Alan Dershowitz Quotes - Page 6

The struggle for morality never stays won. It's always in process.

In my neighborhood, everyone had an opinion on the local cantor. You didn't go to a synagogue to listen to the rabbi's sermon. You went to listen to the cantor. It was like a concert.

Israel and the Palestinians must resolve their own differences. The United States can play an important role as facilitator and guarantor.

Ideas don't desert you; ideas aren't treasonous to you, but people can be.

I think we're seeing privacy diminish, not by laws... but by young people who don't seem to value their privacy.

I've thought of publishing a book of my hate mail, but I don't own the rights to the letters.

I understand that it's good tactics to categorize me as a close-minded, unobjective extremist, but nobody that respects me has those views.

I was a Jewish rabbinical student for 12 years, and studied the Bible all the time.

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.

I feel like my 50 years at Harvard were an interlude. I'm really a New Yorker.

All religions and cultures suffer from sources that preach hate against the 'other.' Throughout history some have, tragically, practiced what their sources preached, while some have sought to dismiss or even counteract the hateful words of their sources.

I learn from experience.

I generally don't select my chicken or my hamburgers based on the personal ideology of the person who is either flipping the hamburgers or making the money back at corporate headquarters. But if people want to do that, they're free to do it.

Any human being has private thoughts.

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.

It is the wall of separation between church and state . . . that is largely responsible for religion thriving in this country, as compared to those European countries in which church and state have been united, resulting in opposition to the church by those who disapprove of the government.

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.

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.

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.

I am a peace supporting Jew.

The best answer to bad speech is good speech

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.

I am attacked equally by the hard right and the hard left for expressing what they regard as politically incorrect views. I thrive on such controversy and welcome it. It only encourages me to speak out more. I have not been affected by attacks on me for defending freedom of speech and due process.

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.

That's when civil liberty suffers - when we think special times justify the diminution of civil liberties. And I'm not going to accept that.