Top 100 Ben Stein Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Prime-time network television has become an island without religion in an ever-more-religious America.”

— Ben Stein

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

— Ben Stein

53. “Now we’re asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don’t know right from wrong, and why it doesn’t bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.”

— Ben Stein

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

— Ben Stein

55. “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.”

— Ben Stein

56. “Every soul deserves a shot at a Cadillac, but not everyone should be guaranteed a Cadillac.”

— Ben Stein

57. “The sad fact is that spending rises every year, no matter what people want or say they want.”

— Ben Stein

58. “I am about to vote. I am about to do something that human beings are rarely allowed to do. I am doing something that did not exist until America.”

— Ben Stein

59. “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.”

— Ben Stein

60. “Humans are alive, therefore life must be complex.”

— Ben Stein

61. “We in the media are just people with all of people’s faults.”

— Ben Stein

62. “The people who did the collateralized mortgage obligations, sold them to pension funds, then sold them short, then bought credit default swap insurance on them, are just amazing. They are a law unto themselves.”

— Ben Stein

63. “I thought that all of the sacrifices and blessings of the whole history of mankind have devolved upon me. Thank you, God.”

— Ben Stein

64. “I don’t like the sound of all the lists he’s making.”

— Ben Stein

65. “For me, I’ve always believed that there was a God. I’ve always believed that God created the heavens and earth – so, for me it’s not a huge leap from there to intelligent design.”

— Ben Stein

66. “It means zero to be against greed.”

— Ben Stein

67. “If there is no God, why bother to tell the truth? Why not steal?”

— Ben Stein

68. “When are American Jews going to realize that the Republican Party is far better for Israel than the Democrats?”

— Ben Stein

69. “Darwinism is still very much alive, utterly dominating biology. Despite the fact that no one has ever been able to prove the creation of a single distinct species by Darwinist means, Darwinism dominates the academy and the media.”

— Ben Stein

70. “I love sleeping in a moving car more than sleeping in bed.”

— Ben Stein

71. “The poor black people in it make the black people in Gone With the Wind look like Malcolm X.”

— Ben Stein

72. “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.”

— Ben Stein

73. “There’s no evidence whatsoever that Darwin had anything useful to say or anything to say period about how life began or how the universe began or how gravity began or how physics began or fluid motion or how thermodynamics began. He had nothing to say about that whatsoever.”

— Ben Stein

74. “Sleep makes people calmer, more alert, less fearful – just plain happier, or so I see around me and in me. I am sure that if this great nation were to concentrate on getting more sleep, we would be a happier, more confident people, and that by itself would be a major achievement.”

— Ben Stein

75. “You cannot win if you’re not at the table. You have to be where the action is.”

— Ben Stein

76. “Politics is a thankless occupation; I have no interest in it at all.”

— Ben Stein

77. “Running a real business is exacting, daunting, repetitive work. Even in Silicon Valley.”

— Ben Stein

78. “The scientific community says that if you even mention God as causes of anything scientific, you’re gone.”

— Ben Stein

79. “As Beverly Hills becomes more Iranian-Jewish, it is becoming politically conservative.”

— Ben Stein

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

— Ben Stein

81. “I feel as if I’m in on a pass and am damn lucky to have whatever I have. It could all be taken away in a second.”

— Ben Stein

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

— Ben Stein

83. “Usually I am not a conspiracy theorist. I don’t believe in the Bilderbergers as a conspiracy or the Trilateralists. But I am certain that the Communists killed JFK. There is a super great book called ‘Legend’ by Edward Jay Epstein that makes it all perfectly clear.”

— Ben Stein

84. “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.”

— Ben Stein

85. “Sleep more at night. If it’s allowed at work or home, take a nap in the afternoon. You’ll be amazed at how much better you’ll feel.”

— Ben Stein

86. “I think Darwinism as a theory explaining evolution within species is incredibly brilliant – just unbelievably, incredibly brilliant.”

— Ben Stein

87. “So, who in the media is without sin among us? I am in the media and I am a major league sinner. I don’t know anyone except my wife who isn’t a big time sinner.”

— Ben Stein

88. “I don’t really consider myself to be a personal finance expert compared with some others. There are quite a few that know a lot more than I do.”

— Ben Stein

89. “People ask how I can be a conservative and still want higher taxes. It makes my head spin, and I guess it shows how old I am. But I thought that conservatives were supposed to like balanced budgets. I thought it was the conservative position to not leave heavy indebtedness to our grandchildren.”

— Ben Stein

90. “It’s a lot better to hope than not to.”

— Ben Stein

91. “I always assumed scientists were free to ask any question, pursue any line of inquiry without fear or reprisal.”

— Ben Stein

92. “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.”

— Ben Stein

93. “People getting rich in a free society in general – with some scammy exceptions, which are rare – makes everyone else richer, too.”

— Ben Stein

94. “Men and women succeed because they find a field of endeavor that matches their interests and abilities.”

— Ben Stein

95. “I have always been very diversified, so I have never suffered a catastrophic loss. I spread my money around the way a large institutional investor does. I use different brokerage firms. I manage some of my accounts myself...”

— Ben Stein

96. “I am so in love with just lying in bed listening to Mozart.”

— Ben Stein

97. “I’d say the main way people get into terrible financial trouble is just to spend too much money relative to their income, and that is an endemic problem in the United States of America, and that’s the kind of thing that should be taught about in schools.”

— Ben Stein

98. “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.”

— Ben Stein

99. “Wow, bad news. Mr. Obama now hates Israel because the Israelis want to build 1,600 apartments in their own capital city, Jerusalem. Russia hates Israel, too. So do the Europeans. So does Ban Ki-moon, a Korean who is secretary-general of the UN.”

— Ben Stein

100. “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.”

— Ben Stein