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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
Nation
Rights
Subordinated
Nations
Dismantled
Firsts
Totalitarian
First
Jury
People
Institution
Institutions
Afraid

More quotes by 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 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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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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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 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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How much of our lives could we buy back if we cherished our lives instead of our trinkets?
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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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
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I love my life and I am so blessed.
Gerry Spence
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Faced with the pain of freedom, man begs for his shackles.
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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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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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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Credibility is what it is ALL about.
Gerry Spence
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Everyone wants to argue. Everyone does. Everyone needs to.
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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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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Without argument the species would parish.
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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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