Gerry Spence Quotes

51 Sourced Quotes

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
The major functions of the government are, as in the communist nations, operated by deeply embedded, hopelessly entangled bureaus where nothing is accomplished because the function of the bureau is to intercept every living idea and smother it.

Gerry Spence
What the insurance companies have done is to reverse the business so that the public at large insures the insurance companies.

Gerry Spence
I say, embrace fear as a friend. It is nature's gift to us. It is the best weapon for liberty. We do not give our permission to be enslaved by acknowledging its presence. Instead, it permits us to escape into the forest if we must. But it does not prevent the boy from rising off the ground one more time to defeat the bully. Fear is presented to us as a signal of danger. It permits us to escape or to fight with power beyond our ability.

Gerry Spence
The best antidote for crime is justice. The irony we often fail to appreciate is that the more justice people enjoy, the fewer crimes they commit. Crime is the natural offspring of an unjust society.

Gerry Spence
No artist's masterpiece can match a mother's creation of a successful child, one who has been freed to explore and to grow.... Success is measured not only by who we are, but by what gifts we give. As the old chief said, "The gift is not complete until it is given again." Ah, the mother whose gift to the world is a person!

Gerry Spence
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
I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief.

Gerry Spence
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
The less of one's life one must exchange for money, the more freedom one may enjoy.

Gerry Spence
I dream of a time when the people will retake their airways and use them to achieve a voice to rediscover democracy, and to see the divine potential of man.

Gerry Spence
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
There are no rules that say lawyers cannot write or speak from their heart. Passion has never been formally outlawed, although it is a little-known experience among most lawyers and nearly all academicians.

Gerry Spence
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
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
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
Although the ideal of free enterprise could, indeed, lend itself to the uplifting of the human condition, when it is practiced for profit alone, it becomes but a license for the powerful to further enslave the weak.

Gerry Spence
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
If I am real, if I am speaking from the heart zone, the right words will come. They will come a spoonful at a time, in the proper mixture.

Gerry Spence
Teach the child to respect that which is not respectable and you teach the child the first requirement of slavery: submission to unjust authority. Children are persons. They are small persons whose perfect souls have not yet been ground through the meat grinder of slavery.

Gerry Spence
The so-called godly man may be more likely to do serious wrong than a man who deeply questions himself. The 'godly man' often zealously follows religious precepts that, in the end, justify an unjust injury to others, while the questioning man, addressing his own conscience, may have the better chance to consider all the circumstances and come to the just decision.

Gerry Spence
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
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
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
As we drive down the freeways, we see the new cars, but not the massive new-car loans that enslave their drivers to the banks.

Gerry Spence
When we come before the school board, most often we do not face those interested in the education of our children, but those interested in the maintenance of power. These contests are war. Any other paradigm is an illusion. It is not a mere contest, like athletes plunging down the hill on skis for the fastest time. It is not a dance in which the most graceful will be rewarded with a medal. This is war. Once we understand that the struggle is war, we can wage war and win.
The key to winning any war is to control the war. This does not mean I seek to control my opponent.

Gerry Spence
Susan Boggs, a black runaway interviewed in Canada in 1863, said of the religious slave masters: 'Why the man that baptized me had a colored woman tied up in his yard to whip when he got home that very Sunday and her mother... was in church hearing him preach. He preached, You must obey your masters and be good servants.- That is the greater part of the sermon, when they preach to the colored folks....'

Gerry Spence
Skepticism, not cleanliness, is next to godliness. Skepticism is the father of freedom. It is like the pry that holds open the door for truth to slip in.

Gerry Spence
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
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