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Dennis Prager [1948-0] American
Rank: 11
Journalist, Radio host


Dennis Mark Prager is an American conservative and nationally syndicated radio talk show host, columnist, author, and public speaker.

Respect, War, Good, Nature, Society, Age, Alone, Beauty, Courage, Death, Design, Equality, Freedom, Friendship, Happiness, Health, Learning, Marriage, Power, Strength, Thankful, Trust



QuoteTagsRank
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. Courage, Good
101
There is no limit to suffering human beings have been willing to inflict on others, no matter how innocent, no matter how young, and no matter how old. This fact must lead all reasonable human beings, that is, all human beings who take evidence seriously, to draw only one possible conclusion: Human nature is not basically good. Good, Nature
102
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. Happiness, Nature, Society
103
Complaining not only ruins everybody else's day, it ruins the complainer's day, too. The more we complain, the more unhappy we get.
104
Once one understands that 'racial tensions' is a euphemism for a black animosity toward whites and a left-wing construct, one begins to understand why the election of a black president has had no impact on most blacks or on the left.
105
Unhappy, let alone angry, religious people provide more persuasive arguments for atheism and secularism than do all the arguments of atheists. Alone
106
Our scientific age demands that we provide definitions, measurements, and statistics in order to be taken seriously. Yet most of the important things in life cannot be precisely defined or measured. Can we define or measure love, beauty, friendship, or decency, for example? Age, Beauty, Friendship
107
If anything, we older people yearn for a peaceful world even more than young people do. We are the ones who lost friends or relatives in some war. We are the ones who have lived a lifetime of seeing and reading about human suffering. War
108
As you get older and wiser you realize that when people are given anything without having to earn it (unless they are physically or mentally utterly incapable of earning anything), they become ungrateful and lazy. They also become less happy.
109
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.
110
Of all the characteristics needed for both a happy and morally decent life, none surpasses gratitude. Grateful people are happier, and grateful people are more morally decent. Thankful
111
Yet, while producing increasingly selfish people, the mantra of the Left, and therefore of the universities and the media, has been for generations that capitalism and the free market, not the welfare state, produces selfish people.
112
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.
113
If we weren't born with anti-social passions - narcissism, envy, lust, meanness, greed, hunger for power, just to name the more obvious - why the need for so many laws, whether religious or secular, that govern behavior? Power
114
Africans who immigrate to America know how little racism exists there. They suspect it before emigrating from Africa, and they know it after arriving in America. Indeed, America, the Left's depiction of it notwithstanding, is the least racist country in the world.
115
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.
116
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.
117
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. Society
118
To deny that human beings are filled with anti-social passions betrays a denial of reality and a lack of self-awareness. One has to be taught nonsense for a great many formative years to believe it.
119
There was one thing more than any other that turned this New York, liberal, Jewish, Columbia University graduate student away from modern liberalism: its use of moral equivalence to avoid confronting evil during the Cold War. War
120
Those indoctrinated by leftist thinking become largely incapable of making accurate moral judgments.
121
Once enough Americans reacquaint themselves with Americanism, we should promote it to all countries just as the Left promotes leftism and Muslims promote Islam. One need not be American to affirm Americanism.
122
I have never written that there is a threat of fascism in America. I always considered the idea overwrought. But now I believe there really is such a threat - and it will come draped not in an American flag, but in the name of tolerance and health. Health
123
There was a time when liberalism was identified with anti-Communism. But the Vietnam War led liberals into the arms of the Left, which had been morally confused about Communism since its inception and had become essentially pacifist following the carnage of World War I. War
124
The Left has always sought single, non-values-based explanations for human behavior.
125
For some reason, the evolutionists have not come up with an evolution-based explanation for why human beings react so powerfully to music. But surely they will.
126
I have known Tavis Smiley since the 1980s, when we both worked at the same radio station in Los Angeles. He is smart, and he is a gentleman who has accorded me great respect both on and off the air. Respect
201
When watching 'The Passion,' Jews and Christians are watching two entirely different films. For two hours, Christians watch their Savior tortured and killed. For the same two hours, Jews watch Jews arrange the killing and torture of the Christians' Savior.
