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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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Gerry Spence
Age: 95
Born: 1929
Born: January 8
Lawyer
Laramie
Wyoming
Gerald Leonard Spence
Nations
Dismantled
Firsts
Totalitarian
First
Jury
People
Institution
Institutions
Afraid
Nation
Rights
Subordinated

More quotes by 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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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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Faced with the pain of freedom, man begs for his shackles.
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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The less of one's life one must exchange for money, the more freedom one may enjoy.
Gerry Spence
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Today the courts are choked with lawsuits brought by people against the New King. When they sue each other as a result of an automobile accident they in fact sue the King, for both parties are likely insured. Steadily the courts have become clearing-houses for the insurance industry.
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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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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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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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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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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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
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Money in doses disproportionate to our needs enslaves.
Gerry Spence
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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
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When any system has for its goal the advancement of the system over the betterment of its individual members, such a system is embedded in slavery.
Gerry Spence
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Without argument the species would parish.
Gerry Spence
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Words that do not create images should be discarded.
Gerry Spence
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The true test of liberty is the right to test it, the right to question it, the right to speak to my neighbors, to grab them by the shoulders and look into their eyes and ask, “Are we free?” I have thought that if we are free, the answer cannot hurt us. And if we are not free, must we not hear the answer?
Gerry Spence
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Credibility is what it is ALL about.
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