Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alan Dershowitz
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: September 1
Lawyer
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Brooklyn
New York
Alan M. Dershowitz
Alan Morton Dershowitz
Two
Says
Right
Knew
Children
Everybody
Kidnapped
Thing
Child
Oxygen
Would
Hours
Opposed
Life
Everyone
Torture
Death
Personally
Left
Save

More quotes by Alan Dershowitz

Image
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
Image
I've thought of publishing a book of my hate mail, but I don't own the rights to the letters.
Alan Dershowitz
Image
I have always considered Pascal's Wager a questionable bet to place. Any God worth believing in would surely prefer an honest agnostic to a calculating hypocrite.
Alan Dershowitz
Image
Accusations fit on Greenwald really sounds like he's against all surveillance unless you can find a guy with the Al Qaeda card, wearing an Al Qaeda baseball cap, an Al Qaeda uniform.
Alan Dershowitz
Image
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
Image
No country in the history of the world has ever contributed more to humankind and accomplished more for its people in so brief a period of time as Israel has done since its relatively recent rebirth in 1948.
Alan Dershowitz
Image
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
Image
I came from a poor family, so working and going to school at the same time was natural. It taught me multi-tasking, although we didn't call it that back then. I learned I could never be idle, I need to be doing many things at once.
Alan Dershowitz
Image
Asymmetrical warfare is a euphemism for terrorism, just like collateral damage is a euphemism for killing innocent civilians.
Alan Dershowitz
Image
In our criminal justice system, we say it's better for 10 guilty people to go free than for even one innocent person to be wrongly convicted.
Alan Dershowitz
Image
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
Image
Censorship laws are blunt instruments, not sharp scalpels. Once enacted, they are easily misapplied to merely unpopular or only marginally dangerous speech.
Alan Dershowitz
Image
I was a Jewish rabbinical student for 12 years, and studied the Bible all the time.
Alan Dershowitz
Image
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
Image
The sad reality is that there are no purely domestic issues in Israel. Issues that would be dealt with by municipalities in other countries - such as how to deal with a dangerous bridge or how to resolve conflicts between religious and secular bus riders - become major international issues when they occur in Israel.
Alan Dershowitz
Image
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
Image
I've thought hard about my psychological connections and I think I've managed to separate out the psychological from the legal, moral, and political.
Alan Dershowitz
Image
I don't believe in firing professors. They have academic freedom.
Alan Dershowitz
Image
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
Image
On television and in the movies, crimes are always solved. Nothing is left uncertain. By the end, the viewer knows whodunit. In real life, on the other hand, many murders remain unsolved, and even some that are solved to the satisfaction of the police and prosecutors lack sufficient evidence to result in a conviction.
Alan Dershowitz