Alan M. Dershowitz > Quotes

“Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming it's not an individual right or that it's too much of a public safety hazard, don't see the danger in the big picture. They're courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't like.”
― Alan Dershowitz

“A library is a place where you learn what teachers were afraid to teach you.”
― Alan Dershowitz

“I have always considered "Pascal's Wager" a questionable bet to place, since any God worth believing in would prefer an honest agnostic to a calculating hypocrite.”
― Alan Dershowitz, Letters to a Young Lawyer

“Bigotry against any group should be disqualifying for high office.”
― Alan Dershowitz

“I am not frightened of my beliefs. If there is a God who is threatening me with damnation because I don't believe in Him, so be it. I've lived my life in conscience, and I will suffer damnation willingly in conscience against a tyrannical God who would damn me because, on the basis of the intelligence He gave me, I have come to a conclusion doubting His existence, and I will continue to be a skeptic all of my life.”
― Alan Dershowitz

“I asked Hillary why she had chosen Yale Law School over Harvard. She laughed and said, "Harvard didn't want me." I said I was sorry that Harvard turned her down. She replied, "No, I received letters of acceptance from both schools." She explained that a boyfriend had then invited her to the Harvard Law School Christmas Dance, at which several Harvard Law School professors were in attendance. She asked one for advice about which law school to attend. The professor looked at her and said, "We have about as many woen as we need here. You should go to Yale. The teaching there is more suited to women." I asked who the professor was, and she told me she couldn't remember his name but that she thought it started with a B. A few days later, we met the Clintons at a party. I came prepared with yearbook photos of all the professors from that year whose name began with B. She immediately identified the culprit. He was the same professor who had given my A student a D, because she didn't "think like a lawyer." It turned out, of course, that it was this professor -- and not the two (and no doubt more) brilliant women he was prejudiced against - who didn't think like a lawyer. Lawyers are supposed to act on the evidence, rather than on their prejudgments. The sexist professor ultimately became a judge on the International Court of Justice.

I told Hillary that it was too bad I wasn't at that Christmas dance, because I would have urged her to come to Harvard. She laughed, turned to her husband, and said, "But then I wouldn't have met him... and he wouldn't have become President.”
― Alan Dershowitz

“Those primarily responsible for the current desperate situation of the Palestinian people have been their own leaders, from Haj Hussaini (the late Grand Mufti of Jerusalem) to Yassir Arafat, to the leaders of Hamas and the other terrorist groups. These leaders have placed a higher priority on the destruction of Israel than on the construction of Palestine.”
― Alan M. Dershowitz, The Case for Israel

“It is fair to say that although Israeli actions in combating terrorism have been far from perfect, Israel has been in greater compliance with the rule of law than any other country facing comparable dangers.”
― Alan M. Dershowitz, The Case for Israel

“The Palestinians will eventually have a state, but it should not come as a reward for terrorism.”
― Alan M. Dershowitz, The Case for Israel

“To the extent the divine source and inalienability of our rights are purported to be factual, history has proved our Founding Fathers plainly wrong: Every right has, in fact, been alienated by governments since the beginning of time. Within a generation of the establishment of our nation, the Founding Fathers rescinded virtually every right they previously declared unalienable. John Adams, one of the drafters of the Declaration of Independence, alienated the right to speak freely and express dissenting views when, as president, he enforced the Alien and Sedition Acts against his political opponents—with Hamilton’s support. (Perhaps Hamilton’s God had not given “sacred rights” to Jeffersonians!) Another of the drafters, Jefferson himself, alienated the most basic of rights—to the equal protection of the laws, based on the “truth” that “all men are created equal”—when he helped to write (and strengthen) Virginia’s “Slave Code,” just a few years after drafting the Declaration of Independence. The revised code denied slaves the right to liberty and to the pursuit of happiness by punishing attempted escape with “outlawry” or death. Jefferson personally suspected that “the blacks … are inferior to the whites in the endowments of body and mind.” In other words, they were endowed by their Creator not with equality but with inferiority.

