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Well, first of all, no professor should be able to say, I refuse to defend my position. I refuse to debate my position.

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
Defend
First
Debate
Refuse
Position
Able
Wells
Professor
Firsts
Professors
Well

More quotes by Alan Dershowitz

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The best answer to bad speech is good speech
Alan Dershowitz
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President Obama has earned my vote on the basis of his excellent judicial appointments, his consensus-building foreign policy and the improvements he has brought about in the disastrous economy he inherited.
Alan Dershowitz
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I have been defending Israel's right to exist, and to defend itself against terrorism, for many years-on college campuses, in television appearances and in debate.
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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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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The law is agnostic about truth.
Alan Dershowitz
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A criminal trial is never about seeking justice for the victim. If it were, there could be only one verdict: guilty.
Alan Dershowitz
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When I was growing up, my mother would always say, 'It will go on your permanent record.' There was no 'permanent record.' If there were a 'permanent record,' I'd never be able to be a lawyer. I was such a bum, in elementary school and high school... There is a permanent record today and it's called the Internet.
Alan Dershowitz
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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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The prosecution wants to make sure the process by which the evidence was obtained is not truthfully presented, because, as often as not, that process will raise questions.
Alan Dershowitz
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I came from a poor family, so working and going to school at the same time was natural. It taught me multi-tasking, although we didn't call it that back then. I learned I could never be idle, I need to be doing many things at once.
Alan Dershowitz
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The struggle for morality never stays won. It's always in process.
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
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When I decide who to vote for as President, I ask myself who will be best for America and for the world. An important component of my answer involves my assessment of the candidate's willingness and ability to protect Israel's security, since I strongly believe that a strong Israel serves the interests of the United States and of world peace.
Alan Dershowitz
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In the real world in which we live, you always have to choose between evils. And in choosing between evils, you have to have moral criteria for how to make those choices.
Alan Dershowitz
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The vast majority of gun owners don't kill, but people who do kill, tend to kill with guns, and often with illegal guns.
Alan Dershowitz
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I think we're seeing privacy diminish, not by laws... but by young people who don't seem to value their privacy.
Alan Dershowitz
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In our criminal justice system, we say it's better for 10 guilty people to go free than for even one innocent person to be wrongly convicted.
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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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