Dennis Prager Quotes - 289 quotes

Dennis Prager is an American conservative radio talk show host, writer, and public speaker. He is best known for hosting "The Dennis Prager Show," a nationally syndicated radio program, and for co-founding PragerU, an organization that produces short educational videos from a conservative perspective. He was born on August 2, 1948, in Brooklyn, New York to a modern Orthodox Jewish family and attended Brooklyn College, where he majored in anthropology and history. He also studied at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs and the University of Leeds. His early career involved advocating for Soviet Jews who were denied permission to emigrate, which led to his role as a national spokesman for the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry. In addition to his radio career, Prager has authored several books, including "The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism" and "Happiness Is a Serious Problem." His work often focuses on promoting Judeo-Christian values and critiquing secularism and political correctness. Prager's influence extends beyond radio and writing. He is a sought-after speaker and has been involved in various educational and philanthropic efforts. His commentary on politics, religion, and culture continues to resonate with a wide audience.

 What made america exceptional was not its flaws, which were all universal, but it's virtues which were not.
- Dennis Prager
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 Young people have been told God is nonsense, their country is essentially evil, their past is deplorable, their future is bleak, and marriage and children are not important. Why are some many young people depressed, unhappy, and angry? It's not capitalism or income inequality or patriarchy, or even global warming. It's having no religion, no God, and no country to believe in. And what does that leave them with? No meaning. But, there is always Instagram.
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 There are only two races, the decent and the indecent.
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 I have no interest in passing on my seed, I have interest in passing on my values.
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 Which would rather have? A biological child who rejected your values or an adopted child who upheld your values?
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 ... as the father i had the exact same experience...when did i first see my biological son? The day he was born i didn't carry him right ? My first interaction with him was the day he was born...well my first interaction with my adopted son was the day he was born...what difference is it to me?
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 Politically Incorrect: a truth that people on the left find too painful to acknowledge and therefore do not want expressed.
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 The purpose of life is not to live long but to live fully.
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 That the conservative secular individual at least needs to respect the importance of God and religion in American history and to conservatism the truth is conservatism will not succeed if it remains godless for more than a two generations it's just not because God will punish you or any nonsense like that but because America is rooted in the notion that our rights come from God it's in a declaration of independence our rights don't come from government that's the whole revolution of the American Revolution rights don't come from people rights come from something higher than people if a conservative cannot accept that I understand that but it's a problem for conservatism meaning conserving the American value system which is I call the American Trinity, on every coin 'in God we trust' 'e pluribus unum' from many one and 'liberty' the belief was that God wants us free this is the greatness of the American Revolution God wants us free that that was remarkable and they got that idea from the Torah from the third book of the Bible Leviticus which is on the Liberty Bell
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 Today is to indoctrinate not educate I'm sure you know a great deal about carbon emissions but if you know about carbon emissions and not Stalin that is one perverted form of Education that's indoctrination not education
- Dennis Prager
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 But whenever people mock and that's all they do I know they don't know how to deal with it intellectually it's a because if you can if you can demolish an argument intellectually why would you use mockery mockery make make you feel good but it is not persuasive you you have not used reason you have used insult and the like but it is it is not it is not an argument.
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 Because I said that science is a substitute religion for many people it is so they say well that's ridiculous science is fact-based and religion is faith based the moment you say science tells you anything other though other than facts it's a religion if you say if I say to you what do you believe in on your answer with science then science is functioning as a religion science doesn't tell you not to murder science doesn't tell you not to steal science doesn't tell you not not not to do anything bad it doesn't tell you to do anything good science has nothing moral to teach us that's not a knock on science if I study geology do I know good and evil if I study chemistry do I know good and evil the mitochondria tell me the honor my parents .
- Dennis Prager
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 I hate big governments,” Prager continued. “And the left loves them, because they love power. I don’t want power over anyone. That disqualifies me from being a leftist. I have no desire to control you. I am so not a candidate for the left. I want to leave you alone and you to leave me alone.

- Dennis Prager

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 And the veneration of feelings over truth, not to mention wisdom, is a cornerstone of leftism.

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 For those who wrestle with the problem of theodicy, there is not final answer, but there are workable philosophies of life. One is that God allows nature to take its course, meaning that God allows cancer cells to metastasize in good people just as readily as in evil ones. If it were otherwise, there would be no point to being good-everyone would be good to avoid getting sick. Another is that God allows evil people to hurt good ones because God gave human beings freedom of moral choice, without which we would be automatons, not human beings. A fourth way of reconciling God with unjust suffering is to posit that God does not will any suffering, but that God is there when w call out for comfort, for strength, and for peace of knowing that there is a caring God and all is not chaos.

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 I told them they think that way because they live in such a decent country. It is easy to remain naïve in America, where most are insulated from the suffering inflicted on so much of humanity in deeply corrupt, poverty-stricken, and war-torn societies. Nevertheless, given the way humans have treated one another throughout history, and only two generations after Auschwitz, only the naïve can believe that people are basically good. And since no Western religion (i.e., any religion based on the Bible) has ever posited that people are basically good, this naïveté is abetted by secularism, which allows for the pursuit of knowledge but destroys wisdom.

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 Is multiculturalism, the idea that no culture is superior to another morally or in any other way wise? Isn’t it the antithesis of wisdom, whose very premise is that certain ideas are morally superior to others, and certain literary or artistic works are superior to others?

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 Third, instead of allowing the enormity of the world's suffering to make me unhappy, I have allowed it to increase the depth of my gratitude for the blessed life that I have been allowed to lead.

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 To believe that this life is all there is and that those who unfairly endure terrible suffering have nothing to look forward to is not a recipe for happiness.

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 The more people think, they more they are likely to recognize that if there is no religious meaning to the universe, there is no meaning of any type to the universe. And no thinking person can be truly happy believing that ultimately everything is pointless.

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 No. 1: If there is so much racism in America, why are there so many false claims of racism and outright race hoaxes? I offered 15 recent examples. Moreover, there were probably no racist hoaxes when America really was racist, just as there were no anti-Semitic hoaxes in 1930s Germany, when there was rampant anti-Semitism. You need hoaxes when the real thing is hard to find. No. 2: The constant references to slavery. If there were a great deal of racism in America today, there would be no reason to constantly invoke slavery and the Confederacy. The very fact that The New York Times, the leader in racist dishonesty, felt it necessary to issue its '1619 Project,' which seeks to replace 1776 as the founding of America with 1619, when the first African slaves arrived in America, is a perfect illustration of the point. The fact that 'The 1619 Project' was labeled false by the leading American historians of that era (all of whom are liberals and at least one of whom led a campaign to impeach President Donald Trump) adds fuel to the argument. Even regarding the past, the promoters of the 'America is racist' libel need to lie to paint America as bad as possible. No. 3: The reliance on lies. 'The 1619 Project,' which will now be taught in thousands of American schools, is based on lies. All Americans who care about America and/or truth should inquire if their children's school will teach this and, if so, place their child in a school that does not. Two of the biggest lies are that preserving slavery was the real cause of the American Revolution and that slavery is what made America rich. Even the charge of endemic racist police brutality is a lie. There are undoubtedly racist police, but racism does not characterize police interactions with blacks. No. 4: The large African immigration to the United States. Nearly 2 million black Africans and more than 1 million blacks from the Caribbean have emigrated to the United States in just the last 20 years. Why would so many blacks voluntarily move to a country that is systemically racist, a country, according to the promoters of the 'America is racist' libel, in which every single white is a racist? Are all these blacks dumb? Are they ignorant? And what about the millions more who would move here if they were allowed to? How does one explain the fact that Nigerians, for example, are among the most successful immigrant communities? No. 5: The preoccupation with 'microaggressions.' According to the University of California's list of racist microaggressions, saying, 'There is only one race, the human race', is a racist microaggression. This is, of course, Orwellian doublespeak. Anyone who believes there is only one race is not, by definition, a racist. If everyone in the past had believed there was one race, the human race, there would never have been racism, let alone a slave trade based on racism. The very fact that the left came up with the intellectual farce known as microaggressions, like the race hoaxes, proves how little racism there is in America because the entire thesis is based on the fact that there are so few real, or 'macro', aggressions. The race riots, the ruining of people's careers and lives over something said or done at any time in their lives, the ruining of professional sports (especially basketball and football), the tearing down of America and its history, the smearing of moral giants like Abraham Lincoln - all of this is being done because of a lie. As I wrote in a column three years ago: 'The Jews survived the Blood Libel. But America may not survive the American Libel. While the first Libel led to the death of many Jews, the present Libel may lead to the death of a civilization. Indeed, the least oppressive ever created.'

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 ...even when he suffered the torment of solitary confinement, he was a happier person than his guards because his life, unlike theirs, had meaning and sense of purpose.

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 Some people accuse those of us who have this attitude of deluding ourselves in order to be happy, but these people miss the point. There is almost always a positive element in a negative situation, just as there is almost always a negative aspect to a positive situation. Choosing to find the positive and emphasizing it is not in any way a form of self-delusion.

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 Unhappy people at least have the fantasy that money will make them happy; unhappy rich people don't even have that.

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 One reason is inner peace. Think of all the truly decent people you know personally, and then think of the worst people you know. Which individuals strike you as having more inner peace? Whenever I have posed this question to audiences, the response has been virtually unanimous. We regard the good people we know as having much greater inner peace.

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 When you feel that you knew the price in advance and chose to pay it, you are in a far better position to accept life's problems.

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 But not having expectations diminishes optimism only if we define optimism as the assumption that we will get what we want.

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 Love is, among other things, an emotion. So, here is a question about leftists’ emotions: Do any leftists get the chills when the national anthem is played or when they see the American flag waving as the anthem is played? Given their rhetoric, it is most unlikely. Yet, every person I know who loves America does get a chill at such moments. Do leftists, as opposed to some liberals and conservatives, display the flag on any national holiday? How many leftists even own a flag?

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 If you came in to a movie in the last 15 minutes would you have a clue as to what is going on you're in the last 15 minutes of history hours of history have taken place before you you can't possibly understand the movie if you don't know what happened before the last 15 minutes it's as simple literally as simple as that the ignorance is astonishing.

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 This is yet another way in which we make ourselves, not to mention others, miserable. It is human nature to concentrate on what is missing and deem it the most important trait. Unless we teach ourselves to concentrate on what we do have, we will end up obsessing over missing tiles and allow them to become insurmountable obstacles to happiness.

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 This is one reason, incidentally, why it is foolish to envy all successful people-many of them are driven by demons that no amount of success can assuage.

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 I have a simple rule that is of great value in identifying whom to trust: Do not choose friends on the basis of personality, "chemistry," or enjoyment alone. Know their character (i.e., their values and whether they act on those values) before you trust them.

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 All happy people are grateful, and ungrateful people cannot be happy.

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 On the other hand, if your perceptions are not accurate, get rid of these perceptions-and find out why you have a predilection for perceiving slights when there are none.

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 Expectations diminish happiness-when they are not met-and when they are met.

- Dennis Prager

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 Very often, the reason that people reach faulty conclusions is not their inability to reason; it is that they reason from faulty premises. The refusal of ancient seamen to go far out to sea lest they fall off the world was not a function of faulty reasoning; it was, in fact, sound reasoning-based on the faulty premise that the earth was flat. So too, the many people who think that more parties, sex, movies, and clothes, classier cars, and a whole host of other fun providers will bring them happiness are not using faulty reasoning. The fault lies in their original premise-that more fun will bring happiness.

