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 SpenceThe 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, โAre we free?โ 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 SpenceThe 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 SpenceThe erosion of a nation's concern for life and for individual rights, has always preceded the intrusion of tyranny.
Gerry SpenceWe could advance the human race enormously if we but learned to communicate honestly with our neighbors.
Gerry SpenceSusan Boggs, a black runaway interviewed in Canada in 1863, said of the religious slave masters: 'Why the man that baptized me had a colored woman tied up in his yard to whip when he got home that very Sunday and her mother . . . was in church hearing him preach. He preached, You must obey your masters and be good servants.- That is the greater part of the sermon, when they preach to the colored folks. . . .'
Gerry Spence