Ben Stein Quotes

Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place. Science leads you to killing people.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.’

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.

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.

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

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.