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. – Alan Dershowitz
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. – Alan Dershowitz
Well, first of all, no professor should be able to say, I refuse to defend my position. I refuse to debate my position. – 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
The threat or fear of violence should not become an excuse or justification for restricting freedom of speech. – Alan Dershowitz
The vast majority of gun owners don’t kill, but people who do kill, tend to kill with guns, and often with illegal guns. – Alan Dershowitz
Being offended by freedom of speech should never be regarded as a justification for violence. – Alan Dershowitz
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
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
Hypocrisy is not a way of getting back to the moral high ground. Pretending you’re moral, saying your moral is not the same as acting morally. – 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
Doing something because God has said to do it does not make a person moral: it merely tells us that person is a prudential believer, akin to the person who obeys the command of an all-powerful secular king. – 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
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
I never had an existential moment when I asked myself what I was going to do. I always wanted to be a lawyer, and I knew exactly the kind of lawyer I wanted to be. – 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 was a Jewish rabbinical student for 12 years, and studied the Bible all the time. – Alan Dershowitz
I’ve thought of publishing a book of my hate mail, but I don’t own the rights to the letters. – Alan Dershowitz
There are two kinds of terrorism. Rational terrorism such as Palestinian terrorism and apocalyptic terrorism like Sept. 11. You have to distinguish between the two. – Alan Dershowitz
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. – Alan Dershowitz
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. – Alan Dershowitz