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 Everything that leads to happiness involves pain.

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 But today some people continue to view themselves as victims because of the historical suffering of their group and because it is easy and comforting to do so. And this renders happiness virtually impossible. First, as we have seen, perceiving yourself as a victim makes you unhappy. Second, it makes you permanently angry, which further guarantees unhappiness. Third, it enables you to avoid confronting whatever it is that is really making you unhappy.

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 At least as often it is a person's attitude and philosophy of life that determine his or her level of happiness.

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 Second, I knew myself well enough to know that if I remained single, I wouldn't grow nearly as much as I would as a married man.

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 Yet most readers do not draw the important conclusion-that people with fame, fortune, and glamour are often quite miserable because fame, fortune, and glamour are not vehicles to happiness.

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 There is, in short, no area of life where our happiness would not be increased by ceasing to compare ourselves with people whom we almost always imagine to be happier.

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 The Communists who imagined a utopian Russia destroyed the terribly flawed Czarist society but produced a far worse place and gave us the gulag. The Germans who compared the flawed democracy of Weimar Germany to images of a Great Reich destroyed that imperfect democracy and gave the world Auschwitz. In the Middle East today, some religious people who compare their flawed societies to images of a religious utopia governed by God and their religion's laws support the creation of religious totalitarian states. Americans who compare their society, one of the most just in human history, to a society free of all competition, racism, sexism, and any other real or imagined flaw—or to an imagined idyllic past—often weaken that society by condemning and reforming it excessively and unjustly On the other hand, without any images of a better society, we would have little reason to hope for a better world, and we would have little guidance in what to strive for. But images are like fire and need to be handled accordingly.

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 Unhappiness does not necessarily follow from dissatisfaction.

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 That — not "nationalism is always good" or "nationalism is always bad" — is the only accurate assessment. Therefore, morally speaking, nationalism is no different from anything else in life. There is moral violence (in self-defense, in defense of innocents, in defense of a society under unjust attack, etc.) and immoral violence (murder of innocents, wars of aggression, etc.).

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 The great teaching of the Bible is "Love your neighbor as yourself." It does not say "Love all of humanity as yourself." Love must begin with our neighbor. It should never end with our neighbor, but it must begin with him.

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 Ask any young person — even a young child — “What do you want to be?” and just about everyone will answer, “a doctor,” “an engineer,” “a teacher,” “a firefighter,” “an airplane pilot” or a member of some other profession. This is completely understandable. But I have a suggestion that would change your child’s life — and the world — for the better. Tell your child to answer, “I want to be a good person.” This would completely change the way your child sees himself or herself.

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 Leftists want to “fundamentally transform” the United States. Five days before the 2008 presidential election, candidate Barack Obama told a huge audience in Columbia, Missouri, “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”...So, here’s a question: How can one claim to love what one wishes to fundamentally transform? The answer is obvious: It isn’t possible. If a man were to confide to you that he wants to fundamentally transform his wife, would you assume he loves his wife? If a woman were to tell you she wants to fundamentally transform her husband, would you assume she loves him? Of course not.

- Dennis Prager

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 I am unaware of a single left-wing individual or organization that has condemned NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick for refusing to stand for the flag during the playing or singing of the national anthem that precedes NFL games. To the contrary, on the left, he is universally regarded as a hero. Indeed, Nike anointed him as one, making him its brand model.

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 When I was saying that scientists are humans like everybody else scientists as I said run the gamut of brilliant and wise to stupid and foolish just like plumbers and chiropractors and dentists and uber drivers and any other group scientists are not one whit wiser than than electricians but we think they are because people believe in science not just in science in its facts h2o is water but in science as the answer to life's questions science does not answer life's questions it answers questions such as why does a cancer cell metastasize what is the gravitational pull of the Sun on the planets that science and only science can answer I don't look to the Bible to figure out the gravitational pull of the Sun or how to deal with metastasizing cancer cells I don't know one religious person who does.

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 Here’s why this is so important. If there were a lot of racism, there would be no need for hoaxes. No Jew in Germany in the 1930s made up an anti-Semitic hoax. No Jewish shop owner ever made up a charge that a Nazi hurled a rock through his store window. The reason? None was needed. Nazi hatred against Jews was real. It didn’t have to be faked. To convince people that America is racist, you have to fake it.

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 Unconditional love is not a good idea. I don’t know where it originated, but I am quite certain it’s relatively recent, a product of an age that has put primary importance on feelings. With the possible exception of a parent’s love for a young child, unconditional love is not a good idea among people, and it’s probably not a good idea concerning God’s love for us. I am familiar with no biblical basis for the notion that God loves us no matter how much cruelty and evil we engage in (God’s love of His Chosen People, Israel, is specifically depicted as conditional upon Israel’s behavior), or for the notion that God loved Adolf Hitler and Mother Teresa equally. Frankly, I would be disappointed in such a God. It renders Him a love machine whose love cannot be affected by our behavior, not a loving being who is affected by how we act. It renders His love amoral. And it prevents us from growing up.

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 New York Times columnist Ross Douthat described the 2009 James Cameron blockbuster film, “Avatar,” as “Cameron’s long apologia for pantheism, a faith that equates God with Nature, and calls humanity into religious communion with the natural world.” That equation of God with nature was a major reason for the film’s popularity.

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 The bottom line: The reason so many young people are depressed, unhappy and angry is the left has told them that God and Judeo-Christian religions are nonsense; their country is largely evil; their past is deplorable; and their future is hopeless.

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 And it explains the widespread adoption of that secular substitute for traditional religion: leftism. But unlike Judaism and Christianity, leftism does not bring its adherents happiness.

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 Interestingly, while they often claim to love humanity, many don’t seem to love people. They give less charity and volunteer less time to the downtrodden than conservatives, for example. They have much less interest in having children and making families. They are far more likely than conservatives to cut off relations with friends or relatives with whom they differ politically. And if they really loved people, they would love capitalism because only capitalism has lifted billions of people from poverty.

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 Nature is beautiful and awe-inspiring. It’s also brutal and merciless. “Nature, red in tooth and claw,” as Alfred Tennyson aptly describes it. Nature follows no moral rules and shows no compassion. The basic law of all biological life is “survival of the fittest,” while the basic law of Judaism and Christianity is the opposite: the survival of the weakest with the help of the fittest. Nature wants the weakest eaten by the strongest. Hospitals are as anti-natural an entity as exists.

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 The gist of the editorial — and of most religious and conservative opposition to President Trump — is that any good the president has done is dwarfed by his character defects.

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 This is an amoral view that says more about Galli than it does about the president. He and the people who share his opinion are making the following statement: No matter how much good this president does, it is less important than his character flaws.

- Dennis Prager

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 Having a child is likely to make a troubled marriage worse (and being brought into a troubled home is certainly no favor to the child).

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 Parents who want their children to be happy but who raise them to believe that some values are even higher than happiness are more likely to raise happy children.

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 WE make this choice because of our insecurity because of our anger at the other person, or because we want to play the role of victim. Whatever the reason, little is more destructive to happiness than perceiving yourself insulted when in fact you weren't.

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 For all the tensions that result from the differences between male and female natures, neither sex would really want things to be much different. Let men imagine what women would be like if htey had men's nonintimate, variety-directed, always-seeking-new-excitement nature. Men would loathe such competitive women, few people would establish a stable home (which despite their nomadic nature, most men yearn for), and few men or women would take care of the next generation. On the other hand, let women imagine what men would be like if they were as desirous of intimacy, as nest-oriented, as women. Most women regard men who are like that as essentially women with men's bodies, not as desirable men. It is the rougher edged, macro oriented, and sexually aggressive male nature that makes men-when they control their nature-most attractive to women.

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 People derive meaning from two beliefs-the belief that their life has meaning and the belief that life itself has meaning. Both beliefs-in personal meaning and in transcendent meaning-are necessary for happiness.

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 Pursuing depth is on of the distinguishing characteristics of the human being; it is one of the noblest goals of a human life; and it brings ongoing happiness. Indeed, the journey to depth brings as much happiness as its attainment, and since depth has no limits, the journey to it never ends.

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 Wisdom may be defined as understanding, as opposed to merely knowing.

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 This shows you how this person has never thought that anything that I have said through never these is all brand-new should I be more inclined to believe peer review test data or a 2000 year old book written by sheep herders but there is not one religious person who believes that you you you learn peer review test data from the Bible that shows you how foolish this comment this is a person who has never thought this through okay so do you learn thou shalt not murder thou shalt honor your parents thou shalt not steal love thy neighbor as thyself from peer review test data of course not you learn nothing about good and evil which is the most important question on earth from text data from peer review test data but this is this is the ignorance that pervades the secular world .

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 Yet, seeking unconditional love is a vestige of childhood. Young children need, deserve, and therefor seek unconditional love. But adults should not need, do not deserve, and therefore should not seek unconditional love.

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 But it [science] offers zero wisdom there was no wisdom is how to live a life what is the difference between right and wrong we know the limitations of the Bible you may not know the limitations of science that's the difference we don't look to the Bible for science you shouldn't look to science for morality or wisdom that's all I'm saying but the moment you think science tells you anything other than science then it's a religion.

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 For example scientists made the atom bomb scientists did not decide whether the atom bomb would be dropped on Japan to end World War two lay people did people who had no clue how an atom bomb is made the scientists made the atom bomb they did not decide whether to drop it.

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 Moreover, unconditional love stymies growth into mature adulthood. If we will be loved no matter how we act, why should we act in a way that earns love?

- Dennis Prager

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 From the point of view of the secular, Gaia-worshipping world, Genesis gets even worse when, 27 verses later, God tells human beings to, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.” Both instructions infuriate Earth-worshippers. Regarding being fruitful, they oppose people having more than one child, and many advocate having no children so as to have minimal human impact on Mother Earth. But the second part — ruling over nature — is what really angers them.

- Dennis Prager

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 Only someone who has never debated the issue could make such a claim. So allow me to debate the assertion. My view is the antithesis of Dionne's. As I see it, it is not right to never call another human being an "animal." Calling the cruelest among us names such as "animal" or any other "dehumanizing" epithet actually protects humans. The word "beastly" exists for a reason and is frequently applied to human beings. By rhetorically reading certain despicable people out of the human race, we elevate the human race. We have declared certain behaviors out of line with being human.

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 Biologically, of course, we are all human. But if "human" is to mean anything moral — anything beyond the purely biological — then some people who have committed particularly heinous acts of evil against other human beings are not to be considered human. Otherwise "human" has no moral being. We should then not retain the word "inhumane." What is the difference between "he is inhumane" and "he is an animal"? Both imply actions that render the person no longer human.

- Dennis Prager

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 But what is desirable or even necessary in the physical world can be very self-destructive when applied to the emotional world. Ceilings can be perfect, but life cannot. In life, there will always be tiles missing-and even when there aren't, we can always imagine a more perfect life and therefore imagine that something is missing.

- Dennis Prager

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 What would Dionne have us call those Nazi physicians — "not nice," "badly flawed," "evil"? Why is rhetorically ostracizing them from the human race "a dangerous path"? He doesn't have an answer because he lives in the left's world of moral-sounding platitudes. Leftism consists almost entirely of moral-sounding platitudes — statements meant to make the person making them feel morally sophisticated. But based on their relative reactions to the sadists of the MS-13 gangs, I trust Donald Trump's moral compass more than E. J. Dionne's.

