Top 100 Ben Stein Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.”

— Ben Stein

Featured in: Faith Quotes, Quotes About Believing

2. “The human spirit needs to accomplish, to achieve, to triumph to be happy.”

— Ben Stein

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

— Ben Stein

4. “No one will do it for you.”

— Ben Stein

5. “It’s amazing what ordinary people can do if they set out without preconceived notions.”

— Ben Stein

Featured in: Determination Quotes

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

— Ben Stein

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

— Ben Stein

8. “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.”

— Ben Stein

9. “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.”

— Ben Stein

10. “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.”

— Ben Stein

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

— Ben Stein

12. “Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place- science leads you to killing people.”

— Ben Stein

13. “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.”

— Ben Stein

14. “The successful people of this world take life as it comes. They just go out and deal with the world as it is.”

— Ben Stein

15. “I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don’t feel threatened. I don’t feel discriminated against.”

— Ben Stein

16. “Academic freedom is being lost by a great many people who dare to challenge Darwinism. That’s a terrifying situation. That’s contrary to the principles of science.”

— Ben Stein

17. “I don’t believe the most successful people are the ones who got the best grades, got into the best schools, or made the most money.”

— Ben Stein

18. “When I seemed to be irritable or sad, my father would quote the learned Dr. Knight, and then say, ‘Just go to sleep.’ Like all smart aleck kids, I thought the advice was silly. But as I’ve grown older, I’ve realized just how smart Knight was.”

— Ben Stein

19. “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.”

— Ben Stein

20. “Science leads you to killing people.”

— Ben Stein

21. “I am scared of running out of money.”

— Ben Stein

22. “The education system should teach us about money; it’s an incredibly big subject. I run into people all the time that don’t have the first clue of what they should do about money.”

— Ben Stein

23. “I’m not a Mensa member. I have no idea where that rumor came from. I never have been, and I doubt if I ever will be.”

— Ben Stein

24. “Being a Daddy is priority number one. When you are old and facing oblivion in a nursing home or a hospital or on a golf course in winter, you are not going to wish you had spent more time at the office or making a sales call or watching a show. You will wish you had spent more time with your family.”

— Ben Stein

25. “It doesn’t bother me a bit when people say, ‘Merry Christmas’ to me. I don’t think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it.”

— Ben Stein

26. “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.”

— Ben Stein

27. “Life lived to help others is the only life that matters.”

— Ben Stein

28. “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?”

— Ben Stein

29. “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.”

— Ben Stein

30. “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.”

— Ben Stein

31. “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.”

— Ben Stein

32. “You can do what you think you can do and you cannot do what you think you cannot.”

— Ben Stein

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

— Ben Stein

34. “And now, any of those who refuse, or are unable, to prove they are citizens will receive free insurance paid for by those who are forced to buy insurance because they are citizens.”

— Ben Stein

35. “We are not supposed to be all equal. Let’s just forget that. We are supposed to have equal rights under law. If we do that, we have done enough.”

— Ben Stein

36. “I am scared of getting old. I am scared of being ill.”

— Ben Stein

37. “If there is no God, then man sometimes thinks he is god, and sometimes tries to live like a god.”

— Ben Stein

38. “My parents, products of the Great Depression, were successful people, but lived in a state of constant fear that my sister and I, and they, would sink into the kind of economic insecurity that their generation knew so well.”

— Ben Stein

39. “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.”

— Ben Stein

40. “Darwinism doesn’t explain where gravity comes from. It doesn’t explain where thermodynamics comes from. It doesn’t explain where the laws of physics come from. It doesn’t explain where matter comes from.”

— Ben Stein

41. “I don’t think Wall Street people in general are smart. I think that’s one of the biggest myths in American lore. They’re tough, aggressive, greedy, quick thinking but I don’t think they’re particularly smart at all.”

— Ben Stein

42. “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.”

— Ben Stein

43. “If you can’t stand the heat, don’t go to Cancun in the summer.”

— Ben Stein

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

— Ben Stein

45. “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.”

— Ben Stein

46. “Israel is our strongest, most reliable ally in the Middle East. Of course, we’re their most reliable ally, too.”

— Ben Stein

47. “Science should always be in the business of attempting to disprove itself.”

— Ben Stein

48. “It is so great to sleep in safe, glorious, beautiful America. I just cannot get over it.”

— Ben Stein

49. “The America that we knew as the smartest place on the planet is gone with the wind.”

— Ben Stein

50. “I’m out and about meeting people all day long. And I’m very friendly; I talk to just about everybody I meet.”

— Ben Stein