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We are defined by how we use our power.

Gerry Spence

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Gerry Spence
Age: 95
Born: 1929
Born: January 8
Lawyer
Laramie
Wyoming
Gerald Leonard Spence
Power
Defined
Use

More quotes by Gerry Spence

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Although we give lip service to the notion of freedom, we know the government is no longer the servant of the people but, at last has become the people's master. We have stood by like timid sheep while the wolf killed - first the weak, then the strays, then those on the outer edges of the flock, until at last the entire flock belonged to the wolf.
Gerry Spence
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The way people move is their autobiography in motion.
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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What the insurance companies have done is to reverse the business so that the public at large insures the insurance companies.
Gerry Spence
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When we acknowledge the kingdom of the self, we will no longer accept slavery either for ourselves or for others, no matter how it is disguised.
Gerry Spence
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Without argument the species would parish.
Gerry Spence
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Money in doses disproportionate to our needs enslaves.
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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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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Our prejudices - we all have them - are part of our personality structure. The problem is that our prejudices may lie lurking at the bottom of the subterranean mind where the slowly ooze up and color our thinking without our knowing it.
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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To accept capitalism and Free Enterprise as articles of faith without agreeing that we must be free to consider whether what is offered is free and freeing is itself enslavement.
Gerry Spence
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We could advance the human race enormously if we but learned to communicate honestly with our neighbors.
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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My intent is to tell the truth as I know it, realizing that what is true for me may be blasphemy for others.
Gerry Spence
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I love my life and I am so blessed.
Gerry Spence
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I cherish the fantasy, even the hope, of adventures in other realms to come. But how can we choke out that most precious of all gifts, life, with the rope of religion around our necks? It chokes out freedom with dogma. It pinions us to the stake of superstition.
Gerry Spence
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A new fascism promises security from the terror of crime. All that is required is that we take away the criminals' rights - which, of course, are our own. Out of our desperation and fear we begin to feel a sense of security from the new totalitarian state.
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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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