- Dennis Prager

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 It is ever dangerous to use dehumanizing rhetoric on people? Of course — when it is directed at people based on their race, religion, ethnicity, nationality or any other immutable physical characteristic. The Nazis did what they did to Jews and others because they dehumanized them based on their religious/ethnic/racial identity. That's why racism is evil. But why is it dangerous to use such rhetoric on people based on their behavior? By equating labeling the cruelest among us "animals" with labeling Jews "animals," Dionne cheapens the fight against real evil.

- Dennis Prager

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 Boredom, at least in our time, is the most overlooked source of evil. In the past, before people went to college and abandoned religion — the two greatest reasons there is so much moral idiocy in our time — people knew how dangerous boredom was. “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop” was a common aphorism that wouldn’t even make sense to most young people today. By bored, I am not referring to a lack of things to do. There is more opportunity to do and experience things today than ever before. By bored, I mean a deep boredom of the soul, what the French call “ennui.” This is the boredom that emanates from lack of purpose and a yearning for excitement.

- Dennis Prager

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 The fact that one of our two major political parties is advocating lowering the voting age to 16 is a good example of the absence of wisdom among a large segment of the adult population. What adult deems 16-year-olds capable of making a wise voting decision? The answer is an adult with the wisdom of a 16-year-old — “Hey, I’m no wiser than most 16-year-olds. Why should I have the vote and they not?”

- Dennis Prager

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 Last year, Amy Wax, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, co-authored an opinion piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer with a professor from the University of San Diego School of Law in which they wrote that the “bourgeois culture” and “bourgeois norms” that governed America from the end of World War II until the mid 1960s were good for America, and that their rejection has caused much of the social dysfunction that has characterized this country since the 1960s. Those values included, in their words: Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime.

- Dennis Prager

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 Didn't I need to earn my wife's love when we dated? Why should I stop having to earn it now that we are married? To assume that no matter how I behave my wife will love me is to render me a child and her my mother.

- Dennis Prager

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 But all this does is promulgate the view that blacks are inherently different from all other people. As a result, the only way the left’s view of blacks differs from that of white supremacists is that the latter believe blacks are inherently inferior, whereas the left believes blacks are inherently different. But both the left and the white supremacists agree that race contains immutable characteristics.

- Dennis Prager

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 One day, however, the thought occurred to me that being unhappy was easy-in face, the easy way out- and that it took no courage, effort, or greatness to be unhappy. Anyone could be unhappy. True achievement, I realized at an early age, lay in struggling to be happy. ...happiness is a battle to be waged and not a feeling to be awaited.

- Dennis Prager

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 One should add that nationalism is evil when it celebrates race, but that is not nationalism; it is racism. Nationalism and racism may be conjoined, as German Nazism did. But they are not definitionally related. While some Americans have conjoined American nationalism with race (such as the Confederacy, the Ku Klux Klan and currently various fringe "white identity" movements), American nationalism, based as it is on the motto "e pluribus unum" ("out of many, one"), by definition includes Americans of all races and ethnicities. That is how conservatives define American nationalism. I have never met a conservative who defined American national identity as definitionally "white."

- Dennis Prager

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 Second, happiness is important to doing good. Unhappy people are usually less capable than happy people of doing good. For one thing, they are usually too preoccupied with themselves and their unhappiness to do much good for others.

- Dennis Prager

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 Unfortunately, however, many people define the great value of freedom incorrectly. They define freedom as doing whatever they want. But doing what you want usually means doing what your body and nature want, and this is not only not freedom, it is actually more akin to bondage. Addicts do what they want-and they are among the least free people on earth. Freedom is being able to do what will bring you happiness-and that takes self-control.

- Dennis Prager

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 I am convinced that a major reason for this growing preference for animals is that animals give unconditional love and people do not. And what could be more desirable than receiving unconditional love? (i.e.; being loved for doing nothing but existing)?

- Dennis Prager

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 Nor do adults deserve unconditional love. The idea that merely existing makes us deserving of others' love renders love infantile. While we deserve decent behavior from our fellow human beings, we have to earn their respect and love.

- Dennis Prager

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 Thus seeking unconditional love is a guarantor of unhappiness, if only because we would be seeking something that no one will give us (except dogs). Adult love is never unconditional. As much as any husband and wife love each other, that love is not unconditional. There are-and should be-conditions under which a spouse's love can be lost. For example, no woman should continue to love a man who beats her.

- Dennis Prager

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 In sum, causes are great meaning-givers, but they are best for the world when the people who attache themselves to those causes derive essential meaning in their lives from human relationship, not from the cause itself.

- Dennis Prager

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 Unfortunately, even the answer “a good person” does not ensure character development. Among too many parents, “a good person” has come to mean holding the proper political positions. Many parents, especially among the best educated, believe that if their child believes that America is racist; that all whites have “white privilege”; that patriarchy is a serious problem and needs to be eradicated; that carbon emissions threaten life on Earth, that economic inequality is a great evil; that there are scores of genders; that Republicans are deplorable people; and other left-wing positions, then their child is good person.

- Dennis Prager

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 U = I - R. The amount of Unhappiness equals Images minus Reality.

- Dennis Prager

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 We are completely satisfied with nothing...That human nature is the greatest single obstacle to happiness is too rarely pointed out by those who speak or write about happiness. First, it strikes many people as too pessimistic. Second, citing our own nature as the greatest obstacle to happiness means that to be happy, we have to battle ourselves, and this is not something many people want to hear. Third, it undermines the common desire to attribute one's unhappiness to outside forces.

- Dennis Prager

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 our brain, not our nature, must determine our happiness.

- Dennis Prager

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 Because human nature is insatiable, our brain, with its rational and philosophical abilities, not our nature, must be the arbiter of whether we are happy. We must be able, in effect, to tell our nature that although we hear it and respect it, our mind, not our nature, will determine whether we are satisfied.

- Dennis Prager

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 Tension provides a good example. Since tension is painful, people try to avoid it, and in so doing they decrease their chances for happiness. For tension is necessary to all growth. A life without tension is a shallow life; so shallow that an absence of tension characterizes animal o plant life more than it does human life. If you have tension in your life, it means that you face competing demands-a characteristic of a full life, not an unhappy one.

- Dennis Prager

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 Leftists might respond that Kaepernick’s public refusal to stand for the flag and national anthem says nothing about his love for America, as it is only a form of protest against racial injustice. But that is nonsense. Would leftists argue that anyone who publicly refuses to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day really loves Dr. King?

- Dennis Prager

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 If it were in our nature to be fully satisfied, we would have not motivation to accomplish anything in either the worldly or the personal realm.

- Dennis Prager

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 Leftists routinely describe America as racist, sexist, xenophobic, imperialist, genocidal, homophobic, obsessed with money and morally inferior to most Western European countries. No moral person could love such a place. As one person commenting on a Paul Krugman column wrote, “Does loving your country mean you love or ignore the fact that we destroyed Iraq, shot down an Iranian commercial airliner, and waged a brutal war in Asia for reasons that today make no sense?”

- Dennis Prager

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 Sometimes we have to change our reality; sometimes our reality need not, or cannot, be changed, only celebrated or at least made peace with.

- Dennis Prager

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 You know what nature tells you nature says the survival of the fittest you know that the hospital is the most unnatural thing in the universe because it's survival of the least fit it's the opposite of nature the opposite if you let nature guide you which that science science is the survival of the fittest should we apply it to human life then close every Hospital.

- Dennis Prager

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 Where do you get good and evil from science I do get that from the 10 commandments I do get that from love your neighbor as yourself love the stranger that's why we get and that's why the Western world abolish slavery before anybody else it had slaves which was terrible but everyone had slaves so the only moral question is why did anybody abolish it not why did anybody have it if an evil is universal the only question to ask is why did it end not why was it there?

- Dennis Prager

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 RACISM HOAXES 7-12 No. 7: Bowling Green State University (2016): “Bowling Green police say student lied about politically driven attack” (ABC). “The day after the 2016 election, Eleesha Long, a student at Bowling Green State University — about 90 miles west of Oberlin — said that she was attacked by white Trump supporters, who threw rocks at her. Police concluded that she had fabricated the story” (City Journal). No. 8: Dreadlock cutting hoax (2019): “A black student at a Christian school in Virginia who accused three white sixth grade boys of cutting her dreadlocks and calling her ugly now says she was lying about the attack” (NBC). No. 9: Jussie Smollett (2019): In one of the most notorious hoaxes, actor Jussie Smollett claimed he was attacked by white racists in Chicago on a freezing night. The story was a hoax. The “noose” was a rope his two co-conspirators had purchased for staging the “attack.” No. 10: Oakland’s Lake Merritt (2020): After the city of Oakland launched a hate crime investigation regarding a noose hanging from park trees, Victor Anari Sengbe, a black man, tweeted: “It’s not a noose, this guy climbed the tree and put up the rope for a swing months ago, folks used it to exercise… ITS NOT A NOOSE.” Nevertheless, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf then tweeted, “Intentions do not matter. We will not tolerate symbols of hate in our city. The nooses found at Lake Merritt will be investigated as hate crimes.” No. 11: NASCAR (2020): A “noose” was found in the Talladega, Alabama, racetrack garage assigned to black NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace. FBI investigators determined it to be one of several such ropes placed sometime the year before in Talladega garages as door pulls, long before that garage was ever assigned to Wallace. But Wallace continued to maintain it was, in fact, a noose. No. 12: University of La Verne (2020): “Racist Threats and Attacks that Rattled a California University Campus Were Faked, Police Say” (Newsweek).

- Dennis Prager

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 Karl Marx saw man as primarily motivated by economics; Sigmund Freud saw man as primarily driven by the sexual drive; Charles Darwin, or at least his followers, see us as primarily driven by biology. But Frankl was right. As regards economics, poor people who have meaning can be happy, but wealthy people who lack meaning cannot be. As regards sex, people who do not have a sexual life (such as priests, who keep their vow of chastity; many widowed and divorced older people; and others) but have meaning can be happy. Sexually active people who do not have meaning cannot be. As regards biology, there is no evolutionary explanation for the need for meaning. Every creature except the human being does fine without meaning. And nothing has given Americans – or any other people, for that matter – as much meaning as religion. But since World War II, God and religion have been relegated to the dustbin of history.

- Dennis Prager

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 Regarding adultery, that sin is for spouses and God to judge. There is no connection between marital sexual fidelity and moral leadership. I wish there were. And as regards the “Access Hollywood” tape, every religious person, indeed every thinking person, should understand that there is no connection between what people say privately and their ability to be a moral leader. That’s why I wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal 20 years ago defending Hillary Clinton when she was charged with having privately expressed anti-Semitic sentiments.

- Dennis Prager

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 Here are six reasons to believe the left hates America: 1. No one denies that the international left — the left in Europe, Asia, Latin America and elsewhere — hates America. Therefore, in order to argue that American leftists do not hate America, one would have to argue that on one of the most fundamental principles of international leftism — hatred of America — American leftists differ with fellow leftists around the world: All the world’s left hates the U.S., but the American left loves it. This, of course, makes no sense. Leftists around the world agree on every important issue. Why, then, would they differ with regard to America? Has any leftist at The New York Times, for example, written one column critical of the international left’s anti-Americanism?

