Alan Dershowitz Quotes

Morality may consist solely in the courage of making a choice.

Every act has both good and evil results. The best we can do is lean to the light.

I'm not saying you did the wrong thing. I'm not even saying it wasn't something I'd thought of doing, myself. But even if it was the just thing to do, or the fitting thing, it still wasn't the right thing.

To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less.

I know the difference between right and wrong, and I can tell good from bad. But I also know that the more difficult decisions come when we have to choose between good and better. The toughest calls of all are those we have to make between bad and worse.

The doing evil to avoid an evil cannot be good.

Because it's possible to do, and you have the right to do it, doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.

The issues of the choice between right and wrong has to be an ongoing concern for everybody, at every age. There is no magical point in a human life when anyone is or becomes immune to the second-by-second choice to do right instead of wrong.

There is nothing good or evil save in the will.

All moral laws are merely statements that certain kinds of actions will have good effects.

They tend to be pretty abstract ones then, like doing what will have the best consequences; obviously you wouldn't specify what consequences are best, they may be different in some circumstances, so at a lower, more specific level, you may well get differences.

If in doubt, don't. If still in doubt, do what's right.

I'm sure there's a right way and there's a wrong way. The bottom line is you have to do what you think is right.

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

Choices of right or wrong are not presented to you in black and white. If they were, I'm sure most people would choose white.

The power of choosing good and evil is within the reach of all.

In Survivor and Finder's Fee, it is about what you would do if you could get away with it. Survivor is about your own integrity and where you draw your own ethical and moral lines. There are no rules.

Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evil, not the strength to choose between the two.

I don't think any of us know how we would react until we were put in a situation where we have to do something bad or do something good. I think I'd like to believe I'd act like a decent human being, but I'm realistic to know I don't know.

There is but one right, and the possibilities of wrong are infinite.

An ethical action, like an unethical action, is usually analyzed by politicians purely in pragmatic terms.

It seems that if you put people on paper and move them through time, you cannot help but talk about ethics, because the ethical realm exists nowhere if not here: in the consequences of human actions as they unfold in time, and the multiple interpretive possibility of those actions.

One cannot prescribe to anyone whether he should follow an ethic of absolute ends or an ethic of responsibility.

If the end does not justify the means, what does?

doing what is right is easy. The problem is knowing what is right