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Dennis Prager

American writer, speaker, radio and TV commentator

Dennis Mark Prager (born 2 August 1948) is an American radio talk show host, syndicated columnist, conservative author, and public speaker. He founded Prager University.

A person whose conduct consists of not hurting anyone is not good; such a person is merely not bad.
To be a good person involves the active pursuit of good. It is not enough merely to refrain from hurting other human beings; one must intercede on their behalf... You do not have to do something bad in order to do bad; you only have to do nothing.
Conservatives view America as President Abraham Lincoln viewed it; as the 'Last Best Hope of Earth.'
America gradually became the least-xenophobic, least-racist nation in the world. In no country do people become accepted as full members of the society as do immigrants to America.
The United States of America fought a horrific civil war that ended slavery. Yes, slavery was the reason for the Civil War. Every southern state that seceded from the United States announced that northern opposition to slavery and to its spread to new states was the primary reason for secession.
One doesn't fight only when one is optimistic. One fights because it is the right thing to do and because America remains, as Lincoln said, 'the last best hope of earth.'
The further left one goes, the more negative the assessment of today's America and the America of the past.

Quotes

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1980s

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The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism (1986)

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Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin, The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism. 1986.

  • A person whose conduct consists of not hurting anyone is not good; such a person is merely not bad. To be a good person involves the active pursuit of good. It is not enough merely to refrain from hurting other human beings; one must intercede on their behalf.
    • p. 43
  • Nor is it enough to refrain from personally performing an injustice, for in order to be good one must seek out and rectify injustices performed by others.
    • p. 43
  • The insufficiency of defining goodness as not hurting others is clearly demonstrated by the general assessment of the behavior of most Germans under the Nazis. According to this definition, most Germans during the Holocaust were good people, since they did not hurt anyone. Yet most of us do not consider such Germans good people, clearly indicating that we recognize the impossibility of defining a good person as one who does not hurt anyone.
    You do not have to do something bad in order to do bad; you only have to do nothing.
    • p. 43

1990s

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  • "I'm pro-choice, but I believe that most abortions are immoral. I take the nuanced middle ground."
  • "I'm a passionate moderate".
  • "If you drop desires, you'll never have a Salk vaccine."

Happiness is a Serious Problem:A Human Nature Repair Manual (1998)

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“Yes, there is a “secret to happiness”—and it is gratitude. All happy people are grateful, and ungrateful people cannot be happy. We tend to think that it is being unhappy that leads people to complain, but it is truer to say that it is complaining that leads to people becoming unhappy. Become grateful and you will become a much happier person."

"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.”

"You can allow any real—or merely perceived—flaw to diminish your happiness.”

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

"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’."

“The only people who have no bad tendencies are dead.”

“All happy people are grateful, and ungrateful people cannot be happy. Become grateful and you will become a much happier person.”

“Happiness is a moral obligation.”

“Everything worthwhile in life is attained through hard work. Happiness is not an exception.”

“A simple test to ascertain how much you enjoy and derive meaning from your work is to ask yourself whether you would continue doing it if you won the lottery.”

2000s

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  • The foolishness of that comment [equating meat-eating to the Holocaust] is so deep, I can only ascribe it to higher education. You have to have gone to college to say something that stupid.
    • Dennis Prager as quoted in "P.E.T.A." (1 April 2004), Penn & Teller's Bullshit!, Home Box Office: Regarding PETA's equating of the consumption of animals to the genocide of Jews in the Holocaust.
  • "I am for no law to be passed to prevent Keith Ellison or anyone else from bringing any book he wants to his swearing-in, whether actual or ceremonial. But neither I nor tens of millions of other Americans will watch in silence as the Bible is replaced with another religious text for the first time since George Washington brought a Bible to his swearing-in"

https://www.dennisprager.com/a-response-to-my-many-critics-and-a-solution/ (2007)


  • [I]f you look at Europe and see a continent adrift, with no identity and no strong values beyond economic equality and possessing little capacity to identify evil, let alone a will to fight it, then you need to start fighting.
  • The Left doesn't hate evil, it hates those who hate evil. On the Left there is a subliminal, subconscious deep understanding that they are inadequate to the job of fighting evil. That's why they get so passionate about trivia.


Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism (2003)

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Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin. Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism, 2003.

  • It is small surprise that among tyrannical regimes and their defenders, America and Israel are so often identified as the same enemy. This is not merely a consequence of America's standing along behind Israel; the United States has aided various Arab countries very generously, and it has on some critical occasions backed Arab regimes, such as Nasser's Egypt in 1956 and Saudi Arabia in 1981, against Israel. The hostility is aroused largely because America and Israel represent democracy, equal rights for women, a higher quality of life, and a willingness to confront despotism. That is why the two non-Muslim countries that have suffered the heaviest losses from Islamic suicide murderers are Israel and the United States.
    • pp. 194–195
  • Israel remains an embattled democracy in the midst of authoritarian states, and the birthplace of the kibbutz to which tens of thousands of youth from around the world have turned for a living lesson in human equality.
    • p. 195

2010s

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  • [A] child smacking an adult across the face is not funny. It is, in fact, one of the last things society should tolerate.

Why the Left Hates America (2015)

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Dennis Prager. "Why the Left Hates America" , National Review, 28 July 2015.

  • Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, the document that articulated the principle of human rights endowed by the Creator, thereby ultimately ensuring the end of slavery, and led to the establishment of the country that has served as the beacon of hope for people of every race and ethnicity.
  • Conservatives view America as President Abraham Lincoln viewed it; as the 'Last Best Hope of Earth.'
  • [T]he further left one goes, the more negative the assessment of today's America and the America of the past.

A Dark Time in America (2016)

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Dennis Prager. "A Dark Time in America", National Review.com, 3 May 2016.

  • The ideas that America should be a 'melting pot' or that all Americans should identify as American are now unutterable in educated company. Indeed, many college campuses do not have an American flag on their campus because some students regard it as 'offensive' — representing imperialism and capitalism.
  • I will not end on a happy note, because there isn't one. But neither do I despair. One doesn't fight only when one is optimistic. One fights because it is the right thing to do and because America remains, as Lincoln said, 'the last best hope of earth.'

The Scariest Reason Trump Won (2016)

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Dennis Prager. "The Scariest Reason Trump Won", National Review, 10 May 2016.

  • The majority of Republicans are not conservative.
  • Most Americans no longer know what America stands for. For them, America has become just another country, a place located between Canada and Mexico. But America was founded to be an idea, not another country.

Why Most Jews Aren't Bothered By The Times' Anti-Semitic Cartoon (2019)

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Dennis Prager. Why Most Jews Aren't Bothered By The Times' Anti-Semitic Cartoon, The Daily Wire, 4 May 2019

  • Anti-Zionism is not criticism of Israel. It is a hatred of Israel — a hatred greater than that of any other country and a delegitimization of Zionism, the movement to reestablish the Jewish national home. Imagine someone who argued that the establishment of the Italian state — Italy — was illegitimate and who hated Italy more than any other country in the world yet claimed that he was in no way anti-Italian, as he had Italian friends and loved Italian culture. No one would believe such an absurdity.

2020s

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  • Women are used by feminists; blacks are used by Democrats; workers are used by Communists.
    • Dennis Prager, The Dennis Prager Show, Oct. 16, 2020, 9:38am PST live broadcast. In the context of the previous night's Presidential Town Hall where Joe Biden said he would made no distinction between men and women.
  • Affluence + secularism = cowardice.
    Affluence + boredom = Leftism.
    • Ibid. Mar-16-2021 11:55am


There were, undoubtedly, many nice slave holders in the south.

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