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Great research universities must insist on independence from government and on the exercise of academic freedom.

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
Must
Insist
Great
Academic
Independence
University
Research
Exercise
Freedom
Government
Universities

More quotes by 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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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
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Everybody says they're opposed to torture. But everyone would do it personally if they knew it could save the life of a kidnapped child who had only two hours of oxygen left before death. And it would be the right thing to do.
Alan Dershowitz
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In my neighborhood, everyone had an opinion on the local cantor. You didn't go to a synagogue to listen to the rabbi's sermon. You went to listen to the cantor. It was like a concert.
Alan Dershowitz
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Rights are not self-evident. They're not unalienable. They are subject to modification just like anything else.
Alan Dershowitz
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The law is agnostic about truth. It's very skeptical of ultimate truth. That's why freedom of speech permits lies to be told.
Alan Dershowitz
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The court of last resort is no longer the Supreme Court. It's 'Nightline.'
Alan Dershowitz
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Ideas don't desert you ideas aren't treasonous to you, but people can be.
Alan Dershowitz
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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
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Imagine a legal system in which lawyers were equated with the clients they defended and were condemned for representing controversial or despised clients.
Alan Dershowitz
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Censorship laws are blunt instruments, not sharp scalpels. Once enacted, they are easily misapplied to merely unpopular or only marginally dangerous speech.
Alan Dershowitz
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There are many levels of truth.
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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Freedom of speech means freedom for those who you despise, and freedom to express the most despicable views. It also means that the government cannot pick and choose which expressions to authorize and which to prevent.
Alan Dershowitz
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I never place limits on the potential success of my students. If they're going into acting, they're going to win the Oscar... If they're going into law, they're going to be chief justice.
Alan Dershowitz
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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 it.
Alan Dershowitz
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Asymmetrical warfare is a euphemism for terrorism, just like collateral damage is a euphemism for killing innocent civilians.
Alan Dershowitz
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Israel and the Palestinians must resolve their own differences. The United States can play an important role as facilitator and guarantor.
Alan Dershowitz
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Any human being has private thoughts.
Alan Dershowitz
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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