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Scientists search for truth. Philosophers search for morality. A criminal trial searches for only one result: proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Alan Dershowitz

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Alan Dershowitz
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: September 1
Lawyer
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Brooklyn
New York
Alan M. Dershowitz
Alan Morton Dershowitz
Truth
Philosopher
Philosophers
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Scientist
Criminal
Morality
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More quotes by 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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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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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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I was a Jewish rabbinical student for 12 years, and studied the Bible all the time.
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 law is agnostic about truth.
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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Nobody wants justice.
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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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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Laws are important precisely because in a democracy they reflect the attitudes and aspirations of those they govern.
Alan Dershowitz
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In today's distorted world of 'human rights,' truth takes a back seat to ideology, and false claims - especially those that 'support' radical ideologies - persist even after they have been exposed.
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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There are two kinds of terrorism. Rational terrorism such as Palestinian terrorism and apocalyptic terrorism like Sept. 11. You have to distinguish between the two.
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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Rights are not self-evident. They're not unalienable. They are subject to modification just like anything else.
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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A good lawyer knows how to shut up when he's won his case.
Alan Dershowitz
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Well, many insane people and seriously mentally ill people seem very reasonable.
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