Dennis Prager Quotes

Unhappy, let alone angry, religious people provide more persuasive arguments for atheism and secularism than do all the arguments of atheists.

Those who believe in nothing are very, very jealous and angry at those who believe in something.

The idea that you earn things - that you earn respect, that you earn income, responsibility. the vote, punishment... these ideas are anathema to the liberal mind.

Goodness is about character - integrity, honesty, kindness, generosity, moral courage, and the like. More than anything else, it is about how we treat other people.

The vote, punishment... these ideas are anathema to the liberal mind

If we continue to teach about tolerance and intolerance instead of good and evil, we will end up with tolerance of evil.

All happy people are grateful. Ungrateful people cannot be happy. We tend to think that being unhappy leads people to complain, but it’s truer to say that complaining leads to people becoming unhappy.

How a society channels male aggression is one of the greatest questions as to whether that society will survive. That's why I am not against violence in the media, I am against the glorification of immoral violence.

Nothing guarantees more the erosion of character than getting something for nothing

Whatever the Left touches-- the arts; the economy; health care; the soul; religion-- it destroys or damages

Those who do not confront evil resent those who do.

Hamas is a terrorist organization dedicated to annihilating the Jewish state. It runs a theocratic totalitarian state in Gaza, with no individual liberty, and no freedom of speech or press.

Because gratitude is the key to happiness, anything that undermines gratitude must undermine happiness. And nothing undermines gratitude as much as expectations. There is an inverse relationship between expectations and gratitude: The more expectations you have, the less gratitude you will have.

Prayer is not asking God to do something, it's asking God to help YOU do something

Secularism breeds narcissism. There is nothing higher to live for, so you live for you

Although images of perfection in people's personal lives can cause unhappiness, images of perfect societies - utopian images - can cause monstrous evil. In fact, forcefully changing society to conform to societal images was the greatest cause of evil in the twentieth century.

The biggest obstacle to people becoming better is that you have to really want to be a good person in order to be a better person, and most people would rather be other things.

Utopian movements produce dystopias.

If your religion doesn't teach you the difference between good and evil, your religion is worse than useless.

Compassion without wisdom is dangerous. It's what enables people to support the 'underdog,' even if the underdog is evil

Until the Left took over American public education in the second half of the 20th century, it was generally excellent - look at the high level of eighth-grade exams from early in the 20th century and you will weep. The more money the Left has gotten for education - America now spends more per student than any country in the world - the worse the academic results. And the Left has removed God and dress codes from schools - with socially disastrous results.

Socialism values equality more than liberty.

The more that you expect, the less happy you will be-- because if the expectations are realized you won't be grateful

More harm was done in the 20th century by faceless bureaucrats than tyrant dictators.

When emotions dominate, maturity and wisdom deteriorate

Good and happy people who believe in God are the greatest living arguments for God's existence

A bad mood is like bad breath. Both are wrong to inflict onto others

Lying to the Left is like water to fish

The bigger the government, the greater the corruption

Taking responsibility for your own life is not a Left wing idea

The Libertarian Party is a shameful party

When women criticize men it's called feminism. When men criticize women it's called misogyny

Nothing enables people to do evil as much as does a sense of victimhood

I don't judge people by their theology, I judge them by their behavior

Happiness is a moral obligation

Given the amount of unjust suffering and unhappiness in the world, I am deeply grateful for, sometimes even perplexed by, how much misery I have been spared.

Thanks to Barack Obama, America is for the first time aligning its values with those of 'the majority of the world's population.' If you think the world's population has had better values than America, that is has made societies that are more open, free, and tolerant than American society, and that is has fought for others' liberty more than America has, you should be delighted.

Tell me of a right wing-induced hysteria of the last 50 years

The state of Europe is so bad that I cannot see any future in Europe other than its Islamization or a civil war

Complaining is never powerful because at the root of a complaint is powerlessness

Happiness is dependent on self-discipline. We are the biggest obstacles to our own happiness. It is much easier to do battle with society and with others than to fight our own nature.

Repetition is the mother of pedagogy

Many liberals believe in God; many conservatives do. What matters is not whether people believe in God but what text, if any, they believe to be divine. Those who believe that He has spoken through a given text will generally think differently from those who believe that no text is divine. Such people will usually get their values from other texts, or more likely from their conscience and heart.

The vast majority of those who are famous are not significant and the vast majority of those who are significant are not famous.

For the Left, tolerance does not mean tolerance. It means first, acceptance. And second, celebration. That is totalitarianism: You not only have to live with what you may differ with, dear citizen, you have to celebrate it or pay a steep price.

When I see the mostly young people of Occupy Wall Street - a mixture of the bored, the nihilistic, the seekers of excitement, the left-wing true believers, the confused idealists and those hoping to engage in violence - railing against the rich capitalists on Wall Street, I get worried. Because the hatred they express toward the rich is similar to that expressed against the rich by Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. Of course, these people are not comparable to those killers. But class hatred must lead to bad things. That is why President Obama is playing with fire with his attacks on the rich.

To understand the Left, one must understand that in its view the greatest evil is material inequality. The Left is more troubled by economic inequality than by evil as humanity has generally understood the term.

Happiness is not so much a feeling as it is an attitude

There have been huge Muslim demonstrations against cartoons depicting Muhammad and any other perceived insult against Islam. But I am unaware of a single demonstration of Muslims against Muslim terror directed at non-Muslims.

With the demise of the biblical religions that have provided the American people with their core values since their country's inception, we are reverting to the pagan worldview. Trees and animals are venerated, while man is simply one more animal in the ecosystem - and largely a hindrance, not an asset.