Quotes by Alan Dershowitz

About Alan Dershowitz:

Alan Morton Dershowitz is an American lawyer, jurist, author, and political commentator. He is a prominent scholar on United States constitutional law and criminal law, and a leading defender of civil liberties. He spent most of his career at Harvard Law School where in 1967, at the age of 28, he became the youngest full professor of law in its history. He held the Felix Frankfurter professorship there from 1993 until his retirement in December 2013.
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When I was 14 or 15, a camp counselor told me I was smart. I had never been very good in school, but he told me once that I was smart but my mind operated a little differently.

Alan Dershowitz

Good character consists of recognizing the selfishness that inheres in each of us and trying to balance it against the altruism to which we should all aspire. It is a difficult balance to strike, but no definition of goodness can be complete without ...

Alan Dershowitz

I understand that it's good tactics to categorize me as a close-minded, unobjective extremist, but nobody that respects me has those views.

Alan Dershowitz

We all learn in school that the judicial, legislative and executive branches of government must check and balance each other. But other non state institutions must participate in this important system of checks and balances as well. These checking in...

Alan Dershowitz

I charge my wealthy clients a lot and put 10 per cent in a fund which I use to pay the expenses of my poorer clients. When the government gangs up on the poor schnook in the street, someone has to stand up for him.

Alan Dershowitz

In the Pentagon Papers case, the government asserted in the Supreme Court that the publication of the material was a threat to national security. It turned out it was not a threat to U.S. security. But even if it had been, that doesn't mean that it c...

Alan Dershowitz

The threat or fear of violence should not become an excuse or justification for restricting freedom of speech.

Alan Dershowitz

You know, it's ironic to me that Christians want to keep the Ten Commandments in our schools, because Christianity has abrogated four of the Ten Commandments. For example, the Sabbath day according to the Ten Commandments is Saturday, not Sunday. And...

Alan Dershowitz

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.

Alan Dershowitz

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.

Alan Dershowitz

It simply cannot be disputed that for decades the Palestinian leadership was more interested in there not being a Jewish state than in there being a Palestinian state.

Alan Dershowitz

I love discomfort. I mean, my whole life is discomfort. One reason I can never retire is that the idea of just sitting on the beach totally comfortable is not a desideratum in my life. I like ambiguity, I like conflict, I like uncertainly.

Alan Dershowitz

There is a paranoid streak in American life. Radio talk show hosts tend to foment that paranoid streak in American life.

Alan Dershowitz

I can't find anything in the Constitution that says you prefer the life of the mother, or the convenience of the mother if it's an abortion by choice, over the potential life of the fetus. Look, I think women, if they're required to not have abortion...

Alan Dershowitz

On television and in the movies, crimes are always solved. Nothing is left uncertain. By the end, the viewer knows whodunit. In real life, on the other hand, many murders remain unsolved, and even some that are 'solved' to the satisfaction of the pol...

Alan Dershowitz

Judges are the weakest link in our system of justice, and they are also the most protected.

Alan Dershowitz

I think mistakes are the essence of science and law. It's impossible to conceive of either scientific progress or legal progress without understanding the important role of being wrong and of mistakes.

Alan Dershowitz

I've thought hard about my psychological connections and I think I've managed to separate out the psychological from the legal, moral, and political.

Alan Dershowitz

The very concept of an Iranian university is an oxymoron. There are no free and open places of learning in that repressive theocracy. Dissenters are not given tenure; they are murdered, after first being tortured. Blasphemy, which is broadly defined,...

Alan Dershowitz

I love to play. I love, opera, hiking and museums. The one thing I don't do is sit. I have a tremendous amount of energy.

Alan Dershowitz

The defendant wants to hide the truth because he's generally guilty. The defense attorney's job is to make sure the jury does not arrive at that truth.

Alan Dershowitz

Author Bio

  • NameAlan Dershowitz
  • DescriptionAmerican lawyer, author
  • BornSeptember 1, 1938
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionAuthor
  • AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship