The erosion of a nation’s concern for life and for individual rights, has always preceded the intrusion of tyranny.
We must begin to train lawyers the minute they walk into law school to tell the truth. They must immediately begin to learn the business of representing people. They must be assigned cases the first day.
We are afraid. But fear confirms life and identifies the source of every successful argument – ourselves.
Successful argument is a communication between the acknowledged authority of both parties to the argument.
Without argument the species would parish.
In any nation in which people’s rights have been subordinated to the rights of the few, in any totalitarian nation, the first institution to be dismantled is the jury. I was, I am, afraid.
To bargain freedom for security is the devil’s bargain. Having made the bargain, one enjoys neither freedom nor security.
Each of us has been endowed with the perfect power to be free. Slavery is a state of mind that fails to acknowledge the slave’s own power.
Everyone wants to argue. Everyone does. Everyone needs to.
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.
To accept capitalism and Free Enterprise as articles of faith without agreeing that we must be free to consider whether what is offered is free and freeing is itself enslavement.
I love my life and I am so blessed.
Money in doses disproportionate to our needs enslaves.
Prejudice locks the mind. Nothing can enter. Nothing true can escape.
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.
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.
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.
The stain of prejudice is often indelible.
We are defined by how we use our power.
As we drive down the freeways, we see the new cars, but not the massive new-car loans that enslave their drivers to the banks.
Is there anyone I wouldn’t take as a client? Well, I’d never represent a banker.