- Dennis Prager

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 Finally, if leftists do not love America, what do they love? According to their own rhetoric, they love the planet — Mother Earth, as they frequently refer to it. And they love animals. They really love power, and they claim to love material equality. They don’t love Western culture — and they now dismiss praise for it as a euphemism for white supremacy.

- Dennis Prager

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 If there is a God, no Higher Being, no ultimate guiding hand that imbues creation with meaning and purpose, then creation does not have those qualities. As much as we may find our work, family, friends, and social causes a source of meaning, a secular universe means that there is no ultimate meaning to any of these things. We have made up all these meanings in order not to despair. It is quite difficult to be happy if we stare into the mirror each morning and see only the random product of meaningless forces, stellar dust that happens to be self-aware.

- Dennis Prager

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 In all my studies of happiness, on of the most significant conclusions I have drawn is that there is little correlation between the circumstances of people's lives and how happy they are.

- Dennis Prager

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 For example, though nearly everyone would acknowledge that having good friends is far more meaningful-and far more important to happiness-than having great professional success at work few of us would characterize a man who was moderately successful at work but who had deep and loving friendship as a "Great Success." At the same time, we routinely call wealthy men successful without knowing whether they have a friend in the world. I do not foresee a worldwide movement to use the term success more accurately, though such a movement would in fact greatly increase human happiness. But until we reach such a blessed time, we should forthrightly acknowledge that our current definition of success is more conducive to increasing unhappiness than happiness.

- Dennis Prager

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 People who have chosen to regard themselves as victims cannot allow themselves to enjoy life, because enjoying life would challenge their perception of themselves as victims.

- Dennis Prager

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 Drugs such as Prozac no more make a person happy than a cast on a broken leg makes a person a track star. The leg cast enables the leg to heal so that a person may eventually be able to run again.

- Dennis Prager

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 Perhaps the best way to understand depth is to think of growth: we become deeper when we struggle to grow-emotionally, morally, psychologically, intellectually, and in wisdom. Note, please, that struggle is part of depth. Very little that is acquired easily is deep.

- Dennis Prager

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 One reason is that we are far more capable of handling life's tragedies when we have some explanation for them.

- Dennis Prager

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 A lack of clarity suggests that our life is in chaos; chaos suggests meaninglessness; and meaninglessness guarantees unhappiness.

- Dennis Prager

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 Clarity cannot change everything that will happen in our life, and it will certainly not change anything that has happened, but it transforms us from passive bystanders to actors.

- Dennis Prager

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 People who make doing good and attaining good character more important goals than achieving happiness achieve happiness as a by-product of that goal.

- Dennis Prager

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 This is one reason young single people more readily give their lives over to causes than do married adults. Since they have no spouse or children, rarely have the deep friendships that come with age, and are unlikely to have life-fulfilling work, a cause becomes their greatest source of meaning and therefore of happiness (and even of relationships-with other members of the cause).

- Dennis Prager

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 But parents can bequeath their children a priceless gift by offering them a philosophy of life. It will do more to ensure a child's future happiness than almost anything else a parent can give.

- Dennis Prager

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 Pay as much attention to how these people treat others, especially people from whom they need nothing, as to how they treat you. Watch, for example, how you prospective friends treat waiters and waitresses. Do they treat them as inferiors to be ordered around or with politeness and generosity?

- Dennis Prager

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 Aside from giving the universe meaning, religion infuses the individual's day with transcendence, provides a supportive community for life's best and worst moments, teaches gratitude, bonds parents and children, keeps the individual in touch with the past and hopeful for the future, offers the individual regular opportunities to get in touch with the holy, teaches self-control, and provides meaningful holy days, not merely days off-all of which are essential to happiness.

- Dennis Prager

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 I have much more in common with a conservative atheist than I do with the left-wing Jew.

- Dennis Prager

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 I do not know whether such a study has been made, but I doubt that there is a correlation between hair and happiness-and if there is, it is a direct result of bald men attributing too much importance to their missing hair and allowing it to make them unhappy.

- Dennis Prager

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 We often proclaim whatever we think is missing in another person to be the most important trait. A trait that we believe-or that is in fact-missing in our child becomes the most important trait in a child. A trait we perceive as missing in our spouse becomes the most important trait in a husband or wife. And to make things worse, we then find this trait in other people's children or spouses.

- Dennis Prager

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 Success at work cannot be equated with happiness, but work can still be a major source of happiness-if the work is joyful and meaningful.

- Dennis Prager

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 The pursuit of financial success is destructive when engaged in for its own sake and not for reasons that increase happiness.

- Dennis Prager

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 ...once biochemical healing begins, people should be able and inspired-since the fog is finally beginning to lift-to confront the psychological origins of their depression (which may be the ultimate cause of the biochemical imbalance.)

- Dennis Prager

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 ...people need a sense of purpose to maintain a will to live.

- Dennis Prager

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 If you value growth, you will value virtually every situation because there are very few situations from which you cannot learn and therefore grow.

- Dennis Prager

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 Let us make this clear: this rule applies to every action people undertake. If you ever think that there is no price being paid for a decision you have made, you have not thought the issue through.

- Dennis Prager

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 Some people may perceive having always to ask, "what price do I pay?" as depressing. It is not at all depressing; in fact, it immeasurably adds to your happiness. First, it enormously helps to prevent unhappiness caused by later shock and disappointment when you do become aware of the prices paid. Second, this rule makes it clear that whatever else you would choose would also exact a price, very possibly a much steeper one.

- Dennis Prager

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 The lower and bad parts of human nature are not only unobjectionable, they can actually be beneficial. Think about it: would you rather be married to fa faithful person who has little lust or to a faithful person who has a lustful nature that he or she controls? Most of us would prefer the latter-because that person is both more alive and more moral (there is no virtue in not acting on a desire that doesn't exist).

- Dennis Prager

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 We often think that the moral life and the psychologically healthy life are in conflict because the former demands suppression and the latter, expression. This not true. Not only can one be both moral and psychologically healthy but, at their best, moral behavior and psychological health are complementary. In general, psychological health better enables a person to act morally (though it doesn't ensure it); and we are most psychologically healthy when we are most capable of controlling ourselves.

- Dennis Prager

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 ...self control goes against zeitgeist, the spirit of our times, which glorifies getting all we want and makes us feel deprived and even somewhat of a failure if we do not. If medieval religious attitudes are associated with self-denial, modern secular attitudes are identified with denying ourselves nothing.

- Dennis Prager

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 First, only marriage combines all three forms of companionship-a spouse is family, best friend, and permanent companion. That is why it is widely held that while the death of a child is the most painful loss, the death of a spouse is the most disorienting one. Second, unlike all other family relationships and unlike all other friendships, marriage alone combines those elements with sex, a uniquely powerful form of bonding. Third, unlike other family relationship, which are nearly all unequal (parent-child; older sibling-younger sibling), a good marriage is a relationship of equals. Fourth, unlike both family and friends, we are with our wife or husband virtually every day. And the concept of "quality time" notwithstanding, quantity of time is a quality, on that has a powerfully bonding effect. Women intuitively know this better than men, which is why it is they who generally demand more time with their spouse.

- Dennis Prager

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 This is an example of the connection between goodness and happiness. Good people bring good people into their lives, and good people in our lives bring us happiness. The people we bring into our lives are somewhat like a mirror of ourselves-and as with all mirrors, what we see may sometimes disturb us. If you find that you repeatedly bring unsavory people into your life, either there is a something missing in your own character or your good character is being sabotaged by a troubled emotional life.

- Dennis Prager

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 “I vote for the man (or woman), not the party” is what millions of Americans say and what, in fact, many do. It is intended as a noble sentiment: “I am not one of those Americans who votes blindly by party; I measure each candidate and then decide which one to vote for.”

- Dennis Prager

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 They use whatever makes them different as a shield to prevent them from focusing on what truly ails them.

- Dennis Prager

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 Happiness is largely, though certainly not entirely, determine by us-through hard work (most particularly by controlling our nature) and through attaining wisdom (i.e., developing attitudes that enable us to despair). Everything worthwhile in life is attained through hard work. Happiness is not an exception.

- Dennis Prager

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 How do you begin minimizing expectations? First, do not fear that not having expectations will make you either less optimistic or less successful. Second, acknowledge, the destructive role that expectations usually play in your life. Third, take an inventory of your life and begin to express gratitude for all the good in it. With each thing for which you regularly express gratitude, you will implicitly end your expectations of having it.

- Dennis Prager

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 It is easier to perform surgery than to raise happy, healthy, good children-and surgeons are given years of specialized training, while most of us have to raise human beings from babyhood to adulthood with nothing but our own parents' often very faulty model to guide us.

- Dennis Prager

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 But when most unhappy people blame others, they do so because that is easier than to acknowledge life's complexity or to search within for the sources of their unhappiness.

- Dennis Prager

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 When most people think of success they think of professional and material success. It is this type of success that cannot be equated with happiness. There are, however, myriad forms of success that do lead to happiness: success in love, in relationships, in child rearing, in touching others' lives, in becoming deeper, in gaining wisdom, in doing good, and in learning about oneself.

- Dennis Prager

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 Most people believe in this equation: H = nF, or the amount of Happiness equals the Number of Fun experiences.

- Dennis Prager

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 While it is obvious that having expectations increases unhappiness when the expectations are not met, less obvious is the fact that expectations equally increase unhappiness when they are met.

- Dennis Prager

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 That is why, for example, when we give children so much that they come to expect more and more, we actually deprive them of the ability to be happy-because they have less and less gratitude. This is why it is so important to teach children always to say "Thank you"-not only because it is the decent thing to do but because saying the words inculcates gratitude in the person saying them.

- Dennis Prager

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 But first it is important to explain once again that expectation means taking for granted that something will happen or regarding something as virtually inevitable-as, for example, the sun rising tomorrow.

- Dennis Prager

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 With regard to having expectations of others, the same rule applies-we an have expectations of other people only in matters over which they have complete control-but with on additional emendation: we should have fewer expectations of others than of ourselves (for our sake and for theirs).

- Dennis Prager

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 However, not having expectations does ensure two beautiful things: minimum suffering over unfulfilled goals and profound gratitude over goals that are fulfilled. There is little in life that gives so much at so little cost as not having expectations.

- Dennis Prager

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 There is one major exception to not having expectations. Young children have every right to, indeed should, expect unconditional love from their parents. It is the birthright of every child to receive such love.

- Dennis Prager

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 The disadvantages of having expectations-lowered gratitude when they are fulfilled and gratuitous pain when they are not-greatly outweigh any advantages expectations may have.

- Dennis Prager

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 Expecting to get what we want is immaturity, no optimism, and adults cannot long sustain happiness while holding immature beliefs.

- Dennis Prager

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 Optimism has two dictionary definitions. One is the more immature one: "A tendency to expect the best possible outcome." The other is "To dwell on the most hopeful aspects of a situation."

- Dennis Prager

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 It is easy to understand why nature made conceiving children as pleasurable and as easy as possible-nature cares about the perpetuation of the species. But nature cares not one whit about the happiness of a species' individual members.

