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 STEINThe 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.
More Ben Stein Quotes
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I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can’t find it in the Constitution, and I don’t like it being shoved down my throat.
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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.
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Israel is our strongest, most reliable ally in the Middle East. Of course, we’re their most reliable ally, too.
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If there is no God, why bother to tell the truth? Why not steal?
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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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The America that we knew as the smartest place on the planet is gone with the wind.
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I think Darwinism as a theory explaining evolution within species is incredibly brilliant – just unbelievably, incredibly brilliant.
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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.
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I thought that all of the sacrifices and blessings of the whole history of mankind have devolved upon me. Thank you, God.
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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.
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Greed is a basic part of animal nature. Being against it is like being against breathing or eating. It means nothing.
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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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As to a media personality, well that just happened in large measure because people found me amusing, and I did lots and lots of T.V. news interview shows.
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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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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.
BEN STEIN