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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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Words that do not create images should be discarded.
Gerry Spence
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Credibility is what it is ALL about.
Gerry Spence
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Faced with the pain of freedom, man begs for his shackles.
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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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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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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We could advance the human race enormously if we but learned to communicate honestly with our neighbors.
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 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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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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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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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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I am not as concerned about choosing the right words as I am in letting the words flow naturally.
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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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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Money in doses disproportionate to our needs enslaves.
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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Everyone wants to argue. Everyone does. Everyone needs to.
Gerry Spence
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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
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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