- Dennis Prager

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 How important an obstacle to happiness is the family? We can answer this by imagining how different the world would be if everyone were raised from birth by a happy, healthy, loving, attentive, and ethical mother and father (biological or adoptive). There would be far fewer police officers needed, far fewer wars fought, and far fewer books on happiness written. We wage battles within society, but the real battlefield for a better world, at least in a free society, is within the family.

- Dennis Prager

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 This book is not the place to argue for the existence of God or the validity of religion. My only argument here is that belief in God and religion gives a person an intellectual basis for seeing the world as something other than a cosmos apathetic to the cries of children-thereby providing an important means of pursuing happiness in a world filled with pain.

- Dennis Prager

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 Once you have determined what your missing tile is and whether acquiring it will really make you happy, you should do one of three things: get, forget it, or replace it with a different tile. If you do not do one of these three things, you will allow the missing tile to make you unhappy.

- Dennis Prager

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 If you equate happiness with success, you will never achieve the amount of success necessary to make you happy. There is always more success that can be achieve. Identifying success with happiness is like moving the goalposts back 10 yards every time your football team has a first down.

- Dennis Prager

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 Most people believe that happiness and fun are virtually identical. Ask them, for example, to imagine a scene of happy people. Most people immediately conjure up a picture of people having fun (e.g., laughing, playing games, drinking at a party). Few people imaging a couple raising children, a couple married thirty years, someone reading a great book, or people doing any of the other things that really do bring happiness.

- Dennis Prager

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 ...we must understand the major difference between fun and happiness: fun is temporary; happiness is ongoing. Or, to put it another way, fun is during, happiness is during and after.

- Dennis Prager

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 When used judiciously, they (amusements) help us maintain our happiness-by helping us to relax, by deflecting concentration away from our problems, and by enabling us to laugh.

- Dennis Prager

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 Because the enjoyment of amusements ends when the amusement ends, unhappy people can come to rely on amusements as an escape from unhappiness and constantly pursue them.

- Dennis Prager

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 Which group is happier-those who have fun eating all the fattening foods they enjoy, or those who have learned to usually deprive themselves of that fun and keep the body they want?

- Dennis Prager

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 A life devoted to avoiding fun is no more likely to lead to happiness than a life devoted to having fun. As in every other aspect of life, the middle road is the road to happiness

- Dennis Prager

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 A good way to understand the role of fun in happiness is by drawing an analogy to food and spice, with food representing life's basic needs and spice representing fun. We cannot live on spice alone; it is the food that spices make tasty that gives us the nutrition to live. But food without spices renders eating more of a chore than a joy. So too, we cannot live on fun alone, but living solely on the nonfun essentials of life renders life a chore, not a joy.

- Dennis Prager

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 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.

- Dennis Prager

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 Many of their parents worked assiduously to shield their children from pain and frustration, unwillingly teaching them that avoidance of pain is important to happiness and thereby preventing them from learning how to deal with pain.

- Dennis Prager

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 For the record, however, my religious outlook do not posit a God who gives all people unconditional love. The source of my understanding of God, the Hebrew Bible, which originated the idea of a loving God, does not hold that whether we are the torturer or the torturer's victim, God loves us the same. Indeed, it implies that God's love is conditional (see, for example, Exodus 19:5, where God's love of His people is conditioned up on their keeping His covenant). I believe therefore that even with regard to God, we must try to grow into adulthood. God's love of us is immense and forgiving (if we repent) but not unconditional. In fact, I would have a difficult time loving a God who loved everyone equally. It would mean that God's love was unmoved by anything we do, and I cannot love that which cannot be moved.

- Dennis Prager

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 Little in life can bring us the happiness that we derive from our family. A parent's love for a child is perhaps the most powerful positive force in human life, and the love between a husband and wife is unique in the intimacy and depth of its bond. The family, for good reasons, has been the building block of all higher civilizations. And when good, it is also our refuge in a hostile world.

- Dennis Prager

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 No totalitarian tyrant has a as much control over his subject as even the kindest parents have over their young children.

- Dennis Prager

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 And finally, when unhappy people try to help others by founding or joining social movements, they often do more harm than good. There are good reasons to fear social movements made up of unhappy people who want to bring about social change. Those left-wing and right-wing social movements that have destroyed tens of millions of lives were not composed of happy people.

- Dennis Prager

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 Fourth, the ubiquity of unjust suffering made me realize long ago the intellectual and emotional necessity of a religious outlook on life. It seems to me that it would be extremely difficult for a truly secular person to be happy if he or she were sensitive to and fully aware of evil and suffering. The nonreligious view of the world holds that this unfair and often vicious life is the only reality (i.e., there is nothing beyond this life) and that one is blessed or cursed is essentially a matter of luck; whether one is tortured or blessed matters not at all to an uncaring universe. To believe this while caring deeply about those who are cursed with terrible misfortune would seem to make happiness nearly impossible.

- Dennis Prager

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 People who regard themselves as victims do not see themselves as in control of their lives. Whatever happens in their lives happens to them, not by them.

- Dennis Prager

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 People who primarily regard themselves as victims see the world as unfair to them in particular. Just as the young student who always sees himself as "being picked on" is an unhappy soul, so is the person who carries that attitude into adulthood.

- Dennis Prager

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 People who regard themselves primarily as victims are angry people, and an angry disposition renders happiness impossible

- Dennis Prager

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 Such victims may be divided into five types: victims of their childhood, victims of membership in a group victims of whatever makes them different, victims of perceived slights, and victims of deserved consequences.

- Dennis Prager

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 But as much as the label victim applies to those hurt by their parent(s), to carry around a victim identity thoroughly undermines a person's ability to become happy.

- Dennis Prager

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 So common is it to inherit problems from parents that UCLA psychiatrist Dr. Stephen Marmer maintains that if we pass on to our children just half the neuroses we were given by our parents, we will have been exemplary parents.

- Dennis Prager

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 That is a major reason I have found little relationship between the circumstances of people's lives and their level of happiness. If external circumstances determined people's happiness, happiness would be a simple rather than a complex subject. We would know whether people were happy simply by knowing their external circumstances, and we would never have to work on our happiness because we would never have any control over it.

- Dennis Prager

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 The fact that such equations do not exist should convince anyone that blaming others or outside forces for our unhappiness is usually a mistake. Others can certainly contribute to our happiness or unhappiness, but it is we who make the final determination about how much we will allow others to affect our lives.

- Dennis Prager

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 Furthermore, as with addiction to drugs, addiction to self-pity can render a person destructive to self and others-destructive to the self because it is easy to wallow in self-pity and allow it to paralyze action; destructive to others because the more that people consider themselves victims, the angrier they will be and the likelier they are to lash out at others.

- Dennis Prager

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 Lest there be a terrible imbalance in insatiability between the sexes, God or nature gave women a correspondingly insatiable urge and wisely ensured that it be an urge that works in the opposite direction of the male urge. If women equally possessed the male drive for numerous partners, the world would self-destruct: few people would marry and make a family, nothing lasting would be built, men and women would devote their lives to lust satiation, unattractive men and women would be ignored, and the human race would differ little from the animal kingdom.

- Dennis Prager

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 Furthermore, when I was hired, I experienced immense gratitude largely because I did not have such expectations, surely more gratitude than if I had expected the job. For most people in most circumstances, expectations are unnecessary impediments to happiness. When expectations are unfulfilled they cause gratuitous pain, and when they are fulfilled, they diminish gratitude, the most important element in happiness.

- Dennis Prager

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 If you take black and white left-wing rhetoric seriously, blacks are not human beings like members of other races. They are first and foremost black; they are human beings defined before anything else by their color — not their humanity, their personality, their character, their mind or their heart. So much so that, according to white and black leftists, if you dissent from this racist view, you are now labelled racist.

- Dennis Prager

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 Many women, for example, find themselves repeatedly attracted to men who do not control their passions-and are repeatedly hurt by them-while they reject equally passionate men who do control themselves, erroneously dismissing these men as less exciting. This phenomenon is known as the "the jerks always get the girl."

- Dennis Prager

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 The idiocy and inhumanity (literally) of this, the “progressive” view of black people, is easily demonstrated. Do any blacks see themselves first as black? When a black man, let’s call him James, looks into the mirror, does he first see a black person, or does he see James? When a white woman, let’s call her Karen (I’m playing with the left here), looks into the mirror, does she first see a white person, or does she see Karen? Does any human being first see his or her color?

- Dennis Prager

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 Other than being white and male, we have essentially nothing in common. He is an atheist; I am a religious believer. He is Italian; I’m a Jew. He grew up poor and on food stamps in Los Angeles; I grew up in a solid middle-class home in Brooklyn. He had little formal education and never went to college; I grew up in a house of intellectuals and went to an Ivy League graduate school. Even though I cannot “relate” to his experience or he to mine, we are nevertheless very close because, in addition to that intangible thing that creates friendships, we have the same values.

- Dennis Prager

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 I do not see how a meaningless universe can produce meaningful lives, but I well understand why most people who believe in a meaningless universe do not wish to view their own lives in this way.

- Dennis Prager

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 We derive immense meaning from loving, being loved, belonging, and being needed-and all of these are obtainable in family life.

- Dennis Prager

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 Before citing other examples, it is crucial to point out that the fact that we can find good in virtually every situation is in no way the same as the belief that "everything turns out for the best." That belief is, unfortunately, nonsense.

- Dennis Prager

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 Nevertheless, the weakening of religion as a source of meaning for individuals in the modern era has been considerably more of a curse than a blessing. With the decline of traditional religion, tens of millions of people have looked elsewhere for causes to provide meaning, and the most popular of these have created enormous evil-ideologies such as chauvinistic nationalism, racism, Communism, and Nazism.

- Dennis Prager

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 We determine how much we will allow something to make us unhappy. That we can determine our emotional response to events is hard for many people to acknowledge. Most people think that events make them unhappy, that their happiness level is essentially dictated by what happens to them. But this is untrue.

- Dennis Prager

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 Without a philosophy of life, we do not know how to react to what life deals us.

- Dennis Prager

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 Without being able to place events into perspective-which comes from having a philosophy of life- we are at the mercy of events. Our ship has no destination and no compass.

- Dennis Prager

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 Most people wait until tragedy strikes before thinking about how to incorporate tragedy into their life. And then the shock is often too great to absorb into their emotional and psychological system. Although it may not always work, a philosophy of life ought to be regarded as an inoculation against despair. Many people have confronted terrible tragedy, retained their faith, and avoided despair-and they have done so thanks in large measure to having a philosophy of life.

- Dennis Prager

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 The story is told that the wise King Solomon commissioned a jeweler to fashion for him a magic ring that would cheer him when he was down and sober him when he got too happy. The jeweler came up with such a ring: engraved on it were three Hebrew words, gam zu ya'avor, "This too shall pass."

- Dennis Prager

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 First, are you growing through it? If you growing, what you are experiencing should be regarded as necessary tension; if you are not growing, only suffering anguish, it is unhealthy aggravation. Second, if you are incapable of being happy because of what you are experiencing, it is aggravation, not healthy tension.

- Dennis Prager

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 There are no free lunches. 1 Make peace with the fact that everything in life has a price. 2 Determine what the price is for anything you desire 3 Choose whether to pay that price or to forgo what you desire.

- Dennis Prager

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 When I finally married, I did so after thinking through the prices paid for remaining single and for being married. Marrying with such rational thinking about prices paid may strike some people as unromantic, yet a sober awareness of prices paid is far more likely to lead to permanent love than marrying based on romantic feelings alone. In every marriage, there are moments of greater and lesser feelings of being in love, greater and lesser feelings of passion. During the lesser moments, the rational faculties remind you why you chose to marry.

