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The people of a nation are enslaved when, together, they are helpless to institute effective change, when the people serve the government more than the government serves them.

Gerry Spence

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Gerry Spence
Age: 95
Born: 1929
Born: January 8
Lawyer
Laramie
Wyoming
Gerald Leonard Spence
Effective
Serve
Nation
Nations
Change
Enslaved
Together
Institute
Government
Serves
People
Helpless

More quotes by Gerry Spence

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Each of us has been endowed with the perfect power to be free. Slavery is a state of mind that fails to acknowledge the slave's own power.
Gerry Spence
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The worst enslaving trait of all is greed. I rail against the substitution of money for worth. The idea that the endless accumulation of dead money can furnish a meaningful life to sold-out souls is the supreme lie offered by the system of free enterprise.
Gerry Spence
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We are defined by how we use our power.
Gerry Spence
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The Internet...has become the voice of the people in the first genuine experiment in democracy yet conducted in America. It stands ready to serve every facet, every faction.
Gerry Spence
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The art of arguing is the art of living. We argue because we must, because life emends it, because, in the end, life itself is but an argument.
Gerry Spence
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Nearly every day on the television set the hero cop breaks into the bad guy's house and beats a confession out of him and we cheer on the cop. Propaganda smears our clear vision. It causes us to accept the diminishment of our constitutional protections as something to be lauded - after all, the cop was protecting us.
Gerry Spence
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How much of our lives could we buy back if we cherished our lives instead of our trinkets?
Gerry Spence
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Successful argument is a communication between the acknowledged authority of both parties to the argument.
Gerry Spence
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We must begin to train lawyers the minute they walk into law school to tell the truth. They must immediately begin to learn the business of representing people. They must be assigned cases the first day.
Gerry Spence
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The function of the law is not to provide justice or to preserve freedom. The function of the law is to keep those who hold power, in power.
Gerry Spence
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Why are scientists now using lawyers in laboratory experiments instead of rats? Three reasons: (1) lawyers are more plentiful than rats, (2) there is no danger the scientists will become attached to the lawyers, and (3) there are some things rats just won't do.
Gerry Spence
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The ultimate enemy of Democracy is not the drug dealer of the crooked politician or the crazed skinhead. The ultimate enemy is the New King that has become so powerful it can murder its own citizens with impunity.
Gerry Spence
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Faced with the pain of freedom, man begs for his shackles.
Gerry Spence
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In any nation in which people's rights have been subordinated to the rights of the few, in any totalitarian nation, the first institution to be dismantled is the jury. I was, I am, afraid.
Gerry Spence
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The less of one's life one must exchange for money, the more freedom one may enjoy.
Gerry Spence
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Words that do not create images should be discarded.
Gerry Spence
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Today the insatiable quest for profit promotes the new slavery. In bewildering ways, the new is more pernicious than the old, for the New American Slave is told he is free, and he clings to that myth as if his life depended upon it, a suspicion that cannot be totally ignored.
Gerry Spence
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Money in doses disproportionate to our needs enslaves.
Gerry Spence
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It is an anomaly that we can split the atom, but we are nearly powerless to persuade each other to embrace justice.
Gerry Spence
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I love my life and I am so blessed.
Gerry Spence