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."

"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."

"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."

"The stain of prejudice is often indelible."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Power can win the body count but it cannot win this war. Because the enemy is not human. This is a war against a malicious spirit. Only fools attempt to defeat a spirit with guns and rockets and bombs."

"I dream of a time when the people will retake their airways and use them to achieve a voice to rediscover democracy, and to see the divine potential of man."

"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."