people gambled, would say no.

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.

Technology adds nothing to art.

My body really, really wanted to reproduce when I was 15. It took a lot of civilization, socialization, willpower and some emulsion polymerization technology for me not to reproduce at 15.

For the most part, any serious magic show is not using very much technology newer than theatrical lights.

I'm totally against straight marriage - even though I'm married. I don't think heterosexual marriage is any of the government's business.