Alan Dershowitz Quotes

Don't join the book burners... Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book.

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.

Throughout my career as a lawyer, teacher and labor leader, books have remained my constant companion - stuffed into a briefcase, overflowing on my bedside table, stacked on my desk at work. Books have carried me to distant worlds, opened new doors and made me feel empathy, compassion, anger, fear, joy, acceptance - and everything in between.

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

A library is a place where you can lose your innocence without losing your virginity.

Here you discover that so long as books are kept open, then minds can never be closed.

How precious a book is in light of the offering, in the light of the one who has the privilege of this offering. The library tells you of this offering.

I discovered philosophy in my youth when I read 'wildly,' and thus I was exposed to the world of ideas.

Those who know how to think need no teachers.

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.

Truthfully, without over-egging it, as I often do, the library and journalism, those things made me who I am.

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn.

Education should prepare our minds to use its own powers of reason and conception rather than filling it with the accumulated misconceptions of the past.

I was on my own at Wellesley, surrounded by a lot of young women who were motivated and intellectually curious. I started to read because I was required to do so for class, but I soon found myself enjoying the seclusion of the library. I came to see reading as an important way to learn about people, including myself.

Freedom to learn is the first necessity of guaranteeing that man himself shall be self-reliant enough to be free.… when the clock of civilization can be turned back by burning libraries, by exiling scientists, artists, musicians, writers and teachers; by disbursing universities, and by censoring news and literature and art; an added burden, an added burden is placed on those countries where the courts of free thought and free learning still burn bright. If the fires of freedom and civil liberties burn low in other lands they must be made brighter in our own.

With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one — but no one at all — can tell you what to read and when and how.

My mom was big on education, big on reading, so she was always pushing books on me: 'The Autobiography of Malcolm X,' like, 'Read these books.' And it was like, man, I'm learning stuff that I just can't get anywhere else.

School was always a major player in my personal journey. It allowed me to open up to the world, and also social mobility. It allowed me to enrich myself, to read, learn and understand.

A library is many things. It's a place to go, to get in out of the rain. It's a place to go if you want to sit and think. But particularly it is a place where books live, and where you can get in touch with other people, and other thoughts, through books. If you want to find out about something, the information is in the reference books---the dictionaries, the encyclopedias, the atlases. If you like to be told a story, the library is the place to go.

Cripes Miss Wilcox, they're not guns,' I said. No, they're not Mattie, they're books. And a hundred times more dangerous.

Liberty without Learning is always in peril and Learning without Liberty is always in vain.

Garrett," said Stendahl, "do you know why I've done this to you? Because you burned Mr. Poe's books without really reading them. You took other people's advice that they needed burning. Otherwise you'd have realized what I was going to do to you when we came down here a moment ago. Ignorance is fatal, Mr. Garrett.

What I tell kids is don't get mad (about censorship) get even. Run, don't walk, to the first library you can find, and read what they're trying to keep out of your eyes. Read what they're trying to keep out of your brains. Because that's exactly what you need to know.

Librarians have always been among the most thoughtful and helpful people. They are teachers without a classroom.