Ben Stein Quotes

It means zero to be against greed.

What's a good investment? Go home from work early and spend the afternoon throwing a ball around with your son.

I agree that there are some bad apples on Wall Street. I spent about ten years exposing corporate and financial fraud for 'Barron's' magazine and I found a lot to write about.

I have always been very concerned that Darwinism gave the basic okay to terrible racism and to the idea of murder based upon race.

I've never liked the idea of just having an office in a college somewhere and teaching classes and going to the library and doing research all day. I've never wanted that. The glamorous life is the life that appeals to me.

I think it's criminal how little people in the military are paid. These are people out risking their lives, taken away from their families for long periods of time. I think they should be paid dramatically more than they're paid.

Greed is a basic part of animal nature. Being against it is like being against breathing or eating. It means nothing.

I think a snob would be a person who thinks he is entitled; he has good things in his life and is entitled to them.

I love sleeping in a moving car more than sleeping in bed.

Israel is our strongest, most reliable ally in the Middle East. Of course, we're their most reliable ally, too.

If we are just specks of dust hit by lightning, if we have no spark of God in us, why not just take whatever we can and devil take the hindmost? I mean, we are fools not to do that if there is no right or wrong.

Hollywood is largely about scammers and con men. It was my main livelihood for about 25 years, and the scams were beautiful and ugly, cheap and expensive, but, wow, were there a lot of scammers.

Jump into the middle of things, get your hands dirty, fall flat on your face, and then reach for the stars.

I tell you why I don't think I will ever vote for a Democrat, if I may say so. Because for me, the number one issue is right to life, and I don't think the Democrats are very good on the right-to-life issue.

The banks are not lending, at least from what I see. They were so wild and reckless back in the good times that they got burned terribly.

I think Darwinism as a theory explaining evolution within species is incredibly brilliant - just unbelievably, incredibly brilliant.

Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... But not everyone must prove they are a citizen.

My pals, such as they are, in Hollywood, ask me why I love to travel to D.C. so much, why it's a vacation destination for me. I say, 'Because I sometimes have perfect days there.'

If we try to engineer outcomes, if we overturn tradition to make everyone the same, we ruin society. If we upset tradition to allow for an equal shot at the starting gate, everyone wins, except for the charlatans and would be dictators.

If you want to fight the evil you see in finance and industry, get to work reading the corporate filings, see if there has been fraud, and where you find it, report it to the SEC or write about it or blog about it.

Somewhere there is a map of how it can be done.

Could Congress really do its work if it held its sessions by teleconferencing? Could the Supreme Court? Nothing can replace the spark of intelligence that travels from person to person at meetings.

If there are finer beings than German short hairs, I don't know what they are. In their eyes is peace.

I have talent at playing myself. I don't have a very broad range, but at playing myself I am a wizard. It's more than fun; it's the best job on Earth.

We are mortgaging ourselves to foreigners on a scale that would make George Washington cry. Every day - every single day - we borrow a billion dollars from foreigners to buy petroleum from abroad, often from countries that hate us. We are the beggars of the world, financing our lavish lifestyle by selling our family heirlooms and by enslaving our progeny with the need to service the debt.

When Hollywood sees a good story about a man who sells confidence, they see themselves and they like it.

The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: decide what you want.

I have to tell you I never in my life anticipated getting this old, this fast. It seems as if I were 25 just a few days ago.

It's really amazing that in the age of unbelief, as a smart man called it, there isn't even more fraud. After all, with no God, there's no one to ever call you to account, and no accounting at all if you can get away with it.

Trying to pick individual stocks is a trap. I can't do it. Warren Buffett can, but hardly anyone else can beat the indexes over a long period of time.

Screaming at children over their grades, especially to the point of the child's tears, is child abuse, pure and simple. It's not funny and it's not good parenting. It is a crushing, scarring, disastrous experience for the child. It isn't the least bit funny.

You must take the first step. The first steps will take some effort, maybe pain. But after that, everything that has to be done is real-life movement.

It isn't the rich people's fault that poor people are poor. Poor people who get an education and work hard in this country will stop being poor. That should be the goal for all poor people everywhere.

I am so used to having a comfortable life. What will it be like when I am no longer able to just buy anything I want?

I don't like the sound of all the lists he's making.

Americans are terrified because so many of them have been laid off in recent years and months and they fear that they may be next. Even if they have not been laid off or have not known anyone laid off, they definitely know someone who has lost his home.

I think, there are many people who are much smarter than I am, and many, many, many who are much harder-working than I am, but in terms of the range of my activities, they're unique.

I spend so much time in fear of going broke, and I never have been even remotely close to going broke.

If there's a recession, I'd buy stocks. That's when you make money: when markets are spooked.

Prime-time network television has become an island without religion in an ever-more-religious America.

Humans are alive, therefore life must be complex.

Keep on beginning and failing. Each time you fail, start all over gain, and you will grow stronger until have accomplished a purpose - not the one you began with perhaps, but one you'll be glad to remember.

You can do what you think you can do and you cannot do what you think you cannot

But when I talk to people who are Darwinists or evolutionists and say, 'Well, how did life begin' - they're... they don't have an answer. I mean, they have an answer, but it's a BS answer. It's an answer that wouldn't make sense to a small child.

If Iran and North Korea, by some horrible, devilish, nightmarish scenario, got together and went to war at the same time, one against Saudi Arabia and one against South Korea, I don't know what we would do about that. I don't know that we could stop them short of using nuclear weapons.

Personal relationships are the fertile soil from which all advancement, all success, all achievement in real life grows.

It's a lot better to hope than not to.

I'm an economist by training. I don't really work as an economist. I only worked briefly as an economist.