202
The essence of the Hebrew Bible, transmitted by Christianity, is separation: between life and death, nature and God, good and evil, man and woman, and the holy and the profane. Death
203
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. Freedom
204
It is easier to take a position in the abstract than when it hits home.
205
Those who believe in nothing are very, very jealous and angry at those who believe in something.
206
The Muslim world is threatened by religious fanaticism. The Western world is threatened by secular fanaticism.
207
It is easy to respect secular Americans who hold fast to the Constitution and to American values generally. And any one of us who believes in God can understand why some people, given all the unjust suffering in the world, just cannot believe that there is a Providential Being. Respect
208
It is essential that Christians understand this: Every Jew - secular, religious, assimilated, left-wing, right-wing - fears being killed because he is Jewish. This is the best-kept secret about Jews, who are widely perceived as inordinately secure and powerful. But it is the only universally held sentiment among Jews.
209
America will nurture a new Muslim - one who can believe in Muhammad and the Quran but who abandons belief in a Shariah-based state and affirms the primary American value of individual liberty, which has not been a normative Islamic value.
210
Since neither black animosity nor the Left's falsehood of 'racial tensions' is based on the actual behavior of the vast majority of white Americans, nothing white America could do will affect either many blacks' perceptions or the leftist libel.
211
Our only hope for America is that every conservative takes upon him or herself the project of learning what American and conservative values are, coming to understand what leftism stands for, and learning how to make the case for those values to women, young people, blacks and Hispanics. Learning
212
Conservatives divide the world in terms of good and evil while liberals do it in terms of the rich and poor.
213
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.
214
Liberals tend to put the onus of your success on society and conservatives on you and your family.
215
Socialism values equality more than liberty. Equality
216
There's a lot more power in calm than in vituperation.
217
The fact is that not only do people get more wise and more conservative as they get older, they get more kind and more generous, too.
218
Want to raise children who will be happy adults? Teach them not to whine.
219
Opponents of capital punishment argue that the state has no right to take a murderer's life. Apparently, one fact that abolitionists forget or overlook is that the state is acting not only on behalf of society, but also on behalf of the murdered person and the murdered person's family.
220
People confuse goodness with weakness. It is weak people, not good people (goodness demands strength), who are taken advantage of. Strength
221
Most people who call themselves conservatives can't explain the American value system.
222
In colleges throughout America, students are taught to have disdain for the white race. I know this sounds incredible, or at least exaggerated. It is neither.
223
Having travelled to some 20 African countries, I find myself, like so many other visitors to Africa before me, intoxicated with the continent. And I am not referring to the animals, as much as I have been enthralled by them during safaris in Kenya, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. Rather, I am referring to the African peoples.
224
Proponents of same-sex marriage regularly label opponents 'radical' and 'extremist.' However, given that no society in thousands of years has allowed same-sex marriage, it is, by definition, the proponents of same-sex marriage whose position is radical and extreme. Marriage
225
Even non-democratic allies no longer trust America. Barack Obama has alienated our most important and longest standing Arab allies, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Both the anti-Muslim Brotherhood and the anti-Iran Arab states have lost respect for him. Respect, Trust
226
If there is no God, the labels 'good' and 'evil' are merely opinions. They are substitutes for 'I like it' and 'I don't like it.' They are not objective realities.
301
The greatest hope most Americans - including Republicans - had when Barack Obama was elected president was that the election of a black person as the country's president would reduce, if not come close to eliminating, the racial tensions that have plagued America for generations.
302
Also, when you escape a Communist regime, you treasure liberty and you understand that as government and state expand, liberty must contract.
303
The whole American experiment has been predicated on giving individuals as much control over their own lives as possible.
304
For all of higher civilization's recorded history, becoming a man was defined overwhelmingly as taking responsibility for a family.
305
Corruption is Africa's greatest problem. Not poverty. Not lack of riches. Not racism.
306
Much of the world's moral compass is broken. The moral north reads south and the moral south reads north.
