The Rational Bible Quotes

“Fear of God is a liberating emotion, freeing one from a disabling fear of evil, powerful people. This needs to be emphasized because many people see fear of God as onerous rather than liberating.”
― Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Exodus

“Gratitude: Only when people remember the good others have done for them will they have gratitude. Unfortunately, however, most people remember the bad people have done to them far longer than the good. Or to put it another way, gratitude takes effort; resentment is effortless.”
― Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Exodus

“One of the saddest facts of the human condition is that most people follow the herd. Sometimes, of course, the herd is morally right. That, obviously, is the ideal. But most good is achieved by individuals who have the courage to part from the majority when it is morally wrong. In addition, people tend to act worse in groups than when alone. The herd, not to mention the mob, emboldens people to do bad things they would rarely do if they had no such support.”
― Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Exodus

“Wisdom: People attain wisdom in large part by remembering what happened in the past. No generation can attain wisdom without studying and remembering the past. None of those who believed in the 1960's aphorism, ‘Never trust anyone over thirty,’ became a wise person. Without wisdom, all the good intentions in the world amount to nothing. Intending to do good without having wisdom is like intending to fly an airplane with no knowledge of airplanes or the laws of aerodynamics. Good intentions without wisdom lead to either nothing or to actual evil.”
― Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Exodus

“In many ways, gratitude is the most important of all the good character traits. It is the most indispensable trait to both happiness and goodness. One can neither be a happy person nor a good person without gratitude. The less gratitude one has, the more one sees oneself as a victim; and nothing is more likely to produce a bad person or a bad group than defining oneself or one’s group as a victim. Victims, having been hurt, too often believe they have a license to hurt others. As for happiness, if you think of all the people you know, you will not be able to name one who is ungrateful and happy. The two are mutually exclusive.”
― Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Exodus

“It is almost impossible to do good without wisdom. All the good intentions in the world are likely to be worthless without wisdom. Many of the horrors of the twentieth century were supported by people with good intentions who lacked wisdom.”
― Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Exodus

“African economists have argued that corruption—not Western colonialism, not lack of Western aid—is why Africa hasn’t escaped poverty. These economists have begged Western countries to stop giving monetary aid to corrupt African countries because nearly all the money goes to corrupt government officials and thereby further increases their corrupt power. Meanwhile, in Europe, North America, Japan, Singapore, and a handful of other countries, corruption is far more likely to be prosecuted and therefore far less prevalent. That is a major reason for their continuing prosperity.”
― Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Exodus

“Many intellectuals in the Western world defended the half-century (1959–2008) dictatorship of Fidel Castro of Cuba by noting, for example, under Castro’s rule the literacy rate in Cuba rose to a hundred percent. However, Cubans were not allowed to read anything forbidden by the communist regime. In the view of Castro’s defenders, it is better to be unfree and literate than to be free and illiterate. The Torah’s view, however, would seem to be the opposite; it is better to be free and illiterate, just as it is better to eat a poor man’s food and be free than to eat a rich man’s food as a slave.
Furthermore, the very concept of freedom carries with it the possibility of improvement of one’s circumstances. The illiterate are free to learn to read; the poor are free to work, retain the fruits of their labors, and improve their lot in life—perhaps even become wealthy, as so many have in the freedom of the Western, Bible-based world.”
― Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Exodus

“One of humanity’s most common character traits is ingratitude.”
― Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Exodus

“I love goodness and hate evil. My favorite verse in the Bible is ‘Those of you who love God—hate evil’ (Psalms 97:10).”
― Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Exodus

“Without remembering, wisdom is impossible (see comments on Exodus 10: 2). Wisdom is learning from our own lives and from the lives of others. Wisdom matters because good cannot be achieved without it. Good intentions without wisdom lead to either nothing or to actual evil. However much evil movements have appealed to the bad side of people’s natures, almost every one of them, communism being the most obvious example, also appealed to people’s good intentions.”
― Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Exodus

“Gratitude takes effort; resentment is effortless.”
― Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Exodus

“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed” (Genesis 9:6; emphasis added).”
― Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Exodus

“God gave the Ten Commandments in the no-man’s land of a desert rather than in the land of Israel, to signify these laws do not just belong to one people, but to all humanity.”
― Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Exodus

“needs to be emphasized because many people see fear of God as onerous rather than liberating.”
― Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Exodus

“Corruption is the primary reason societies fail to thrive; societies in which corruption is held in check prosper economically, socially, and morally. Nothing explains the success or failure of countries more than does the presence or absence of corruption.”
― Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Exodus

“Kidnapping people and selling them into slavery, as was done to Africans and others throughout history, is forbidden by the Eighth Commandment. Critics of the Bible who argue the Bible allowed such slavery, and defenders of such slavery who used the Bible, were both wrong. And lest there be any confusion about this issue, the very next chapter of the Torah specifies a person who kidnaps another—particularly when done with the intention of selling the victim into slavery—'shall be put to death’ (Exodus 21:16).”
― Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Exodus

“There is little question Islamist terrorists and molesting clergy have both played a role in the rise of atheism in our time.
No atheist activist is nearly as effective in alienating people from God and religion as are evil ‘religious’ people.”
― Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Exodus