- Dennis Prager

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 At the other extreme, much of the modern secular world has no concept of the holy and therefore has little problem with lower feelings. Thus, for example, sexually explicit billboards and television shows permeate society, a great deals is done to arouse sexual feelings, and foul language in public is common.

- Dennis Prager

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 If evil thoughts help to destroy happiness, then how much more so does evil behavior. (If doing evil made people happier, the human species would self-destruct. But the problem is not that doing evil increases happiness; indeed, it decreases it. The problem is that doing evil increases immediate pleasure.

- Dennis Prager

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 Moderation has a bad name because it sounds boring. The truth is, however, that if you are moderate in your habits but passionate about life, you are more likely to enjoy more of life than if you either always give in to your lower urges or never do.

- Dennis Prager

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 It should be obvious that if human nature is the single greatest obstacle to happiness, controlling our nature is the single greatest step toward happiness. Yet when people think or write about happiness, self-control is rarely stressed.

- Dennis Prager

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 The only happy people I know are people I don't know well.

- Dennis Prager

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 If all of us realized that the people with whom we negatively compare our happiness are plagued by pains and demons of which we know little or nothing, we would stop comparing our happiness with others'

- Dennis Prager

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 But we pay a price for everyone's putting on a happy face-we start believing that life for everyone else is great.

- Dennis Prager

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 Two couples leave their homes to meet for dinner at a restaurant. Couple A have a big fight on the way to dinner, as do couple B. But when the two couples finally arrive at the restaurant, they all act as if everything is fine. "Hi, how are you two doing?" they both ask one another. "Fine, great. And how are you two?" they both reply. During dinner neither couple utter a word about their fight. Driving home, couple A say to each other, "Did you see couple B— how happy and in love they are? Why can't we be that happy?" Meanwhile in their car, couple B are saying the exact same thing: "Did you see couple A—how happy and in love they are? Why can't we be that happy?" Not only were the couples unhappy from their respective fights, they are now even more unhappy as a result of comparing themselves with the other couple! They suffer from what can be called compound unhappiness—just as compound interest is interest on interest, compound unhappiness is unhappiness over being unhappy. Such are the dangers of comparing ourselves with others.

- Dennis Prager

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 And if the fights were within the normal range of marital arguments, opening up and finding out that virtually every couple has fights, often about the same things, would have brought everyone closer together.

- Dennis Prager

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 The problem, of course, is that only in rare cases do people's spouses, work, or children live up to their images. Images, after all, are perfect, and life is not.

- Dennis Prager

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 But I could do so only after deciding to get rid of the images that had prevented me from celebrating what was eminently worthy of celebration-the family I now had.

- Dennis Prager

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 One can only guess at the magnitude of the number of people who deprive themselves of some happiness because they await the perfect happiness that only the realization of an image can provide.

- Dennis Prager

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 Everyone on the left and right cares about the environment. But caring about the environment is not the same as environmentalism. Environmentalism, for most of its adherents, is a secular religion. These people, many of whom refer to, and truly regard, the Earth as a goddess (Gaia, the name of the ancient Greek Earth goddess) worship the environment.

- Dennis Prager

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 But in the love of equals — i.e., the love between a man and a woman and the love of friends — it is not only all right to seek to be loved, it is a good thing. Taking the love of a spouse or friend for granted is perhaps the single greatest cause of marital divorce and the breakup of friendships. “What can I do to ensure his/her continuing love?” is a wonderful thing to keep in mind.

- Dennis Prager

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 We show love to those we love by doing what they consider loving, not necessarily by what we consider loving. A young man once called my radio show and told me he was not planning to give his girlfriend flowers or even a card, or to do anything special for her on Valentine’s Day. His reason was that he considered Valentine’s Day a creation of American capitalism — just another way to sell cards, flowers and gift items and increase companies’ profits. I asked him if his girlfriend agreed with him about the insignificance of Valentine’s Day. He said she didn’t, that, in fact, she thought it important that he do something special for her on Valentine’s Day. I then asked him if he considered birthdays special and expected his girlfriend to do or get something special for him on his birthday. He said he did. How would he react, I then asked, if his girlfriend dismissed the significance of birthdays the way he dismissed the importance of Valentine’s Day and ignored his birthday? He acknowledged that he would be hurt. Just as his girlfriend should make his birthday special whether or not she believes in the importance of birthdays, he should make Valentine’s Day special for her whether or not he deems the day special. We show love to the other in the way he or she understands it, not the way we do.

- Dennis Prager

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 And I have a certain view of life, and that is that most of the people don't fight.  This is why we lose.  More bad people fight than good people fight.  That's the only reason we lose.  (Applause)  And it's very distressing.  I don't know why.  Honestly, I don't know why, and I analyze things constantly, but I don't know why that's true. 

- Dennis Prager

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 That's why my favorite verse from the Bible -- I am a God-believing individual, and the Bible is the book of my wisdom, and I often debate which is my favorite verse, but I have to say, at this time, my favorite verse is, "Those of you who love God, must hate evil."  It is an actual -- It is a scriptural directive.  If you don't hate evil, you don't love God.  Okay?  It's simple as that.  And so there's a directive to hate evil.

- Dennis Prager

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 In any event, here is the example that I give if I only can give one example, and that is race.  We were taught that the liberal position -- there is no other liberal position -- is that race doesn't matter, that skin color is of utter irrelevance, that if you think color matters, you're a fascist.  You're a racist fascist.  That's the way liberals were taught.  Only racists believe race matters.  We, like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we believe character is everything.  Race is nothing.

- Dennis Prager

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 Today, race is considered everything.  Race is intrinsically valuable.  The last people to say this were the Nazis.  Now, I never compared the left to Nazis.  They're not opening up concentration camps.  However, it's either a fact or I should be held accountable for telling you a lie that the last idea prior to the current left to hold that race matters is the Nazis.  It's either true or not true, and if it's not true, I deserve to be called on it.  But if it is true, the left needs to be called on it

- Dennis Prager

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 Do you know that the University of California -- And this is on the internet.  They are proud of it.  They have issued a list of micro-aggressions, this nonsensical idea of you don't realize you're a racist, but if you say the following you really are a racist.  Here is an example.  It is officially a racist comment if you say, "There is only one race.  The human race."  That is considered to be, by the University of California, to be a racist comment.  That was the quintessence of liberalism when I grew up.  It is now considered right-wing racism.

- Dennis Prager

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 That is why, by the way, it is -- I learned -- When I was in graduate school at Columbia, I learned that the reason that people are having fewer children is affluence.  It's not true.  The reason people have fewer children is secularism.  Rich, religious people have a lot of children. 

- Dennis Prager

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 When I get a call from a caller it is never -- not once in 35 years has this not been the case.  Someone will call me up and if they mention that they have more than five children, I say -- So I say, "Don't answer me.  Just tell me are you an Orthodox Jew, a Mormon in good standing in your church, a practicing Catholic or an Evangelical Christian?"  They have been one of those four in every instance in 35 years of broadcasting.  I've never met a secular person with six kids, because there's no reason to do it. 

- Dennis Prager

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 Secular conservatism, in America in particular, should be an oxymoron.  This country has a trinity.  It is on every coin and every bank note.  "Liberty," In God we trust," "E pluribus unum."  "In God we trust" is not a throw-away line.  God means, and has meant, limited government in America.  Big God, little government.  Little God, big government.  It's inevitable.  De Tocqueville said that.  I didn't make that up.  It is ultimately a crisis of belief, a crisis not out of being believe -- that you believe in God -- I hope you do -- but it's a belief -- He doesn't believe in God, Murray, but he believes, he knows that at the core this is the issue.

- Dennis Prager

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 So what do they believe in?  Nothing.  That's why open borders is not a problem to the left.  Open borders only troubles those who want to preserve their civilization.  We, in this room, want to preserve American civilization, so we don't want open borders.  The left has no civilization to preserve, so, of course, they're for open borders. 

- Dennis Prager

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 Their positions actually make sense once you have their premises.  That's why this is -- This is the battle.  This is the greatest battle.  It is easy to defeat Islamism.  It is impossible to defeat internal termites.  Termites bring down your structure.  The left is the termite of Western Civilization, not liberals, the left.  When you understand that, you have to just then decide to fight, cause good people fighting is what we need.

- Dennis Prager

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 All right.  So let me talk to you in the time given to me.  I have a few things to state.  Western Civilization is in crisis, in massive crisis, and the reason is the left.  And if one doesn't understand that it is the left versus the West, one understands nothing about the modern world.  It is as simple as that.

- Dennis Prager

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 3. That is one reason the notion of “unconditional love” is foolish. The fact is, we all earn love, and it is a good thing to have to do so. What possible good purpose can the belief that your spouse loves you unconditionally — i.e., no matter how you act — serve? If we believe our spouse loves us no matter what we do, what would motivate us to be on our best behavior at all times? Why be kind even when we are in a foul mood? Why work to stay attractive if he will love me no matter how much I neglect how I look? Why continue to pay attention to her — like regularly calling her from work — if I know that even if I ignore her, she will continue to love me?

- Dennis Prager

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 2. Because it is the only love relationship between equals (again except for friends), it is the only relationship in which it is a good thing to seek to be loved. In other relationships, it is bad to seek to be loved. Parents who seek to be loved by their children will inevitably do a poor job as a parent. They may even damage their child. Leaders who seek to be loved by the public will be ineffective at best and dangerous at worst. One can only lead if he does not yearn to be loved. A teacher who tries to be loved by her students will likewise fail. Parents, leaders, teachers have jobs to do, and seeking to be loved compromises their ability to do those jobs properly. They should seek to do the right thing, and doing the right thing often means being not loved, even hated. If they seek any response from those they lead, it should be respect, not love.

- Dennis Prager

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 4. “God is love” is a half-truth. God is many things, and love is only one of them. One can just as accurately say “God is punishment” or “God is justice” or “God is truth.”

- Dennis Prager

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 However, at least one difference is unbridgeable-animals do not need to have meaning in their lives.

- Dennis Prager

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 Love conquers all pre-maritally. Not post.

- Dennis Prager

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 One of human nature's most effective ways of sabotaging happiness is to look at a beautiful scene and fixate on whatever is flawed or missing, no matter how small.

- Dennis Prager

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 Just imagine how adults asking the question would react to a child who gives that answer. And that answer would force you, the parent, to work on your child’s goodness. The moment you tell your child to answer, “a good person,” you will have to start communicating that you value their character more than their grades.

