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

More Quotes by Gerry Spence
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More Quotes From Gerry Spence
I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by be... by Gerry Spence

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

Gerry Spence
religious faith life

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
government sheep giving

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
tyrants rights promise

Lawyers should be chosen because they can demonstrate a history rich in human traits, the ability to care, the courage to fight, the will to win, a concern for the human condition, a passion for justice and simple uncompromising honesty. These are the traits of the lawyer.

Gerry Spence
passion honesty fighting

There are only two races (and they are not distinguished by color): those who are free and those who are not.

Gerry Spence
color race two

. . . in America, we have achieved the Orwellian prediction - enslaved, the people have been programmed to love their bondage and are left to clutch only mirage-like images of freedom, its fables and fictions. The new slaves are linked together by vast electronic chains of television that imprison not their bodies but their minds. Their desires are programmed, their tastes manipulated, their values set for them.

Gerry Spence
tyrants america people

Why are scientists now using lawyers in laboratory experiments instead of rats? Three reasons: (1) lawyers are more plentiful than rats, (2) there is no danger the scientists will become attached to the lawyers, and (3) there are some things rats just won't do.

Gerry Spence
lawyer three rats

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
realizing telling-the-truth may

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
unjust-society appreciate people

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
liberty eye hurt

The erosion of a nation's concern for life and for individual rights, has always preceded the intrusion of tyranny.

Gerry Spence
erosion individual rights

Children, as persons, are entitled to the greatest respect. Children are given to us as free-flying souls, but then we clip their wings like we domesticate the wild mallard. Children should become the role-models for us, their parents, for they are coated with the spirit from which they came- out of the ether, clean, innocent, brimming with the delight of life, aware of the beauty of the simplest thing; a snail, a bud.

Gerry Spence
role-models wings children
Nothing in the world is as fearsome as a bloody, battered opponen... by Gerry Spence

Nothing in the world is as fearsome as a bloody, battered opponent who will never surrender.

Gerry Spence
surrender opponents world

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
godly religious men

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
function law justice

We have become the new american slaves: but there is a revolution coming. It is a revolution of individual liberty. It will free us without violence. It will begin with the self. It will spread to the workplace. It will turn our corporate masters into our servants. It will free us of government's tyranny. The revolution will spread to all corners of the nation, and at last, we shall be free.

Gerry Spence
liberty government self
Our willingness to openly reveal our feelings in our argument nea... by Gerry Spence

Our willingness to openly reveal our feelings in our argument nearly always builds our credibility.

Gerry Spence
argument credibility feelings

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

Gerry Spence
insurance-companies reverse done

I could teach an eighth-grader in twenty minutes how to brief a case. Yet for all three years in most law schools the casebook method of learning the law is still in. The matriculating young lawyer is as qualified to represent a client with the education he has suffered through as a doctor who has never seen a patient, who has never held a scalpel in his hand and who learns surgery by having read text books about it and becomes skilled in surgery, if ever, after having stacked up piles of corpses who represent his pathetic learning process.

Gerry Spence
doctors book school

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
government together people