Top 60 Gerry Spence Quotes (2024 Update)

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

— Gerry Spence

Featured in: Faith Quotes

2. “I love my life and I am so blessed.”

— Gerry Spence

3. “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

4. “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

5. “Faced with the pain of freedom, man begs for his shackles.”

— Gerry Spence

6. “Credibility is what it is ALL about...”

— Gerry Spence

7. “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

8. “Words that do not create images should be discarded.”

— Gerry Spence

9. “We are defined by how we use our power.”

— Gerry Spence

10. “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

11. “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

12. “Successful argument is a communication between the acknowledged authority of both parties to the argument.”

— Gerry Spence

13. “Prejudice locks the mind. Nothing can enter. Nothing true can escape.”

— Gerry Spence

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

— Gerry Spence

15. “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

16. “To freely bloom – that is my definition of success.”

— Gerry Spence

17. “The way people move is their autobiography in motion.”

— Gerry Spence

18. “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

19. “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

20. “How much of our lives could we buy back if we cherished our lives instead of our trinkets?”

— Gerry Spence

21. “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

22. “The less of one’s life one must exchange for money, the more freedom one may enjoy.”

— Gerry Spence

23. “Money in doses disproportionate to our needs enslaves.”

— Gerry Spence

24. “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

25. “To bargain freedom for security is the devil’s bargain. Having made the bargain, one enjoys neither freedom nor security.”

— Gerry Spence

26. “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

27. “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

28. “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

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

— Gerry Spence

30. “The ultimate enemy of Democracy is not the drug dealer of the crooked politician or the crazed skinhead. The ultimate enemy is the New King that has become so powerful it can murder its own citizens with impunity.”

— Gerry Spence

31. “Each of us has been endowed with the perfect power to be free. Slavery is a state of mind that fails to acknowledge the slave’s own power.”

— Gerry Spence

32. “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

33. “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

34. “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

35. “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

36. “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

37. “Arguments do not erase prejudice any more than arguments erase scars, whether psychological or physical.”

— Gerry Spence

38. “We are afraid. But fear confirms life and identifies the source of every successful argument – ourselves.”

— Gerry Spence

39. “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

40. “To excel in the art of domestic argument, one must master the art of losing.”

— Gerry Spence

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

— Gerry Spence

42. “I am not as concerned about choosing the right words as I am in letting the words flow naturally.”

— Gerry Spence

43. “Everyone wants to argue. Everyone does. Everyone needs to.”

— Gerry Spence

44. “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

45. “Without argument the species would parish.”

— Gerry Spence

46. “It is an anomaly that we can split the atom, but we are nearly powerless to persuade each other to embrace justice.”

— Gerry Spence

47. “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

48. “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

49. “The stain of prejudice is often indelible.”

— Gerry Spence

50. “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