307
Those who are compassionate when they should be tough will be tough when they should be compassionate.
308
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.
309
If your religion doesn't teach you the difference between good and evil, your religion is worse than useless.
310
One of the great mind destroyers of college education is the belief that if it's very complex, it's very profound.
311
The world is a bad place. There are many wonderful people, but on the whole, humanity basically stinks.
312
Every person who speaks or writes for the public will make an occasional faux pas, and sooner or later will write or say something inappropriate.
313
Most American elementary schools and high schools, and nearly all colleges and universities, teach everything that is significant from a liberal/Left perspective.
314
Most young people have tremendous respect for older people's views.
315
Every poll about the Left, the Right, and happiness reveals that the farther left one goes, the less happy the person is likely to be.
316
The problem for the Left, however, is that the moment it stops painting the Right as vile, it has to argue the issues.
317
Whatever feminists may say about their only advocating choices, everyone knows the truth: Feminism regards work outside the home as more elevating, honorable, and personally productive than full-time mothering and making a home.
318
No day passes without a Democratic politician, a left-wing commentator, or, if I may be excused a redundancy, a left-wing academic labeling Republicans and conservatives racist.
319
Society may no longer define marriage in the only way marriage has ever been defined in the annals of recorded history. Many societies allowed polygamy, many allowed child marriages, some allowed marriage within families; but none, in thousands of years, defined marriage as the union of people of the same sex.
320
Most women are not programmed to prefer a great career to a great man and a family. They feel they were sold a bill of goods at college and by the media.
321
Since the 1970s, I have asked students if they would first try to save their drowning dog or a drowning stranger. And for 40 years I have received the same results: One third vote for their dog, one third for the stranger, and one third don't know what they would do.
322
To posit the existence of a Creator requires only reason. To posit the existence of a good God requires faith.
323
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.
324
The election, and even the re-election, of a black man as president, in a country that is 87 percent non-black - a first in human history - has had no impact on what are called 'racial tensions.'
325
Obviously, the issue for the Left isn't aging white males; it is conservatives, whether they are young or old, white or nonwhite, male or female. If female aborigines were conservative, the Left would have a problem with female aborigines.
326
There is little correlation between the circumstances of people's lives and how happy they are.
401
The larger the state, the more callous it becomes... the colder its heart. It is also true that the bigger the corporation, the more callous its heart. But unlike the state, corporations have competition and have no police powers.
402
I have spent a good part of my life showing what an intellectual bubble the Left lives in.
403
The Left is doing to America what it has done to almost everything it has deeply influenced - the arts, the university, religion, culture, minorities, Europe: ruining it.
404
Leftism seeks to undo most of the values that are distinct to Judeo-Christian religion.
405
The Left has always been anti-religious, and especially anti-Christian.
406
Two of the many areas of conflict between Judeo-Christian values and leftism concern the separation between the holy and the profane and the separation between humans and animals.
407
The universities deceive when they say they have no agenda other than to open minds.
408
Therefore the vast majority of the people who affirm leftist beliefs think of their views as the only way to properly think about life.
409
For the Left, affluence is won, not earned.
410
The fact is that, except for those very few whose wealth is overwhelmingly or entirely inherited, the more affluent have usually worked harder than the less affluent.
411
That said, I have come to believe that the more committed one is to leftism, the more likely one is to become meaner.
412
Leftists' meanness toward those with whom they differ has no echo on the normative right.
413
To be told that one can be dependent on one's parents until age 26 should strike a young person who wants to grow up as demeaning, not as something to celebrate.
414
In various European countries, it is increasingly common for young men to live with their parents into their 30s and even longer. Why not? In the welfare state, there is no shame in doing so.
415
But if there is a just God, there is ultimate justice.
416
I am convinced that great ideas that are powerfully presented can change a mind in five minutes.
417
In the biblical worldview, the purpose of all creation is to benefit man. This anthropocentric view of nature, and indeed of the whole universe, is completely at odds with the current secular idealization of nature. This secular view posits that nature has its own intrinsic meaning and purpose, independent of man.
