Gerry Spence - How to argue and win every time (1995)

12 Sourced Quotes

View all Gerry Spence Quotes
The power argument is an argument so powerful in its structure, so compelling in its delivery that when we assume the power stance the argument cannot be defeated. The power argument need not fill the air with noise. It need not create pandemonium. It need not destroy the opponent. It can be quiet. Gentle. It can embrace love, not anger, understanding, not hate.

Gerry Spence
Prejudice locks the mind. Nothing can enter. Nothing true can escape.

Gerry Spence
Those whose minds are jammed with prejudice have room for little else. Growth is dead. Learning is gridlocked. They may understand our logic, but logic makes no difference. The word root of prejudice, praejudicium, implies prejudgment. People are prejudiced both for and against a philosophy, a religion, a belief system. They are prejudiced for or against a political party, the make of an automobile, a race, a person — you name it.

Gerry Spence
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
Everyone wants to argue. Everyone does. Everyone needs to.

Gerry Spence
Words that do not create images should be discarded. Words that have no intrinsic emotional or visual content ought to be avoided. Words that are directed to the sterile intellectual head-place should be abandoned. Use simple words, words that create pictures and action and that generate feeling.

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

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
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
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
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