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?
Interpretation
Freedom involves the right to question and engage in dialogue about liberty.
In this quote, Gerry Spence emphasizes that true freedom is characterized not merely by the absence of constraints, but by the fundamental right to inquire about and challenge that freedom. He suggests that asking tough questions and engaging in meaningful conversations about our liberty is essential, and that knowledge of our freedom or lack thereof can only empower us, rather than harm us.
In practice
This could be quoted in a discussion about civil rights movements.
Today the insatiable quest for profit promotes the new slavery. In bewildering ways, the new is more pernicious than the old, for the New American Slave is told he is free, and he clings to that myth as if his life depended upon it, a suspicion that cannot be totally ignored.
The best antidote for crime is justice. The irony we often fail to appreciate is that the more justice people enjoy, the fewer crimes they commit. Crime is the natural offspring of an unjust society.
When any system has for its goal the advancement of the system over the betterment of its individual members, such a system is embedded in slavery.
The erosion of a nation's concern for life and for individual rights, has always preceded the intrusion of tyranny.
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 ultimate enemy of Democracy is not the drug dealer of the crooked politician or the crazed skinhead. The ultimate enemy is the New King that has become so powerful it can murder its own citizens with impunity.
You first parents of the human race...who ruined yourself for an apple, what might you have done for a truffled turkey?
I can recall no parallel in history where a great nation recently at war has so distinguished its former enemy commander.
Almost anything that you pay close, direct attention to becomes interesting.
If there is no other world and there is no fruit and ripening of actions well done or ill done, then here and now in this life I shall be free from hostility, affliction, and anxiety, and I shall live happily.
If someday they say of me that in my work I have contributed something to the welfare and happiness of my fellow man, I shall be satisfied.
You grieve Not that heaven does not exist but That it exists without us
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