“Belief in God means more than believing God exists; it also means believing God cares about us. After all, if God exists but doesn’t care about us, what difference does it make to us whether God exists? For all intents and purposes, there is no difference between atheism and the existence of a God who doesn’t care about us.”
― Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Exodus

“The Hasidic Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav (1772–1810) taught, ‘If you are not going to be better tomorrow than you were today, then what need do you have for tomorrow?’ To which Telushkin has added: ‘And if no one feels comfortable criticizing you, the likelihood that you will be better tomorrow is most probably nonexistent.”
― Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Exodus

“Most people, like the Israelites, complain far more often than they express gratitude. People frequently register a complaint with a manufacturer or service provider, but they rarely write a note of thanks for a job well done. We would all do well to consider writing a thank you note each time we write a letter of complaint. Similarly, and more importantly, too many people criticize their spouses more often than they compliment them. That is the road to an unhappy marriage.”
― Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Exodus

“During the Cold War between the democratic West and the Soviet Union, there were, of course, many in the West who said, ‘Better dead than Red [communist]’; but many others subscribed to the slogan associated with Bertrand Russell, the twentieth century’s leading atheist philosopher: ‘Better Red than dead.’ Russell’s slogan was consistent with that of much of the well-educated class in Britain. On February 8, 1933, right after Hitler came to power in Germany, the Oxford Union Debating Society held a debate on the resolution, ‘This House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country.’ The resolution passed 275–153. The vote made an impression on Hitler and Mussolini, as it revealed that many of England’s best educated would prefer to live under Nazism or Fascism than to fight for freedom and risk death.”
― Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Exodus

“The lack of attention to Moses’s sons here and elsewhere in the Torah—essentially nothing is said about them—needs to be explained. And the explanation is probably this: They did not amount to much. This raises the interesting issue of the difficulty many children of great people face in leading successful and satisfying lives. In a book about Moses, ‘Overcoming Life’s Disappointments’, Rabbi Harold Kushner writes about this: Sometimes the father casts so large a shadow that he makes it hard for his children to find the sunshine they need to grow and flourish. Sometimes, the father’s achievements are so intimidating that the child just gives up any hope of equaling him. But mostly, I suspect, it takes so much of a man’s [the father’s] time and energy to be a great man—great in some ways but not in all—that he has too little time left to be a father. As the South African leader Nelson Mandela’s daughter was quoted as saying to him, ‘You are the father of all our people but you never had time to be a father to me.’
Kushner relates a remarkable story he read in a magazine geared toward clergy, a fictional account of a pastor in a mid-sized church who had a dream one night in which a voice said to him, ‘There are fifty teenagers in your church, and you have the ability to lead forty-nine of them to God and lose out on only one.’ Energized by the dream, the minister throws all his energy into youth work, organizing special classes and trips for the church’s teens. He eventually develops a national reputation in his denomination for his work with young people. ‘And then one night he discovers his sixteen-year-old son has been arrested for dealing drugs. The boy turned bitterly against the church and its teachings, resenting his father for having had time for every sixteen-year-old in town except him, and the father never noticed. His son was the fiftieth teenager, the one who got away.’
Of course, this was not necessarily true of Moses’s children, but the silence of the Torah concerning his children (which is not the case with the children of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Aaron) serves as an important reminder to parents who have achieved success to be sure to make time for their children. They need to try to ensure their children feel they occupy a special place in their parents’ hearts and no matter how pressing the parent’s responsibilities he or she will always find time for them.”
― Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Exodus

“While an ever-increasing number of people consider themselves agnostic, the great majority of these people live as if they are atheists, bereft of all the magnificent life-enhancing benefits a God-centered life provides. These individuals are agnostics intellectually, but atheists behaviorally. Such people need to make a choice: Will I live as if there is a God or as if there is no God? You can be an agnostic intellectually, but you cannot live as an agnostic; you live as either a believer or as an atheist. You live either as if life is random chance or as if it is infused with ultimate meaning. Moses chose to look carefully and see a miracle in that burning bush. If we look carefully, we, too, will see a miracle—in everything.”
― Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Exodus

“One of the most important lessons of life—one I believe most people never learn—is that almost everything important is a choice. We choose whether to be happy (or, at the very least whether to act happy), whether to be a hard worker, whether to be honest, whether to be kind, whether to see miracles, and, yes, whether to believe in God (or, at the very least, live as if there is a God).”
― Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Exodus

“Human beings tend to much more quickly forget the good others have done for them than the bad others have done to them. That’s human nature.”
― Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Exodus

“God made nature, and is therefore not natural. This led to the end of the universal human belief in nature gods (such as rain gods). And sure enough, as belief in the Torah’s God declines, nature worship seems to be returning.”
― Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Exodus

“A rabbi challenged his followers one day: “Where does God exist?” Puzzled by what almost seemed to be a heretical question, they answered: “God exists everywhere.” “No,” the rabbi responded: “God exists wherever man lets Him in.”
― Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Exodus

“That’s the great question: Who sees the miracles of daily life? And the answer is: Whoever chooses to see.”
― Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Exodus

“This point is often overlooked: Fear of God is a liberating emotion, freeing one from a disabling fear of evil, powerful people. This needs to be emphasized because many people see fear of God as onerous rather than liberating.”
― Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Exodus