Quote

The gift of self cannot be given to us. It is an incomparable gift that has already been given. We have possessed it from the beginning.

Gerry Spence

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Gerry Spence
Age: 95
Born: 1929
Born: January 8
Lawyer
Laramie
Wyoming
Gerald Leonard Spence
Gift
Beginning
Already
Given
Cannot
Self
Incomparable
Possessed

More quotes by Gerry Spence

Image
When you are faced with prejudice, logic and justice are impotent. Still, we may have an obligation to argue directly into the face of the prejudice, even though there is no chance to win.
Gerry Spence
Image
Once slavery in America was not seen as radical. It became, instead, a revolutionary idea that slaves should be freed. When we have lived under a pernicious power long enough, no matter how oppressive, we grow so accustomed to the yoke that its removal seems frightening, even wrong.
Gerry Spence
Image
What the insurance companies have done is to reverse the business so that the public at large insures the insurance companies.
Gerry Spence
Image
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
Image
Successful argument is a communication between the acknowledged authority of both parties to the argument.
Gerry Spence
Image
Faced with the pain of freedom, man begs for his shackles.
Gerry Spence
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Everyone wants to argue. Everyone does. Everyone needs to.
Gerry Spence
Image
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
Image
We could advance the human race enormously if we but learned to communicate honestly with our neighbors.
Gerry Spence
Image
I love my life and I am so blessed.
Gerry Spence
Image
Credibility is what it is ALL about.
Gerry Spence
Image
To freely bloom that is my definition of success. The question then is, How does arguing with our children advance our goal that our children freely bloom.
Gerry Spence
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The new and most powerful union of all will be a union of one one man, one woman, one worker with special skills, an inquiring mind, and an independent attitude, his creativity intact, his love of life blooming. The union of one will be peopled by one man or one woman who is alive. Such a person is always sought by the intelligent manager.
Gerry Spence