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I never place limits on the potential success of my students. If they're going into acting, they're going to win the Oscar... If they're going into law, they're going to be chief justice.

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
Never
Students
Justice
Winning
Oscar
Law
Oscars
Acting
Chief
Success
Chiefs
Place
Potential
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Limits

More quotes by 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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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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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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There are many levels of truth.
Alan Dershowitz
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The struggle for morality never stays won. It's always in process.
Alan Dershowitz
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Question authority but, raise your hand first.
Alan Dershowitz
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I don't believe in firing professors. They have academic freedom.
Alan Dershowitz
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Most liberal democracies don't try to figure out what the truth is.
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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I tell my students, if you ever become comfortable with your role as criminal defense lawyer, it's time to quit. It should be a constant source of discomfort, because you're dealing with incredible moral ambiguity, and you've been cast into a role which is not enviable.
Alan Dershowitz
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Such technological tools ... are helping us now in the hot war against terrorists who would bomb this theater if they had the capacity to do so.
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 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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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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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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You're absolutely right: Bob Grant is a racist, Bob Grant is a bigot, he's a despicable talk show host and I agree with that.
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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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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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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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