The successful people of this world take life as it comes. They just go out and deal with the world as it is.
BEN STEINI 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.
More Ben Stein Quotes
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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.
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I am back in LA now. And I keep thinking back to my time in New York after the bombings…. I was crying so much I could not see, and the other diners joined in, and I thought, What do you do with such atheistic evil?
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The real stars are wearing body armor in 130-degree heat . . . They’re getting shot at and they don’t have any stunt doubles standing in for them.
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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.
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That was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science – in my opinion, this is just an opinion – that’s where science leads you.
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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.
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The ordinary American – as far as I can tell – knows so much less than he did fifty years ago and has such poor work habits compared with fifty years ago that the average multiplicand of knowledge/capabilities is a much smaller number than it was in 1961.
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It’s about how Darwin ‘s theory – supposedly concocted by this mild-mannered saintly man, with a flowing white beard like Santa Claus – led to the murder of millions of innocent people.
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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.
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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.
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If there is no God, why bother to tell the truth? Why not steal?
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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.
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I don’t consider an actor a star if he’s paid $20 million and grimaces in front of the camera and has a stunt man stand in for him. They may be fine actors, but they’re not role models.
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It’s amazing what ordinary people can do if they set out without preconceived notions.
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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.
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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.
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Personal relationships are the fertile soil from which all advancement, all success, all achievement in real life grows.
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Science leads you to killing people.
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Put simply, the rich pay a lot of taxes as a total percentage of taxes collected, but they don’t pay a lot of taxes as a percentage of what they can afford to pay, or as a percentage of what the government needs to close the deficit gap.
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Israel being condemned by the EU, which 66 years ago watched with glee as its Jews were being mass murdered. That is pretty rich.
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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.
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And there hasn’t been much progress in Darwinism since [the life of Darwin].
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Men and women succeed because they find a field of endeavor that matches their interests and abilities.
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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.
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I am so in love with just lying in bed listening to Mozart.
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Prime-time network television has become an island without religion in an ever-more-religious America.
BEN STEIN