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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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Alan Dershowitz
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: September 1
Lawyer
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Brooklyn
New York
Alan M. Dershowitz
Alan Morton Dershowitz
Merely
Question
Hell
Commands
Law
Abiding
Heaven
Distinguished
Simple
Command
Good
Requires
People
Bible

More quotes by 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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Ed Koch will never rest in peace. That was not his way. He was always nervously squirming, while making others squirm as well. Comfort was not his goal. He understood that to be a proud and assertive Jew meant never being able to leave a sigh of relief and say it's over, we are at peace, we can now put down our guard and relax.
Alan Dershowitz
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The threat or fear of violence should not become an excuse or justification for restricting freedom of speech.
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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Being offended by freedom of speech should never be regarded as a justification for violence.
Alan Dershowitz
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It's a new phenomenon in America that states can now sue the national government and become a kind of check and balance on the excesses of the federal government.
Alan Dershowitz
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Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the constitution by claiming it's not an individual right or that it's too much of a safety hazard don't see the danger of the big picture. They're courting disaster by encouraging others to use this same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't like.
Alan Dershowitz
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The first rule for escaping prison in the United States is always having someone more important than yourself to incriminate.
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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There is a paranoid streak in American life. Radio talk show hosts tend to foment that paranoid streak in American life.
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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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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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 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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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'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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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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Well, many insane people and seriously mentally ill people seem very reasonable.
Alan Dershowitz
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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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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