Quotes from Dennis Prager

The Ten Commandments are there to warn all of us that, with very few exceptions, such as the immediate saving of innocent life, no cause is more important than truth-telling. The Ten Commandments are the greatest list of instructions ever devised for creating a good society. But such a society cannot be created or maintained if it is not based on truth.

Therefore, there is no issue here of a holy text depicting people being ordered by their God to kill infidels or innocents.

If we identify having fun with happiness, we will identify the opposite of fun, pain, with unhappiness. However, because no happiness is possible without pain, the attempt always to avoid it by having fun as much as possible makes happiness impossible

There is little in life that gives so much at so little cost as not having expectations.

Expecting to get what we want is immaturity, not optimism, and adults cannot long sustain happiness while holding immature beliefs.

The only people who have no bad tendencies are dead—either literally or figuratively. To be fully alive, indeed to be fully human, is to have dark tendencies. These are among the aspects of our nature that make us most human and give us our character and passions.

No one can rationally believe doing God's will guarantees one will, for example, never develop cancer or die in an earthquake. If that were the case, we would have to draw the irrational and cruel conclusion that anyone who dies prematurely was being punished by God—or the equally irrational conclusion that all those who live long and healthy lives have lived God-centered lives.

If you build a society in which children honor their parents, your society will long survive. And the corollary is: A society in which children do not honor their parents is doomed to self-destruction.

Regarding morality, intentions matter little; and often, not at all. But when it comes to relating to God (prayer, ritual acts, etc.), intentions matter a great deal.

Nothing inspires people to believe in God as much as God-centered people doing good, just as nothing alienates people from belief in God as much as people doing evil in God's name.

happiness is a battle to be waged and not a feeling to be awaited.

Studies consistently show that when a school requires its students to wear school uniforms, or even just has a dress code, grades rise and violence declines.

Everything worthwhile in life is attained through hard work.

Those who sow in tears will reap in joy.

While a pure mind may be a saintly ideal, for the rest of us mortals controlling our behavior is an enormous enough achievement.

Many people seem to want this epitaph: "I led as painless a life as possible." But the purpose of life is not to avoid pain. That is the purpose of an animal's life—but animals cannot know happiness.

The choice is yours: do you want as pain-free a life as possible, or do you want as life-filled a life as possible? The two are mutually exclusive. "No pain, no gain" is not only true for developing a good body; it is equally true for developing a good life.

God rested from all his work which he created to do/make. The last word, this last 'to do' is for us, we are the partners in the completion of creation, it's not done yet.

For the Left, politics is the way to transform the world; for conservatives, politics is primarily the way to stop the Left from doing so. The former is much more fulfilling than the latter.

When Bad Things Happen to Good People and his lectures.

In English, the word "left" derives from the Anglo-Saxon lyft, which means "weak" or "useless.

Unlike other countries, the United States is more an idea than a place, ethnicity, or race. Unfortunately, most American young people today cannot answer, What is America for? What is it about? Why was it founded? Why is it different? They can't answer these questions because they haven't been taught an answer.

The essential message of Judaism and Christianity is that life is not an end in itself. Life is to be a means—to goodness, to sanctity, and to God. The belief in life as an end in itself is a form of idolatry.

We live in a world in which people can do unbelievably beautiful or unbelievably horrible things to other people. And if those horrible acts argue against the existence of God, then the beautify acts must argue for God's existence.