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Candor and accountability in a democracy is very important. Hypocrisy has no place.

Alan Dershowitz

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Alan Dershowitz
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: September 1
Lawyer
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Brooklyn
New York
Alan M. Dershowitz
Alan Morton Dershowitz
Democracy
Political
Place
Important
Candor
Accountability
Hypocrisy

More quotes by Alan Dershowitz

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I have no doubt that if an actual ticking bomb situation were to arise, our law enforcement authorities would torture. The real debate is whether such torture should take place outside of our legal system or within it. The answer to this seems clear: If we are to have torture, it should be authorized by the law.
Alan Dershowitz
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The struggle for morality never stays won. It's always in process.
Alan Dershowitz
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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, is punished. Gays are not only excluded from Iranian universities, but are imprisoned and killed.
Alan Dershowitz
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You can't think about terrorism without thinking about Palestinian terrorism. Palestinians began international terrorism. It started with them in 1968. They used it as the first resort, not the last resort. They invented it, they perfected it, they benefited from it and they taught the world how to use it and that it would be successful.
Alan Dershowitz
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I've written important articles on prevention, on the concept of the preventive state, how the law is moving much more in an area of trying to prevent wrongs than trying to deal with them after they occur. That will be my academic/intellectual legacy.
Alan Dershowitz
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Any human being has private thoughts.
Alan Dershowitz
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I generally don't select my chicken or my hamburgers based on the personal ideology of the person who is either flipping the hamburgers or making the money back at corporate headquarters. But if people want to do that, they're free to do it.
Alan Dershowitz
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All speech should be presumed to be protected by the Constitution, and a heavy burden should be placed on those who would censor to demonstrate with relative certainty that the speech at issue, if not censored, would lead to irremediable and immediate serious harm.
Alan Dershowitz
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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 couldn't be published.
Alan Dershowitz
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I tell my students, if you ever become comfortable with your role as criminal defense lawyer, it's time to quit. It should be a constant source of discomfort, because you're dealing with incredible moral ambiguity, and you've been cast into a role which is not enviable.
Alan Dershowitz
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Judges are the weakest link in our system of justice and they are also the most protected.
Alan Dershowitz
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Twenty five percent of Israeli citizens are not even Jewish. Anybody can become an Israeli citizen if you qualify. Religion is not a criterion for citizenship.
Alan Dershowitz
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I think extremists within the base may very well move the Democratic party away from its pro-Israel position.
Alan Dershowitz
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I have always considered Pascal's Wager a questionable bet to place. Any God worth believing in would surely prefer an honest agnostic to a calculating hypocrite.
Alan Dershowitz
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I'd require that every university, public or private, be governed by the constitutional standards regarding freedom of expression and due process. There is no reason for treating adult college students any differently in the university setting than in the outside world.
Alan Dershowitz
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I was a Jewish rabbinical student for 12 years, and studied the Bible all the time.
Alan Dershowitz
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There are many levels of truth.
Alan Dershowitz
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I believe that if Israel were to put an end to the settlements in the West Bank tomorrow, as it did in Gaza, there would still be reluctance on the part of the Palestinian Authority to recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish secular democracy.
Alan Dershowitz
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What the United States has to do is send a clear message to Iran that they will not be able to develop nuclear weapons. Why endure the difficulty of sanctions if they are not going to be able to develop nuclear weapons anyway?
Alan Dershowitz
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I feel like my 50 years at Harvard were an interlude. I'm really a New Yorker.
Alan Dershowitz