Alan Dershowitz Quotes - Page 3

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.

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.

Nobody wants justice.

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.

The prosecution wants to make sure the process by which the evidence was obtained is not truthfully presented, because, as often as not, that process will raise questions.

The judge also has a truth he wants to hide: He often hasn't been completely candid in describing the facts or the law.

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.

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.

A state has the right to prohibit the killing of dogs and bears whether for film or for other purposes.

Imagine a legal system in which lawyers were equated with the clients they defended and were condemned for representing controversial or despised clients.

Well, first of all, no professor should be able to say, I refuse to defend my position. I refuse to debate my position.

I've had such a satisfying life professionally and personally. I hope my tombstone says, 'Never boring.'

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

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.

We all learn in school that the judicial, legislative and executive branches of government must check and balance each other. But other non state institutions must participate in this important system of checks and balances as well. These checking institutions include the academy, the media, religious institutions and NGOs.

Most liberal democracies don't try to figure out what the truth is.

Question authority; but, raise your hand first.

The worst mistake you can make is underrating your enemy. Assuming that they're evil - I think it's a terrible thing to do.

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.

Censorship laws are blunt instruments, not sharp scalpels. Once enacted, they are easily misapplied to merely unpopular or only marginally dangerous speech.

If you're a prosecutor, and you believe the defendant is guilty, you only talk about ultimate truth, but not intermediate truth. If you're the defense attorney, you care deeply about intermediate truth, but you tend to neglect ultimate truth.

There's no evidence that I'm aware of that guns protect liberty.

I have made a career out of arguing that we shouldn't be criminalizing political differences. I've made a career out of arguing that the grand jury is an abusive institution. I have made a career out of arguing that we shouldn't stretch and expand the criminal law. I'm not going to change it because you think these are abnormal times. When Thomas Jefferson told the Justice Department that they had to prosecute Aaron Burr, and that he was going to have the chief justice impeached unless he found Aaron Burr guilty, those were special times too.

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.

This is not about celebrity justice, this is about the rights of the children.