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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
Law
Abiding
Heaven
Distinguished
Simple
Command
Good
Requires
People
Bible
Merely
Question
Hell
Commands

More quotes by Alan Dershowitz

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I love discomfort. I mean, my whole life is discomfort. One reason I can never retire is that the idea of just sitting on the beach totally comfortable is not a desideratum in my life. I like ambiguity, I like conflict, I like uncertainly.
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 don't believe in firing professors. They have academic freedom.
Alan Dershowitz
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There are many levels of truth.
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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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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When I was 14 or 15, a camp counselor told me I was smart. I had never been very good in school, but he told me once that I was smart but my mind operated a little differently.
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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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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We have to fulfill what the real meaning of the Second Amendment is: reasonable access to guns for self-protection and for hunting. And there's no room in America for these semiautomatic, automatic and other kinds of weapons that are simply designed to cause mass havoc.
Alan Dershowitz
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I read in the newspaper that the Catholic Church finally decided that it had been theologically improper to try to convert the Jews. Whoops! Sorry for all those inquisitions, crusades, and autos-da-fe. Previous popes were wrong - infallible, perhaps, but wrong.
Alan Dershowitz
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African-Americans are as fair as any other group, but they bring their life experiences to bear as just as whites bring their experiences to bear.
Alan Dershowitz
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If torture is going to be administered as a last resort in the ticking-bomb case, to save enormous numbers of lives, it ought to be done openly, with accountability, with approval by the president of the United States or by a Supreme Court justice.
Alan Dershowitz
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Nobody wants justice.
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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A good lawyer knows how to shut up when he's won his case.
Alan Dershowitz
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Candor and accountability in a democracy is very important. Hypocrisy has no place.
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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We don't have an Official Secrets Act in the United States, as other countries do. Under the First Amendment, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of association are more important than protecting secrets.
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