Alan Dershowitz Quotes

Some people have much more pull than other people. But when I say that the public has ultimate responsibility, I'm not saying it in a moral sense. I'm just saying it in the sense of what is it that's really going to bring change.

Money often determines not only who gets elected, but what gets done. Which voices do lawmakers listen to, the banks or home owners, coal companies, or asthma sufferers, the CEOs or the unemployed?

When we have congressmen and top state politicians all working together with powerful interests, what have we got to fight against them? Not much, except to ask for justice.

The elite interests must not crowd out the interests of the citizens.

The major job was getting people to understand that they had something within their power that they could use, and it could only be used if they understood what was happening and how group action could counter violence.

While few judges or prosecutors would be afraid to exercise their perfectly legitimate discretion in favour of an ordinary man, not to mention a minority group member, most would be terrified to exercise the same discretion for someone politically, financially or socially powerful.

So I'm very happy if my words can ever inspire or empower someone who considers themselves an oppressed minority. We are all the same and we all want the same things: the right to be happy, to be just who we want to be and to love who we want to love.

We have to be focused on not just who is in [Donald's Trump] favor and who is in his good graces and who looks right or what the palace intrigue is.

It behooves every man to see that his influence is on the side of justice, and let the courts make their own characters.

If you have power, you have to empower.

What really worries me is that those who are in positions of power are not really affected by what we are writing. In the moral dialogue you want to start, you really want to involve the leaders. People ask me: "Why were you so bold as to publish A Man of the People? How did you think the Government was going to take it? You didn't know there was going to be a coup?" I said rather flippantly that nobody was going to read it anyway, so I wasn't likely to be fired from my official position. It's a distressing thought that we cannot engage our leaders in the kind of moral debate we need.

The weak are always anxious for justice and equality. The strong pay no heed to either.

I suppose people also have to be a little more careful or circumspect if they're going to leverage their celebrity to promote their political aims. The problem is that politics is about the accretion of power, and it's very difficult not to get giddy with power.

Concentrated power can be always wielded in the interest of the few and at the expense of the many. Government in its last analysis is this power reduced to a science. Governments never lead; they follow progress. When the prison, stake or scaffold can no longer silence the voice of the protesting minority, progress moves on a step, but not until then.

There is no peace now, and there will never be peace, so long as one rules over another.

I think there are plenty of good people in America, but there are also plenty of bad people in America and the bad ones are the ones who seem to have all the power and be in these positions to block things that you and I need.

We have previously suggested that philanthropy combines genuine pity with the display of power and that the latter element explains why the powerful are more inclined to be generous than to grant social justice.

If you know what's going on and know how society can be improved and happiness advanced, you tend to focus on how to get things done that will help health, safety, opportunity, justice, accountability of powerful institutions to the people they are supposed to serve.

Money is power in American politics. It always has been.

Oh yes, right—right. What is the use of having right on your side if you have not got might?

The problem is not scarcity; the problem is power.

As an activist, you do find yourself directed more toward public action. But I've always tried to use stories from my own life in my writing for instance. It has always been clear to me that the stories of each other's lives are our best textbooks. Every social justice movement that I know of has come out of people sitting in small groups, telling their life stories, and discovering that other people have shared similar experiences. So, if we've shared many experiences, then it probably has something to do with power or politics, and if we unify and act together, then we can make a change.

Privilege is least apparent to those who have it.

Policymakers are not the change makers. Because policymakers can't make policy unless we allow them.

Justice? Who asks for justice? We make our own justice ... Let us not rail about justice as long as we have arms and the freedom to use them.