418
All of creation, in the biblical view, was to ultimately prepare the way for the creation of man. But one does not need the Bible alone to hold this view. A purely scientific reading of the universe is in keeping with this view. Everything - every natural and physical law - is exquisitely tuned to produce life, and ultimately man, on earth.
419
Given the unprecedented ignorance of the Bible in contemporary America, it is likely that more young Americans will only know the Noah of 'Noah.' We can only hope that the film offers even a fraction of the wisdom of the original.
420
No American conservative has ever argued that the government should never be involved in peoples' lives. That is anarchy, and we don't argue for that.
421
When Jews left Judaism, they didn't stop being religious. They simply swapped God-based Judaism for godless secular humanism and leftism. For left-wing Jews, Judaism is their ethnicity; leftism is their religion.
422
The last thing Jews need is to create tension with their best friends. And the last thing Christians need is a renewal of Christian hatred toward Jesus' people.
423
In little more than a generation, feminism has obliterated roles. If you wonder why so many men choose not to get married, the answer lies in large part in the contemporary devaluation of the husband and of the father - of men as men, in other words.
424
The evidence in this universe for design - or, if you will, the fine-tuning that cannot be explained by chance or by 'enough time' - is so compelling that the only way around it is to suggest that our universe is only one of an infinite number of universes. Design
425
Every age has found some alternative to American values appealing. The number of Western intellectuals enamored of fascism and all the various expressions of Marxism was legion.
426
American troops around the globe are the greatest preservers of liberty and peace in the world.
501
Without aging white males, I doubt the 'New York Times' would survive. How many young people, females, Hispanics and blacks subscribe to the 'New York Times?'
502
More harm was done in the 20th century by faceless bureaucrats than tyrant dictators.
503
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.
504
The only difference between your local college and a Christian seminary is that the latter is more honest.
505
Rather than dividing the world between good and evil, the Left divided the world in terms of economics. Economic classes, not moral values, explained human behavior. Therefore, to cite a common example, poverty, not one's moral value system, or lack of it, caused crime.
506
From their teenage years on, children are considerably more capable of causing parents unhappiness than bringing them happiness. That is one reason parents who rely on their children for happiness make both their children and themselves miserable.
507
In a lifetime of observing and participating in political debate, I have seen a lot of meanness.
508
Most blacks want school vouchers, but most liberals vehemently oppose them. Why? Because what is good for teachers' unions is of more importance to the Left than what is good for blacks. Who, then, is racist? By their own admission, and by the policies they pursue, the answer is the people who call themselves progressive.
509
Leftism has influenced the literary, academic, media, and, therefore, the political elite far more than any other religion. It has taken over Western schools from elementary through graduate.
510
The notion that there is no basic value system is far more incoherent or invalid than the notion that there are essential values. Every religion can tell you it has basic values. You ask a Christian, most Christians would say love God and love your neighbor. Is that the entirety of Christianity? No one in his right mind would say it is.
511
There are surely times when a conservative and a liberal would agree. We would agree on how moral it is to discriminate on the basis of race. There's absolutely no light between those two positions. It becomes a little more complex when you talk about law as opposed to morality.
512
Virtually nothing Barack Obama has done has left America or the world better since he became president. Nearly everything he has touched has been made worse.
513
Whatever feminists may say about their only advocating choices, everyone knows the truth: Feminism regards work outside the home as more elevating, honorable, and personally productive than full-time mothering and homemaking.
514
The Left has taken over the universities and, increasingly, high schools and elementary schools. It dominates the news and entertainment media. And many judges and courts are leftist - meaning that their decisions are guided by leftism more than by the law or the Constitution.
515
There is something about liberalism that is not nearly as true about conservatism. The further left one goes, the more one finds that the ideology provides moral cover for a life that is not moral. While many people left of center lead fine personal lives, many do not.
516
There is no benefit to the conservative sinner in being a conservative. There is great benefit to the liberal sinner in being a liberal.
517
For conservatives, the issue is that for generations now, they have failed to make the case for their values. They haven't even conveyed conservative values to many of their children. And when they have, the university has often succeeded in undoing them.
518

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