Richard Posner Quotes

It is the censor's business to make a judgment about the propriety of the content or message of the proposed expressive activity. The regulation here does not authorize any judgment about the content of any speeches ... A park is a limited space, and to allow unregulated access to all comers could easily reduce rather than enlarge the park's utility as a forum for speech. Just imagine two rallies held at the same time in the same park area using public-address systems that drowned out each other's speakers.

We have a tendency to assume people are a unity, and thus good people all good, etc. But the fact that Hitler was good to dogs and children isn't a paradox.

If belief in the existence of God is predicted to lead to a feeling of contentment, and the prediction is fulfilled, does it follow that God exists? Surely not. All that would follow would be the desireability of the belief.

Heterosexuals get drunk and pregnant, producing unwanted children; their reward is to be allowed to marry. Homosexual couples do not produce unwanted children; their reward is to be denied the right to marry. Go figure.

In a religiously uniform culture, it is natural for people to take for granted the truth of the prevailing religion and its associated metaphysical propositions.

As a social good, I think privacy is greatly overrated because privacy basically means concealment. People conceal things in order to fool other people about them. They want to appear healthier than they are, smarter, more honest and so forth.

Because reputation lags achievement, we should expect people to reach the zenith of their reputation well past the zenith of their productive output

MacKinnon's treatment of the central issue of pornography as she herself poses it - the harm that pornography does to women - is shockingly causal. Much of her evidence is anecdotal, and in a nation of 260 Million people, anecdotes are a weak form of evidence.

A diversity of approaches is necessary if there is to be a good chance of hitting on one that works. Progress is a social undertaking & achievement, because people see things differently

I was an advocate of the deregulation movement and I made - along with a lot of other smart people - a fundamental mistake, which is that deregulation works fine in industries which do not pervade the economy," he said in the appearance on Spitzer's "Viewpoint." "The financial industry undergirded the entire economy and if it is made riskier by deregulation and collapses in widespread bankruptcies as what happened in 2008, the entire economy freezes because it runs on credit.

I've become less conservative since the Republican Party started becoming goofy,