Gerry Spence Quotes

Is Justice to be established by subjecting half of mankind to the will of the other half? Justice, Sir, is blind to colors, and weighs in equal scales the rights of all men whether white or black…. An opportunity is now presented, if not to diminish, at least to prevent the growth of a sin that sits heavy on the soul of every one of us.

This is not a question of expediency, but of right. In antebellum days the proposition was not, “Are the blacks good enough to be free?” but, “Have they the right?” So today the question is not, “Will outrages result from freeing humanity?” but, “Has it the right to life, the means of life, the opportunities of happiness?”

One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.

I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom.

For as long as I can remember, I've always been interested in issues of social justice, political freedom, and civil rights.

What are we having this liberty for? We are having this liberty in order to reform our social system, which is full of inequality, discrimination and other things, which conflict with our fundamental rights.

I consecrate my life to the abolition of slavery.

Every type of discrimination whether social or cultural, whether based on sex, race, social condition, language or religion, is to be overcome and eradicated as contrary to God's intent.

Liberty without equality is a name of noble sound and squalid result.

Can law, human law, change the nature of things? Can it turn darkness into light, or evil into good? By no means. Notwithstanding ten thousand laws, right is right, and wrong is wrong still. There must still remain an essential difference between justice and injustice, cruelty and mercy. … Who can reconcile this treatment of the Negroes, first and last, with either mercy or justice?

The artist must elect to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative. the history of the capsulize era is characterized by the degradation of my people: despoiled of their lands, their true culture destroyed...denied equal protection of the law, and deprived their rightful place in the respect of their fellows.

In the name of heaven, with what face can we call ourselves the friends of equal freedom and the inherent rights of our species when we wantonly pass laws inimical to each; when we reject every opportunity of destroying, by silent, imperceptible degrees, the horrid fabric of individual bondage, reared by the mercenary hands of those from whom the sacred flame of liberty received no devotion?

Discrimination will impair democracy.

It is not a liberty of circumstance, conceded to us alone, that we wish; it is the adoption absolute of the principle that no man, born red, black or white, can be the property of his fellow man.

America stands for freedom, liberty and justice for all. And it's not happening for all right now.

By a divine paradox, wherever there is one slave there are two

I could not comprehend the justice of that law, or that religion, which upholds or recognizes the principle of slavery.

I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world.

I grew up with injustice and could do nothing about it. But once in America, I had freedom of choice.

Emancipation - what is meant by it? Simply that the slaves shall cease to be held as property and shall henceforth be held and treated as human beings. Simply, that we should take our feet from off their necks.

All women, and men of color - we were owned like tables and chairs. We spent a hundred years getting a legal identity as human beings. That's a big thing.

If we should ever get to Heaven, we shall find nobody to reproach us for being black, or for being slaves.

My work always presents problems in our society. Those problems may be anything from injustice to freedom, and everything related to humanity.

Where I come from, if you see your family and friends' civil rights being taken away, you speak up and do everything you can to keep that from happening!

If you care about injustice, and if you care about freedom, and you care about human rights, then you care about them everywhere.