The most frequent question we get asked about this show is, why would assholes like Brian Brown and Michael Medved come on a show called Bullshit! to get called "assholes"? We do not lie to them; we make sure they know all about the show. We give them copies of past shows, and it's always pretty clear which side of the issue we're gonna be on. The long answer is that people who come on this show generally consider themselves to be bulletproof. Most have never talked to anyone with a dissenting view, and certainly no one with a real research team, like ours. If you say something on our show, we check it. If you lie or make something up, we know. But we're fair—we never take people out of context. We're biased as all fuck, but we try to be honest. Now, that's the long answer. The short answer? [Penn and Teller shrug.]
S3 E2Family Values
S3 E3Conspiracy Theories
[Penn speaks of the deaths during the September 11, 2001 attacks.]
And that's something we should never forget. But to conspiracy nuts, death and suffering… are just heart-pounding entertainment. They whack to tragedy!
My first reaction to Flight 93, was that the Military, after the towers had been hit, said "Uh-oh... wait a minute. That's not part of the plan! What is that plane gonna do? Shoot it!"
I firmly believe that most of the alleged passengers on the alleged hijacked planes are still alive and quite frankly, I think they were all probably working for the government.
Fuck you! We really hope this fuck-up runs into a family member of someone who's died. They may not take kindly to the idea that Daddy's faking his death somewhere.
[Penn & Teller are mocking the Moon Landing Hoax Conspiracy on a stage set w/ Penn as director]
CUT! Jesus fucking Christ, Neil! How many times do we have to try this? "One small step for A man", not man. A man! And that's YOU! Everybody take five. Neil, practice your fucking lines! Ooh yeah, let's use real pilots. I wanna use real pilots! [to the camera] Faking the Moon Landing is easy. You need dirt, wardrobe, a sound stage, a lot of black paints, and some stupid suits. The hard part is shutting people up. It's been 36 years! You'd think the technicians, and prop people, camera people, directors, everyone who works at NASA, and the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, and all the nice folks at Cape Carnaval in Florida, plus members of the US Congress and the White House all shut up about this amazing cover-up for all that time? The Government couldn't even fucking cover up a break-in to a psychiatrist's office in a fucking cheesy hotel! Watergate is the answer to all this shit. If they couldn't cover that up, they fucking can't do anything.
Do you really think that one morning in November 1963, Lee Oswald just got up and said "I'm gonna shoot the President today"?
Yes, but that's not a very sexy answer!
If the conspiracy [to kill President Kennedy] is so big and evil, why hasn't it killed Jim [Marrs]? And how did crazy Oliver Stone's movie [JFK (1991)] ever come out?
Instinctively, people find it incongruous that this could all happen as the result of the coincidental meeting of the President and a lone nut. They feel that a greater conspiracy has to be involved.
Second gunman my aching ass!
S3 E4Life Coaching
We don't know what the "center of our being" really is, but we hope it's chocolate cream!
S3 E5Holier than Thou
I sure hope Hell is bullshit, too, 'cause if not, we are going there for this one.
[Penn compares Tibet under Chinese rule vs. the Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama's rule.]
"Since Mr. Lama has been run out of Tibet, the Chinese have introduced secular education, running water and electricity so maybe life is a bit better on the ground there. Of course, the Chinese have also thrown thousands in labor camps and prisons, stomped out as much free speech as possible, and there's that whole fucked up Communism bullshit. But if you ask Tenzin Gyatso, dba Lama—what is it with these holy people and their aliases? His Holiness will tell you that he must return to power "for the good of his people." In this case, "good" may translate into his people living in squalor and his government condoning slavery. Remember, the lesser of two evils… is still evil. And the enemy of my enemy... is not my friend."
S3 E6College
We're all offended, all the time, and we don't have a fucking right not to be offended! A free country is a marketplace of ideas, and college should be more free, not less.
Americans believe everybody deserves freedom to move up in the world. That's a great thing. But if moving up means spending four years in a beer commercial run by politeness police, maybe you should think twice.
What universities are saying by these codes, special protections and double standards to women, to blacks, to Hispanics, to gay and lesbian students, is: "You are too weak to live with freedom. You are too weak to live with the First Amendment." If someone tells you are too weak to live with freedom, they have turned you into a child.
These quotes come from Wikiquote's Penn & Teller: Bullshit! pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.