Dennis Prager Quotes

Thinking that morality is all about commandments is a relatively new way of thinking, since the Reformation.

Whenever morality is based on theology, whenever right is made dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, infamous things can be justified and established.

As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy.

The atheist is cheating whenever he makes a moral judgment, acting as though it has an objective reference, when his philosophy in fact precludes it.

The problem of good as it faces the atheist is this: Nature, which is the nuts-and-bolts reality for the atheist, has no values and thus can offer no grounding for good and evil. Values on the atheist view are subjective and contingent.

If there is no God, why bother to tell the truth? Why not steal?

Those of us who believe in God and derive our sense of right and wrong and ethics from God's Word really have no difficulty whatsoever defining where our ethics come from. People who believe in survival of the fittest might have more difficulty deriving where their ethics come from. A lot of evolutionists are very ethical people.

For most people, the question why be good - as distinguished from merely law abiding - is a simple one. Because God commands it, because the Bible requires it, because good people go to Heaven and bad people go to Hell.

God is the creator of all things, right? He is the force that dictates the laws of the universe, and is therefore the ultimate source of ethics. He is absolute morality... We claim to be doing good. But the Lord Ruler - as God - defines what is good. So by opposing him we're actually evil. But since he's doing the wrong thing, does evil actually count as good in this case?

Our judgements of good and evil ... presuppose God as the standard. If there's no God, there's neither good nor evil. There's just nature doing what it does

All universal moral principles are idle fancies.

I've learned a lot about good and evil. They are not always what they appear to be.

If God thinks proportionality is fair who are we to say that it is unfair?

I want to show people how there are variations and different interpretations of good and evil.

It's simply untrue that religion provides the only framework for a universal morality.

If power made one evil, then God would be the Devil.

The problem is that religion tends to give people bad reasons to be good.

If there is a God, whence proceed so many evils? If there is no God, whence cometh any good?

Anytime there's a God, there has to be a devil. And anytime there's good, there has to be evil. And the evil sometimes is the best!

I don't think anybody's all good or all bad.

What's distinctively shocking about Machiavelli is that he didn't care. He believed not only that politicians must do evil in the name of the public good, but also that they shouldn't worry about it. He was unconcerned, in other words, with what modern thinkers call 'the problem of dirty hands.'

God's truth judges created things out of love, and Satan's truth judges them out of envy and hatred.

It may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good.

Doing something because God has said to do it does not make a person moral: it merely tells us that person is a prudential believer, akin to the person who obeys the command of an all-powerful secular king.

There's no good guys and bad guys.