There is no right that has not been suspended or trampled during times of crisis and war, even by our greatest presidents. ...

I wish there were an intellectually satisfying argument for the divine source of rights, as our Founding Fathers tried to put forth. Tactically, that would be the strongest argument liberals could make, especially in America, where many hold a strong belief in an intervening God. But we cannot offer this argument, because many liberals do not believe in concepts like divine hands. We believe in separation of church and state. We are pragmatists, utilitarians, empiricists, secularists, and (God forgive me!) moral relativists. We are skeptical of absolutes (as George Bernard Shaw cynically quipped: “The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.”).”
― Alan Dershowitz, The Case for Liberalism in an Age of Extremism: or, Why I Left the Left But Can't Join the Right

“Yet the world, including many in the media, academia, and even diplomacy, seems to accept Palestinian violence as cultural. On the other hand, something different is expected from Israelis. This is cultural relativism bordering on racism. To expect less of Palestinians, regardless of their grievances, is to diminish their humanity.”
― Alan M. Dershowitz, The Case for Israel

“The first rule for escaping prison in the United States is always having someone more important than yourself to incriminate.”
― Alan M. Dershowitz, Letters to a Young Lawyer

“Thomas Friedman of the New York Times has warned that if terrorism is rewarded in the Middle East, it will “be coming to a theatre near you.”
― Alan M. Dershowitz, The Case for Israel

“The most frequent misconception about celebrities, is that they must be so fascinating. The opposite is often the case. Most of my famous clients with some important exceptions, have been uninteresting, some have been outright boring. We tend to confuse their public persona and surroundings which fascinate us with their private personalities which are banal, mundane and self-centered. Many of them have no ideas, no insights, and little to say about matters outside the narrow spheres of their professional lives. Yet we listen to their often uninformed opinions on important issues of the day affecting the world, just because they have a handsome face, strong muscles or other talents or attributes that are irrelevant to their presumed credibility on the matters about which they’re opining. Celebrities may seem fascinating from a distance, but the reality viewed up close, is often very different.”
― Alan Dershowitz

“Aspirations don't disappoint, so long as you realize that the struggle for liberty, justice and anything else worth pursuing never stays won.”
― Alan Dershowitz

“I personally favor the creation of a Palestinian state as a consequence of making best efforts to end terrorism, not as a reward for increasing terrorism as a carefully calculated tactic to achieve statehood.”
― Alan M. Dershowitz, The Case for Israel

“The challenge of the Nuremberg tribunal, therefore, was to do real justice in the context of a trial by the victors against the vanquished—and specifically those leaders of the vanquished who had been instrumental in the most barbaric genocide and mass slaughter of civilians in history. Moreover,”
― Alan M. Dershowitz, America on Trial: Inside the Legal Battles That Transformed Our Nation

“It is more realistic to try to build a theory of rights on the agreed-upon wrongs of the past that we want to avoid repeating, than to try to build such a theory on idealized conceptions of the perfect society, about which we will never agree. Moreover, a theory of rights as an experiential reaction to wrongs is more empirical, observable, and debatable, and less dependent on un-provable faith, metaphor, and myth, than theories premised on sources external to human experience. At bottom, therefore, a theory of rights from wrongs is more democratic and less elitist than divine or natural law theories. It is also more truthful and honest, because rights are not facts of nature, like Newton’s Laws, waiting somewhere “out there” to be discovered, deduced, or intuited. All theories of natural or divine rights are legal fictions created by human beings to satisfy the perceived need for an external and eternal source of rights to check the wrongs produced by human nature and positive law. They are sometimes benevolent fictions, but they are fictions nonetheless, and no amount of need can convert them into fact. Moreover, the fictions of natural and divine rights may be used for malevolent as well as for benevolent purposes.”
― Alan Dershowitz, The Case for Liberalism in an Age of Extremism: or, Why I Left the Left But Can't Join the Right