- Dennis Prager

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 1. Objective moral standards come from God. As I have written and spoken about in a PragerU video and elsewhere, if there is no God who declares murder wrong, murder can be subjectively wrong but not objectively wrong. So, while there can certainly be nonbelievers who hold murder, stealing and other actions wrong, without God, those are opinions, not moral facts. Without the God of the Bible, there are no moral facts. 2. God judges our behavior, and we are therefore accountable to God for our behavior. Outside of a religious worldview, there is no higher being to whom we are morally accountable. 3. Just as morality derives from God, so do rights. All men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, declares the Declaration of Independence. 4. The human being is uniquely precious. While the Bible repeatedly forbids cruel behavior to animals (cutting or tearing off the limb of a living animal to eat it as a means of preserving the rest of the animal, not allowing an animal a day of rest, not allowing an animal to eat while working in the field), only human beings are created in God's image. 5. The world is based on a divine order, meaning divinely ordained distinctions. Among these divine distinctions are: God and man, man and woman, human and animal, good and evil, and nature and God. 6. Human beings are not basically good. Therefore, the most important moral endeavor is making good people. Religious Jews and Christians understand that the greatest battle in life is with one's nature. For the opponents of Judeo-Christian values, the greatest moral battle is not with one's nature; it is with society (specifically, American society). 7. Precisely because we are not basically good, we must not trust our hearts to lead us to proper behavior. The road to hell is paved with good hearts. Feelings make us human, but they cannot direct our lives. This alone divides the Bible-based from those on the left. 8. All human beings are created in God's image. Therefore, race is of no significance. We all emanate from Adam and Eve, whose race is never mentioned. That many religious people held racist views only testifies to the almost infinite ability of people to distort what is good. 9. Fear God, not man. Fear of God is a foundation of morality. In the Book of Exodus, Egyptian midwives were ordered by the Pharaoh to kill all newborn Hebrew boys. They disobeyed the divine king of Egypt. Why? Because 'the midwives feared God.' In America today, more people fear the print, electronic and social media than fear God. 10. Human beings have free will. In the secular world, there is no free will because all human behavior is attributed to genes and the environment. Only a religious worldview, which posits the existence of a divine soul - something independent of genes and environment - allows for free will. 11. Liberty. America was founded on the belief that God wants us to be free. On the Liberty Bell is inscribed just one thing (aside from the name of the company that manufactured the bell). It is a verse from the Bible: 'Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land Unto All the Inhabitants thereof.' The current assaults on personal liberty - unprecedented in American history - emanate from those who reject the Bible as their moral guide (including more than a few Jews and Christians who have joined the assault, having been indoctrinated with anti-religious views in high school and college).

- Dennis Prager

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 “Well, that should be clear,” Prager said. “If ‘men give birth’ is offered as fact, then the word ‘fact’ means nothing.”

- Dennis Prager

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 Virtually every value liberals have held for a century is now held by conservatives and scorned by leftists. Therefore, America, in serious jeopardy of being lost, will be saved when people convince the liberals in their life that the left, not the conservative, is their enemy.

- Dennis Prager

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 If you talk about the great issues of the day with a left-wing friend or relative, that could be the last time you talk to each other. He or she is likely to unfriend you not only on social media but also in life. Leftists generally do not dialogue; they dismiss.

- Dennis Prager

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 A poor man who can make himself satisfied with his portion will be happier than a wealthy man who does not allow himself to be satisfied with his portion.

- Dennis Prager

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 The more expectations you have, the less gratitude you will have.

- Dennis Prager

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 Maybe, just maybe, the death of religion – the greatest provider of meaning, while certainly not the only – is the single biggest factor in the increasing sadness and loneliness among Americans (and so many others). A 2016 study published in the American Medical Association JAMA Psychiatry journal found that American women who attended a religious service at least once a week were five times less likely to commit suicide. Common sense suggests the same is true of men.

- Dennis Prager

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 I often recall what clergy of every faith have said to me: "I have been with many men approaching death; and not one has ever said, 'I only regret that I didn't spend more time at the office.'"

- Dennis Prager

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 First, instead of allowing the world's evil to prevent me from being happy-which would only give evil another victory-I have chosen to fight it to the best of my abilities.

- Dennis Prager

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 Pain in life comes from unfulfilled desires and expectations.

- Dennis Prager

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 For nearly all of us, personal meaning is derived from three sources-relationships (family and friends), work, and causes.

- Dennis Prager

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 I frequently play the recording of Obama’s statement on my radio show not only to explain a basic difference between Right and Left — the Left believes that America needs to be fundamentally transformed, while the Right thinks that America needs to be incrementally improved — but also for people to hear the crowd’s reaction.

- Dennis Prager

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 The combination of affluence and secularism produces boredom as surely as the combination of hydrogen and oxygen produces water. Without affluence, people have a built-in purpose: obtaining food and shelter, supporting oneself and one’s family, etc. And religion, with or without affluence, likewise has always provided people with meaning. Without religion, therefore, purpose is often lost. Add to that the number of people who are not married and do not have children (also a result of the combination of affluence and secularism) and you remove another universal source of meaning.

- Dennis Prager

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 The Left in America is founded on the rejection of wisdom. It is possible to be on the left and be kind, honest in business, faithful to one’s spouse, etc. But it is not possible to be wise if one subscribes to leftist (as opposed to liberal) ideas.

- Dennis Prager

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 Here’s one way to test my thesis: Ask left-wing friends what they have done to pass on wisdom to their children. Most will answer with a question: “What do you mean?” Then ask religious Jewish or Christian friends the same question. They won’t answer with a question.

- Dennis Prager

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 But, while political/social positions do indeed have a moral component, they are not necessarily related to a person’s character. With regard to young people, we should be much more concerned with how they treat their parents and teachers, how they treat their peers, whether or not they cheat on tests and how honest they are in general than their position on carbon emissions.

- Dennis Prager

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 In a video presentation at its 2012 national convention, the Democratic Party offered its answer: “Government’s the only thing that we all belong to,” the narrator said.

- Dennis Prager

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 Being optimistic or pessimistic isn’t helpful in any way. If you’re optimistic, you think everything is going to be fine and end up doing little to change things. If you’re pessimistic, you feel nothing you do is going to make a difference. Either way, you end up doing nothing. I’m not optimistic or pessimistic. I simply have to fight for good.

- Dennis Prager

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 Judeo-Christian values are essentially another term for biblical values. Judaism and Christianity are both based on the Old Testament — its God, its Ten Commandments, its admonition to love one’s neighbor as oneself, to love God, to lead a holy life, etc. Christians also believe in the New Testament, but only an opponent of Christianity would argue that the New Testament negates the values of the Old.

- Dennis Prager

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 I can be happy with what I have even though I am not satisfied with it.

- Dennis Prager

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 Maybe the coronavirus will awaken young people, who have been taught by nature-worshipping teachers and raised by nature-worshipping parents, to the idiocy of worshipping nature rather than subduing it. Nature, it turns out, is not our friend, let alone a god. If it were up to nature, we’d all be dead: Animals would eat us; weather would freeze us to death; disease would wipe out the rest of us. If we don’t subdue nature, nature will subdue us. It’s that simple.

- Dennis Prager

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 Only when you have the serenity to accept the things you cannot change will you recognize that the dissatisfaction you feel over them is indeed unnecessary.

- Dennis Prager

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 Douthat, one of the only religious (as in believing in and practicing a religion) columnists at The New York Times, added, “The threat of global warming, meanwhile, has lent the cult of Nature qualities that every successful religion needs: a crusading spirit, a rigorous set of ‘thou shalt nots,’ and a piping-hot apocalypse.”

- Dennis Prager

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 When you ask atheists, as I have for decades, what they believe in, the most common answer is “science.” There was a young man, an atheist, at the gym where I work out, who responded, “Science!” (in place of “God bless you”) whenever someone sneezed. There is nothing higher than science for an atheist because the natural world is all there is. So, worship of the Earth, the environment or nature is almost inevitable in a secular world.

- Dennis Prager

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 Nationalism is beautiful when it involves commitment to an essentially decent nation and when it welcomes other people's commitment to their nations. Nationalism is evil when it is used to celebrate an evil regime, when it celebrates a nation as inherently superior to all others and when it denigrates all other national commitments.

- Dennis Prager

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 But a fun-only life is as unfulfilling as dessert-only meals.

- Dennis Prager

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 America is the most successful country in world history — while being the most committed to capitalism and remaining the most religious of all the industrialized democracies. To the extent that America is great, that means two of the institutions the left most loathes — Christianity and capitalism — are also great.

- Dennis Prager

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 This is for their sake-they are autonomous human beings, not extensions of us, and for our sake-expectations of children often lead to gratuitous disappointment.

- Dennis Prager

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 The combination of taking a spouse for granted and not feeling or expressing gratitude to them is fatal to most marriages.

- Dennis Prager

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 For happiness is not available to the immature. And one of the prominent characteristics of immaturity is seeing oneself primarily as a victim.

