Quotes from Dennis Prager

As the Psalmist put it millennia ago, 'Those who sow in tears will reap in joy.' Many people, however, believe that they can both sow and reap without tears.

Given my view that tragedy is normal, I try to be happy unless something happens that makes me unhappy, rather than unhappy unless something makes me happy. Most people go through life waiting for something wonderful to happen to make them happy. My attitude is so long as nothing terrible is happening to us, we ought to be happy.

I dream of a day when governments and societies no longer value blood and race over children, and the millions of unwanted children are freed at birth for adoption by people of every race. Aside from all its other benefits, massive adoption is the best assurance that people will never again slaughter the other. When members of every family are one of those others, such hatreds will become, finally, impossible.

A life filled with tension can be a deeply happy one. A life filled with aggravation or stress cannot.

Most people believe if God performed a miracle—just one miracle—for them, they would surely and permanently believe in God. But, as explained in the commentary to Exodus 16:2, human nature doesn't work that way. The power of witnessing a miracle wears off quickly, and most individuals soon need (or merely want) another miracle. Over time, most people's attitude toward those who have done something good for them is: "What have you done for me lately?

By giving His Chosen People the name "Struggle with God," (in Genesis 35:10, it is God Himself, not just the "divine being" of this chapter) God was not only giving people permission to struggle with Him; He was actually asking us to. Doing so makes our faith authentic. And it is that authenticity which keeps us from turning into religious automatons.

Atonement is fundamental to the Torah, but much of the modern world has either forgotten its importance or deliberately rejected it.

The Torah and Judaism are behaviorist in their approach to life. How we behave is ultimately more important than how we think or feel. This is one of the greatest differences between the Torah and the contemporary mind, which attaches far more importance to how people feel.

When to get angry and when and how to express it are among the most important lessons humans can learn. Cain's rage at Abel is a classic example of misplaced rage.

If doing the bad thing never brought benefits, no one would ever do

This verse uses the Hebrew word milacha to refer to work instead of the more common word avoda. Milacha is not truly translatable; it is best understood as creative work—work that produces something.

We live in a world filled with evil and moral confusion. There is only one way out: affirmation of a God Whose primary demand of us is that we treat our fellow human beings decently. Faith in any god who makes any other primary demand will ultimately fail to solve the problem of evil. And any moral system that is detached from God, no matter how noble and sincerely held, will likewise fail