Quotes By Alan Dershowitz

I've always worked.

Well, many insane people and seriously mentally ill people seem very reasonable.

The Internet knows no national borders.

Asymmetrical warfare is a euphemism for terrorism, just like collateral damage is a euphemism for killing innocent civilians.

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.

Twenty five percent of Israeli citizens are not even Jewish. Anybody can become an Israeli citizen if you qualify. Religion is not a criterion for citizenship.

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.

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 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 learn from experience.

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

There's no evidence that I'm aware of that guns reduce crime.

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

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

I am deeply concerned that, without peace and a two-state solution, the Jewish and democratic nature of Israel is in danger. That's why I have opposed Israel's settlement policy since 1973, and that's why I have favored a two-state solution since 1967.

Great research universities must insist on independence from government and on the exercise of academic freedom.

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.

My goal is always to keep support for Israel a bi-partisan issue and never make a national election any kind of referendum on Israel.

Candor and accountability in a democracy is very important. Hypocrisy has no place.

I think there would be less torture with a warrant requirement than without one.

If torture is going to be administered as a last resort in the ticking-bomb case, to save enormous numbers of lives, it ought to be done openly, with accountability, with approval by the president of the United States or by a Supreme Court justice.

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.

The law is agnostic about truth.

Judges are the weakest link in our system of justice, and they are also the most protected.

You know, it's ironic to me that Christians want to keep the Ten Commandments in our schools, because Christianity has abrogated four of the Ten Commandments. For example, the Sabbath day according to the Ten Commandments is Saturday, not Sunday. And the reason is because God rested, not because Jesus was resurrected.

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's much better to have rules that we can actually live within. And absolute prohibitions, generally, are not the kind of rules that countries would live within.

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

I love the Bible.

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.