- Dennis Prager

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 There is no forgiveness on the left, they're mean they think they're good they fool themselves leftism makes you mean They talk about love, but they hate If you can't accept that people can change and thirty years or forty years does not demonstrate a moral change There is something wrong with you This is central to our thinking
- Dennis Prager
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 You Don't rewrite history by taking down statues.
- Dennis Prager
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 The president is a Nazi. It's it's so if they're resistance for the Democratic Party to take on the label of the anti-nazi French heroes who were tortured to death when caught It's cheap grace folks, it's hey, let me think. I'm a hero when I'm a gutless wonder. They had guts the resistance because if they were caught in in in Germany or France They were tortured to death. In America, if you're part of the democratic or left-wing resistance, you get an op-ed in the New York Times. You're not tortured. It's a fraud to call it resistance. It is the first time in American modern history. Certainly since World War two which use that term that anybody has declared Its opposition to a president the resistance. But they've cheapened all terms whether it's rape or Nazi fascist It's just been cheapened and now resistance.
- Dennis Prager
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 The Left believes in big government the right believes in small government. This is a big deal Because the bigger the government the smaller the Smit is the citizen the bigger the government the more the corruption Because power corrupts. That's why why do you want to give people so much power? Do you understand? If you really care about goodness, you want smaller government? You know what the American ideal is. I Take care of me. I take care of my family and I take care of my community The left-wing ideal is the government takes care of me. The government takes care of my family the government takes care of my community Why is that a more noble ideal? Which will produce kinder human beings that's why conservatives per capita per income gives so much more charity than liberals Because the moral left you get like in Europe Europeans give almost no charity because they were raised with big government Why should I help my neighbor? The government will You think that's Noble you on the left you think that's a noble idea I don't have to do a damn thing for my neighbor because the government will That's what we are breathing in the United States. Why bother? Why bother marrying the government will take care of me if I have children, why bother marrying?
- Dennis Prager
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 They understood why they can do it and that brings me to the next difference are People basically good the left thinks people are basically good the right lives on earth.
- Dennis Prager
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 Jews after Auschwitz believe people are basically good. How do you are you out of your minds? And The answer is no we're leftists Because that's what the left teaches you Being they have to teach you people or basically or basically good because then they can blame racism and poverty on crime You get it. There's a very important belief on the left that people are basically good Why would a good person rape why would a good person murder? Why would a good person? Hold up a bank Because clearly if you're good, you wouldn't do those things. So they blame outside forces that's why this issue of are we basically good as so significant because the upshot of the belief is so Significant if you believe people are basically good you blame society for people's evil If you believe people are not basically good you blame them for their evil There's a very big difference It's it's it's not them it's poverty it's not them it's racism. It's not them it's guns Then amazing thing to blame guns no, no think about it. You know how bizarre that is blame guns Guns in good people's hands don't do bad guns in bad people's hands do bad. Why? Is that what? Five-year-olds understand that and I not a five-year-old fan. I don't think we have a lot to learn from five-year-olds
- Dennis Prager
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 That's what you have to understand you have to Violate the laws of common sense to take on a leftist idea. People are basically good. This is amazing They believe people are basically good but every white person in America is a racist That's pretty amazing all these good people became racists over isn't that over the period of time it's just astonishing
- Dennis Prager
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 Because it's not coherently thought through no left-wing position is coherently thought through left-wing positions are felt That's why feelings are such a big deal. So here's a big one to The left is big on feelings the right doesn't give a damn how you feel We give a damn how you act
- Dennis Prager
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 Because of how you t treat your mother, I don't judge you by your thoughts. I judge you by your deeds This this is everything everything that is why the the the left wing question is Does it feel good the conservative question is does it do good? They are often not related Raising the minimum wage to $15 in Seattle felt good, but it didn't do good it bucks a lot of young people out of work and they need work to start climbing the ladder of responsibility in life it put a lot of It put a lot of restaurants out of business, but it feels good It caused a lot of fast-food chains to simply automate you now order from an iPad Why will they have why well, that's a lot cheaper than 15 bucks an hour an iPad Does it do good is not a left-wing question. Does it make me feel good about me
- Dennis Prager
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 Half of half of the boards of directors must of publicly held companies must be female. That's equality, but it's not Liberty. I am not free to choose whom I want on my own board.
- Dennis Prager
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 You're allowed to deny the Holocaust in the United States, you're not allowed to deny the Holocaust in Europe There's a lot more free speech in the United States, but we're becoming because the left loves Europe more like Europe Hey, they ban hate speech will do it too and what's hate speech? Whatever we don't agree with That's all it means. That is all it means
- Dennis Prager
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 Liberty is a big value. We have the Liberty Bell. Not the Equality Bell
- Dennis Prager
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 They understood something the bigger the government the less the Liberty. That's why you need a big God Secular conservatives are terrific but they don't understand the importance of the American Trinity which is on every coin in God, we trust' applaud bassoon demand Liberty. You won't have Liberty if God disappears Because people have to feel that they are accountable to something higher than themselves in order to do good and it's going to either be a government or a god
- Dennis Prager
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 We think you're wrong. You think we're evil! It's a big difference you Have to think we're evil because you don't argue with us So we must be dismissed as evil there. Why do they call us racist bigoted homophobic xenophobic and so on because they don't have arguments.
- Dennis Prager
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 The founders believed in a republic the Left believes in a democracy It's a big difference that Is the reason that we have two senators from every state? States with 30 million people have two senators and states with two million people have two senators Because it's the United States of America not just America. They did not trust The great majority they want they didn't because they knew people are not basically good So they didn't trust just let's go in the majority Nope That's why there's an electoral college And that's why the Left hates the electoral college and they're trying to get around it now not using the constant a constitutional amendment process Colorado just today passed the law that all the electoral votes of Colorado will go to whoever wins the national vote So in other words if Colorado goes for candidate a and the country goes for candidate be tough Coloradans We don't care It's not it's a republic or as franklin said it's a republic if you can keep it He knew what this is in an experiment America is an experiment Every generation has to reaffirm the experiment or it disappears That's my worry The left believes America is racist bigoted imperialistic Conservatives believe America is the least racist country in the history of any multi-ethnic multiracial country
- Dennis Prager
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 This is essential to the left The Left believes that it is a bad Society President Obama did Racism is in our DNA he said and And and President Trump is accused of dividing the country Racism is in our DNA Said the black president of the United States Does there some disconnect here a racist country elected a black president and Didn't give a damn The only thing I cared about him was the color blue Because that's democrat. Not the color black. I This notion that conservatives are racist is one of the great Gargantuan big lies of history. I have asked conservatives when the thousand conservatives would be in an audience I asked them which they would prefer. Okay. It's a good example So I said don't cheer yet or don't vote yet. I would tell them what would you prefer? nine white male Christian liberals or nine black female lesbian conservatives Now why are you laughing Because it's obvious who weekly don't give a damn. None of the rest matters. Only your values matter. The rest is nothing We care about your values we don't care about your race
- Dennis Prager
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 It's just a given people in police states either like it or have no choice about it secondly the notion of I'm not Anti-jewish. I'm Anti-israel is so perverse as to be laughable it is it is perverse Let me just explain it would be like saying i've used this analogy my whole life it would be like saying I love Italians I love I love Verdi and Puccini and I love Ivaldi and I love Italian art and I love pizza and Italian food but I Believe Italy should be destroyed That is what anti-zionists argue we love Jews, but of all the 220 countries on earth only one is illegitimate and it happens to be the only Jewish one
- Dennis Prager
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 But what he said is plenty depressing. We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America Let me explain something the left wants to fundamentally transform the United States of America and Barack Obama was a leftist not just a liberal That's the given that's that's a code for being a leftist if you think America needs to be fundamentally transformed You can't have it both ways you can't say I love America and I want it fundamentally Transformed you don't want to fundamentally transform that which you love if any spouse ever said, you know, I Love my wife, but I would like to fundamentally transform her We would have a right to be skeptical if you really love her items, I'm sure a fundamental transformation is a good idea Likewise a wife about a husband hell I love him but I like him fundamentally transform It doesn't work. They don't know what they say because they say what feels right at any given moment
- Dennis Prager
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 In the final analysis, I have come to this equation Secularism plus affluence plus boredom equals leftism.
- Dennis Prager
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 Here's a rule. My friends. Happy blacks vote Republican. Happy women vote Republican. Happy Jews vote Republican happy. Happy Salamanders vote Republican. Unhappiness is The secret to Democratic success if we can convince you life is miserable
- Dennis Prager
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 While my only agenda of that hour and my book is to make people happier or enable them to be happier. I Realized after a number of years while it's not my agenda. It is a it is a factor. I'm making more Republicans. I Never thought of it that way, but as people get happier, they switch parties, they no longer see themselves as ruined by American life it's a very very important aspect of current American life and I'm coming near the end the list.
- Dennis Prager
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 Well on me, I said to the motto believe women I don't believe women and I don't believe men I believe evidence. I don't understand why that's controversial The idea that gender determines truth is perverse. It's just another perversity women don't lie That's it that's as absurd as men don't lie There are honest women and honest men and lying women and lying men.
- Dennis Prager
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 But you know here is another left-right difference the left doesn't believe in repentance The right does.
- Dennis Prager
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 RACISM HOAXES 1-6 No. 1: The Duke lacrosse team (2006): Three white members of the Duke University lacrosse team were falsely accused by Crystal Mangum, a black student at North Carolina Central University, with having raped her. The charges were all fabricated, but the American media and Duke University faculty rushed to judgment and devoted months to smearing the three lacrosse players and Duke University itself as racist. No. 2: UC San Diego library noose (2010): 'Student apologizes for noose in UC San Diego library' (Los Angeles Times). A 'minority student' was responsible for placing the noose in the university library. Previously, the Associated Press had reported, 'Anger boiled over on the University of California San Diego campus today, where students took over the chancellor's office to protest the hanging of a noose in a campus library.' No. 3: Truck at Oakland's Corporation Yard (2014): 'A reported 'noose' tied to the back of a city truck in August, which stirred already simmering racial tensions at Oakland's Corporation Yard, was not an intended act of racial harassment, a city-commissioned report has found' (Mercury News). No. 4: University of Delaware (2015): 'Nooses' Found Hanging on University of Delaware Campus Were Lanterns' (NBC). University President Nancy Targett had earlier announced, 'We are both saddened and disturbed that this deplorable act has taken place on our campus.' No. 5: The LSU noose (2015): It was widely reported that a noose was sighted at Louisiana State University leading to protests against racism there. It was later reported, 'LSU said a picture of what appeared to be a noose hanging from a campus tree Thursday was not what it appeared to be' (WBRZ). No. 6: University at Albany (2016): 'A state appeals court has upheld the University at Albany's expulsion of a woman who along with two friends falsely claimed to be the victim of a racially motivated attack on a CDTA bus in January 2016' (Times-Union). The three black women had attacked a white woman and then claimed they had been racially attacked.

- Dennis Prager

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 4. View of America: Liberals have always venerated America. Watch American films from the 1930s through the 1950s and you will be watching overtly patriotic, America-celebrating films-virtually all produced, directed and acted by liberals. Liberals were quite aware of America's imperfections, but they agreed with Abraham Lincoln that America is 'the last, best hope of earth.' The left, however, believes the left is the last, best hope of earth and regards America as racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, violent, and imperialistic. 5. Free speech: No one has been more committed than American liberals to the famous statement, 'I wholly disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.' But the left is leading the first widespread suppression of free speech in modern American history-from the universities to the tech companies that govern the internet to almost every other institution and place of work. Of course, the left claims to only oppose 'hate speech.' But putting aside the fact that the left deems 'hate speech' anything it differs with, protecting what you or I might consider hate speech is the entire point of free speech. 6. Western civilization: Liberals have always championed and sought to protect Western civilization. Liberals celebrate the West's unique moral, philosophical, artistic, musical and literary achievements, and have taught them at virtually every university. The most revered liberal in American political history, President Franklin Roosevelt, often cited the need to protect Western civilization and even 'Christian civilization.' Yet, when President Donald Trump spoke of the need to protect Western civilization in a speech in Warsaw, the left-wing media, also known as the mainstream media, denounced him. They argued that Western civilization is no better than any other and that 'Western civilization' is just a euphemism for 'white supremacy.' So, then, if liberalism and leftism are so different, why don't liberals oppose the left? In a nutshell, because they have been taught all their lives to fear the right. But as one of the best-known liberals in America, Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz, said, 'As a liberal, as an American, and as a Jew, I far more fear the left than the right.' Dear liberals: Conservatives are not your enemy. The left is.

- Dennis Prager

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 What's the difference between a liberal and a leftist? This question stumps most people because they think liberal and left are essentially the same. But they're not. In fact, liberalism and leftism have almost nothing in common. But the left has appropriated the word 'liberal' so effectively almost everyone-liberals, leftists and conservatives-thinks they are synonymous. But they're not. Let me offer you six examples: 1. Race: This is probably the most obvious difference between liberal and left. The liberal position on race has always been a) the color of a person's skin is insignificant and b) those who believe race is significant are racists. Meanwhile, the left believes the very opposite. To the left, it's the liberal attitude toward race-it's unimportant-that is racist. That's why the University of California officially lists the statement, 'There is only one race, the human race' as racist. And liberals have always been passionately committed to racial integration, while the left is increasingly committed to racial segregation-such as all-black dormitories and separate black graduations at universities. 2. Capitalism: Liberals have always been pro-capitalism, because liberals are committed to free enterprise and because they know capitalism is the only way to lift great numbers of people out of poverty. It is true that liberals want government to play a bigger role in the economy than conservatives do, but liberals never opposed capitalism, and they were never for socialism. Opposition to capitalism and advocacy of socialism are left-wing values. 3. Nationalism: Liberals believe in the nation-state, whether that nation is the United States, Brazil, or France. But because the left divides the world by class rather than by national identity, the left has always opposed nationalism. So, while liberals have always wanted to protect American sovereignty and borders, the left is for open borders. When the writers of Superman were liberals, Superman was a proud American whose very motto was 'Truth, justice, and the American way.' But that all changed a few years ago, when left-wing writers took over the comic strip and had Superman renounce his American citizenship to be a citizen of the world. The left has contempt for nationalism, seeing it as the road to fascism. Better that we should all be 'citizens of the world' in a world without borders.

- Dennis Prager

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 Those who do not fight real evil fight statues.

- Dennis Prager

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