Penn Jillette Quotes

I would have never signed the Patriot Act. I would have never signed the National Defense Authorization Act allowing for arrests and detainment of you and me as U.S. citizens without being charged.

I will not counter the insanity of the PATRIOT Act with an overblown fear of my rights being taken away.

Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged against provisions against danger, real or pretended from abroad.

The most terrifying possibility since 9/11 has not been terrorism — as frightening as that is — but the prospect that Americans will give up their rights in pursuing the chimera of security.

Americans need to understand the significance of having their civil liberties dismantled. It doesn't just affect terrorists and foreigners, it affects us all.

We are expected to believe that anyone who objects to the Department of Homeland Security or the USA Patriot Act is a terrorist, and that the only way to preserve our freedom is to hand it over to the government for safekeeping.

Do we fear terrorism so much that we throw out our Constitution, and are we unwilling and afraid to debate our Constitution?

I will not let the patriot act, the most un-patriotic of acts, go unchallenged.

I suppose the Green Party doesn't care for the anti-civil libertarian provisions of the notoriously named Patriot Act, invading privacy, and being able to search your home, and not tell you for 72 hours.

My parents were very protective of me and my brother, so they never talked to us about the situation in our country.

For any American who is worried about this country, who feels our core values slipping away, who believes something has to be done to change the direction of our nation before all is lost - the NRA is your refuge. It is your place to stand and fight with Americans just like you, for all that is good and right.

You cannot prevent me from talking. I am exercising my right to free speech.

I know that we will be judged in history by not only how we disrupt terrorism but how we protect the civil liberties and constitutional rights of all Americans, even Americans who don't wish us well. We must do all these things exceptionally well.

As a U.S. citizen, I cherish the First Amendment.

I'm okay with anybody expressing their rights.

I am ready to debate how we fight terrorism without giving up our liberty.

The first thing in my oath is to uphold and protect the U.S. Constitution.

We have the freedom of speech. We are able to hold hands in protest and stand up for what we believe in and have people hear what you have to say.

Our privacy, our rights as citizens - these are ideals that we Americans hold very dear.

I think that freedom of speech is just that, and groups have the right to support or oppose issues that are going to affect them as well as individuals do.

Any government that likes to call themselves democratic should welcome Snowden and allow him to live in their country.

America is way too quick to trade freedom for the illusion of security. Whether it's allowing the NSA to go way too far in what it intercepts of our personal data, to our government monitoring of everything domestically and spending way more than we should.

If we are going to remake society in the image of the fight against terrorism and put that secret fight at the heart of our democratic order - which is the way we're heading - we need to discuss it, and in public.

I'm never going to beg for pardon for exercising fundamental rights.

When 9/11 happened, it changed things overnight, giving the biggest shock treatment to individual agency. People in the U.S., the absolute stronghold of individualism and libertarianism, had to give up many cherished freedoms and privacies in exchange for the promise of public safety.