“Most people today are not aware that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain helped restore Great Britain’s financial stability during the Great Depression and also passed legislation to extend unemployment benefits, pay pensions to retired workers, and otherwise help those hit hard by the slumping economy. But history does remember his failure to confront Hitler. That is Chamberlain’s enduring legacy. So too will Iran’s construction of nuclear weapons, if it manages to do so in the next few years, become President Barack Obama’s enduring legacy. Regardless of his passage of health care reform and regardless of whether he restores jobs and helps the economy recover, Mr. Obama will be remembered for allowing Iran to obtain nuclear weapons.”
― Alan Dershowitz, The Case Against the Iran Deal: How Can We Now Stop Iran from Getting Nukes?

“The greatest danger the world faces in the twenty-first century is an Iranian nuclear arsenal. Accordingly, the critical question about the agreement recently negotiated with Iran is whether it makes it more likely or less likely that Iran will develop nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future. That is why this nuclear deal may be the most important—and dangerous—policy decision of the twenty-first century, and why all people who seek peace and security must focus on the agreement and what it portends for the future of the world.”
― Alan Dershowitz, The Case Against the Iran Deal: How Can We Now Stop Iran from Getting Nukes?

“I learned at that time, for an absolute certainty, that I did not believe in an intervening God, since I did not spend one second praying or trying to make a deal with God.”
― Alan Dershowitz, Taking the Stand: My Life in the Law

“Reading the fascinating transcript of the trial has the effect of demythologizing both the heroes and the villains. For example, Justice Robert Jackson, the American chief prosecutor and hero of Nuremberg, is shown as a bungling cross-examiner who loses virtually every verbal battle with Göring. Jackson was unprepared and sloppy, while Göring was ready for every question with a precise Germanic recollection. At”
― Alan M. Dershowitz, America on Trial: Inside the Legal Battles That Transformed Our Nation

“For something to be a crime there must be both an actus reus and mens rea — that is, a criminal act accompanied by a criminal state of mind.”
― Alan Dershowitz

“We did so by beginning the negotiations with three important concessions. First, we took the military option off the table by publicly declaring that we were not militarily capable of permanently ending Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Second, we took the current tough sanction regimen off the table by acknowledging that if we did not accept a deal, many of our most important partners would begin to reduce or even eliminate sanctions. Third, and most important, we took off the table the option of rejecting the deal by publicly acknowledging that if we do so, we will be worse off than if we accept even a questionable deal.”
― Alan Dershowitz, The Case Against the Iran Deal: How Can We Now Stop Iran from Getting Nukes?

“In the end it was the documentary evidence, the Germans’ own detailed record of their aggression and genocide, that provided the smoking guns. Document after document proved be yond any doubt that the Nazis had conducted two wars: One was their aggressive war against Europe (and eventually America) for military, political, geographic, and economic domination. The other was their genocidal war to destroy “inferior” races, primarily the Jews and Gypsies.”
― Alan M. Dershowitz, America on Trial: Inside the Legal Battles That Transformed Our Nation

“despite finishing first in my class at Yale Law School, I was rejected by all 32 of the law firms to which I applied.”
― Alan M. Dershowitz, The Case Against BDS: Why Singling Out Israel for Boycott Is Anti-Semitic and Anti-Peace

“Israel is the only country in the history of modern warfare that has never dropped bombs indiscriminately on an enemy city in an effort to kill innocent civilians in retaliation for the deliberate bombing of its own civilians”
― Alan M. Dershowitz, The Case for Israel

“Winston Churchill reportedly quipped that “A lie travels around the globe while the truth is putting on its shoes.” That was before the internet. Today, the truth can’t even find its shoes.”
― Alan Dershowitz, Cancel Culture: The Latest Attack on Free Speech and Due Process

“We believe in the process of American justice, which requires zealous advocacy, scrupulous compliance with constitutional safeguards and the rule of law.”
― Alan M. Dershowitz, Letters to a Young Lawyer

“Schocken”
― Alan M. Dershowitz, Abraham: The World's First (But Certainly Not Last) Jewish Lawyer