Alan Dershowitz Quotes

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Alan Dershowitz

Profession : Lawyer

Birth : September 1, 1938

I never do anything for money; I get paid a lot of money as a by-product.

Alan Dershowitz

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

I think that lawyers are terrible at admitting that they're wrong. And not just admitting it; also realizing it. Most lawyers are very successful, and they think that because they're making money and people think well of them, they must be doing everything right.

Alan Dershowitz

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

I think mistakes are the essence of science and law. It's impossible to conceive of either scientific progress or legal progress without understanding the important role of being wrong and of mistakes.

Alan Dershowitz

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

Alan Dershowitz

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

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

Alan Dershowitz

I think extremists within the base may very well move the Democratic party away from its pro-Israel position.

Alan Dershowitz

The law is agnostic about truth. It's very skeptical of ultimate truth. That's why freedom of speech permits lies to be told.

Alan Dershowitz

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

I am a peace supporting Jew.

Alan Dershowitz

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

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

The court of last resort is no longer the Supreme Court. It's 'Nightline.'

Alan Dershowitz

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

Alan Dershowitz

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.

Alan Dershowitz

All sides in a trial want to hide at least some of the truth.

Alan Dershowitz

I was critical of race-based affirmative action early on in my career and I've changed my mind. And I've publicly acknowledged that I was wrong.

Alan Dershowitz

It's wrong, and it's racist, and it's bigoted to say that guns are quintessentially American.

Alan Dershowitz