Gerry Spence 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.

The inability to yield control is often misinterpreted as inability or weakness. Giving up control is often confused with giving up. 223

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.

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.

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.

Corporations do not make up this country, people do.

Who can we cast into the role of the villain? _Circumstance_ is the villain, is it not? 208

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.

There are innumerable ways to murder a person, but the most subtle and pernicious of these is to mutilate the soul of the innocent by denying or downgrading their uniqueness and their beauty.

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.

Great pretenses win nothing. The tears, the unctuous oratory — all are useless if, at last, we have no credibility. To win, we must be believed. To be believed, we must be believable. To be believable, we must tell the truth, the truth about ourselves — the whole truth.

After black slavery, the worker, black and white, became the new slave who was left to fend for himself, to feed and educate his children, and to see to his own burial. At the beginning of the Industrial Age the workingman was transformed into another commodity, an item of energy that could be converted to money. Nothing has changed.

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.

But the day I finally realized I did not need to control Imaging, that, indeed, I ought not control her, that, in fact, I could not control her, and that if I could I would destroy the marriage, was the day our marriage began. If one can control the Other, one maintains a relationship only with one's self, a sort of masturbatory state that takes the place of the marriage. The Other becomes one's puppet, and puppeteers maintain relationships with only themselves. What a strange dynamic! When one is in control of the marriage, alas, there is no marriage.

The way people move is their autobiography in motion.