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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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Alan Dershowitz
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: September 1
Lawyer
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Brooklyn
New York
Alan M. Dershowitz
Alan Morton Dershowitz
Desert
Aren
Ideas
People

More quotes by Alan Dershowitz

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I think that lawyers are terrible at admitting that they're wrong. And not just admitting it - also realizing it.
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
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The law is agnostic about truth.
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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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 abortions, could die and could - so I favor a woman's right to choose.
Alan Dershowitz
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I don't think the law exists to arrive at the truth. If it did, we wouldn't have exclusionary rules, we wouldn't have presumptions of innocence, we wouldn't have proof beyond reasonable doubt. There's an enormous difference between the role of truth in law and the role of truth in science. In law, truth is one among many goals.
Alan Dershowitz
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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
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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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I don't believe in firing professors. They have academic freedom.
Alan Dershowitz
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I learn from experience.
Alan Dershowitz
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There will never be another Ed Koch. He was an original, but he represented a significant, if shrinking, segment of American Jewry who refused to compromise their liberal values, their support for Israel or their Jewish pride.
Alan Dershowitz
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We, the People of this country, have no unalienable rights... all our rights are subject to modification... the Constitution of the United States of America is nothing more than a piece of paper and... our government should not be restrained by the Constitution because our government can do good things for people.
Alan Dershowitz
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I am a man of principle. I will stick by my principles. I will tell the truth no matter where the chips fall.
Alan Dershowitz
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I've thought of publishing a book of my hate mail, but I don't own the rights to the letters.
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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That's when civil liberty suffers - when we think special times justify the diminution of civil liberties. And I'm not going to accept that.
Alan Dershowitz
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There is no perfect justice, just as there is no absolute in ethics. But there is perfect injustice, and we know it when we see it.
Alan Dershowitz
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If you're a prosecutor, and you believe the defendant is guilty, you only talk about ultimate truth, but not intermediate truth. If you're the defense attorney, you care deeply about intermediate truth, but you tend to neglect ultimate truth.
Alan Dershowitz
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I'm not a single-issue person, but I spend so much time on Israel because it is so unfairly condemned around the world.
Alan Dershowitz
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A good lawyer knows how to shut up when he's won his case.
Alan Dershowitz