A guy called up, and in his lead, he said, "Weve talked before. I used — Penn Jillette

"My friend Richard Feynman said, "I dont know." I heard him say it several times. He said it just like Harold, the mentally handicapped dishwasher I worked with when I was a young man making minimum wage at Famous Bills Restaurant in Greenfield, Massachusetts. "I dont know" is not an apology. Theres no shame. Its a simple statement of fact. When Richard Feynman didnt know, he often worked harder than anyone else to find out, but while he didnt know, he said, "I dont know." I like to think I fit in somewhere between my friends Harold and Richard. I dont know. I try to remember to say "I dont know" just the way they both did, as a simple statement of fact. It doesnt always work, but I try."

"The question I get asked by religious people all the time is, without God, what’s to stop me from raping all I want? And my answer is: I do rape all I want. And the amount I want is zero. And I do murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero. The fact that these people think that if they didn’t have this person watching over them that they would go on killing, raping rampages is the most self-damning thing I can imagine. I dont want to do that. Right now, without any god, I dont want to jump across this table and strangle you. I have no desire to strangle you. I have no desire to flip you over and rape you."

"And Ive always said, you know, that I dont respect people that dont proselytize. I dont respect that at all. If you believe that theres a heaven and hell, and people could be going to hell — or not getting eternal life, or whatever — and you think that, "Well, its not really worth tellin em this, because it would make it socially awkward", and atheists who think that people shouldnt proselytize, "Just leave me alone. Keep your religion to yourself"... How much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize? How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that? I mean, if I believe, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that a truck was coming at you and you didnt believe it —that truck was bearing down on you — theres a certain point where I tackle you, and this is more important than that."

"Rabbi Daniel Lapin: Heres a really blunt question: would the world be a better or a worse place if a billion Muslims became evangelical Christians tomorrow? Penn: [long pause] Everything else being equal, I think "yes". Rabbi Daniel Lapin: Then we agree. Penn: The argument is made by me that the celebration of faith, the glorification of faith, and faith being defined as The Bible kind of does as belief without proof, is not something that I feel is good to celebrate. To answer the question about evil, I always find that evil takes responsibility away. I want to have—whether it’s me or whether its a criminal—I want to have full responsibility of my mistakes. And I think when you have this image, whether its the Disney image of devil Pluto and angel Pluto on your shoulders, pulling you one direction or another, I think that idea of evil is an idea that is anti-responsibility."

"Believing theres no God means I cant really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. Thats good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around."

"Im saying, "This I believe: I believe there is no God." Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life. Im not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be enough, but its everything in the world and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. Just the love of my family that raised me and the family Im raising now is enough that I dont need heaven. I won the huge genetic lottery and I get joy every day."

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that theres free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate."

"With much care and skill power has been broken into fragments in the American township, so that the maximum possible number of people have some concern with public affairs."

"The people reign over the American political world as God rules over the universe. It is the cause and the end of all things; everything rises out of it and is absorbed back into it."

"I should say that when people talk about capitalism its a bit of a joke. Theres no such thing. No country, no business class, has ever been willing to subject itself to the free market, free market discipline. Free markets are for others. Like, the Third World is the Third World because they had free markets rammed down their throat. Meanwhile, the enlightened states, England, the United States, others, resorted to massive state intervention to protect private power, and still do. Thats right up to the present. I mean, the Reagan administration for example was the most protectionist in post-war American history. Virtually the entire dynamic economy in the United States is based crucially on state initiative and intervention: computers, the internet, telecommunication, automation, pharmaceutical, you just name it. Run through it, and you find massive ripoffs of the public, meaning, a system in which under one guise or another the public pays the costs and takes the risks, and profit is privatized. Thats very remote from a free market. Free market is like what India had to suffer for a couple hundred years, and most of the rest of the Third World."

"I appeal to all pupils, students and young people, asking you to focus on the horizons that are opening up for you, and which you could only dream of a year ago. Our future will depend on your desire for education and moral values as well as on your entrepreneurial spirit."

"We have created a wealthy society with tens of millions of talented, resourceful individuals who play virtually no role whatsoever as citizens. Bringing these people in — with their networks of influence, their knowledge, and their resources — is the key to creating the capacity for shared intelligence that we need to solve our problems."