Top 15 Gerry Spence Quotes

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

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....

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.

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?

Love is how we feel toward those who show us that which is lovable about ourselves.

The most formidable chains are forged from beliefs. Ah, beliefs! Beliefs tear out the eyes and leave us blind and groping in the dark. If I believe in one proposition, I have become locked behind the door of that belief, and all other doors to learning and freedom, although standing open and waiting for me to enter, are now closed to me. If I believe in one God, one religion, yes, if I believe in God at all, if I have closed my mind to magic, to spirit, to salvation, to the unknown dimension that exist in the firmament, I have plunged my mind into slavery. Test all beliefs. Distrust all beliefs.

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.

"The old saw that "sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never harm me" does not, in fact, hold true."

The way people move is their autobiography in motion.

If logic and reason, the hard, cold products of the mind, can be relied upon to deliver justice or produce the truth, how is it that these brain-heavy judges rarely agree? Five-to-four decisions are the rule, not the exception. Nearly half of the court must be unjust and wrong nearly half of the time. Each decision, whether the majority or minority, exudes logic and reason like the obfuscating ink from a jellyfish, and in language as opaque. The minority could have as easily become the decision of the court. At once we realize that logic, no matter how pretty and neat, that reason, no matter how seemingly profound and deep, does not necessarily produce truth, much less justice. Logic and reason often become but tools used by those in power to deliver their load of injustice to the people. And ultimate truth, if, indeed, it exists, is rarely recognizable in the endless rows of long words that crowd page after page of most judicial regurgitations.

The chief reason [Bill] O'Reilly is a conservative is that like all conservatives he offers no solutions for the major issues confronting those he pretends to champion — such as better wages, workable health insurance, education for every deserving child, controls on the corporate thugs that are destroying our earth, an unfettered national voice for the ordinary citizen, reform of the election laws of this country that permitted corporations to own the country and enslave the people.

Fear is like a pack of dogs – it chases us, and if we try to run or hide from it the dogs will continue our chase until finally, exhausted, we fall and are devoured.

The operational word in every competent defense is attack. If you’re explaining and defending, you’re losing.

We have been assembled and fabricated into well-behaved students, predictable consumers, and obedient citizens. Most of what is feral has been domesticated. We suffocate in an amorphous glob of sameness. We have learned it is better to conform than to be.

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