Richard Posner Quotes

• The Constitution has to be interpreted loosely, otherwise it becomes a straitjacket. You can't interpret it literally. You can pretend to, and go digging around in 18th Century dictionaries to figure out what 'cruel and unusual punishment' meant or what the 'right to bear arms' meant, but that is all fake really. The Constitution has to be interpreted in light of modern needs, and that's what they (the strict interpreters) end up doing in spite of all their investigations.

  Richard Posner

  Light, Punishment, Fake

  43 Copy quote

• The only rationale that the states put forth with any conviction-that same-sex couples and their children don't need marriage because same-sex couples can't produce children, intended or unintended-is so full of holes that it cannot be taken seriously.

  Richard Posner

  Sex, Children, Couple

  "Hero Federal Appeals Judge Burns Down the Case Against Gay Marriage" by Michelle Dean, gawker.com. September 5, 2014.

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• Fact is often stranger than fiction because most writers of fiction try to make their stories plausible.

  Richard Posner

  Inspirational, Trying, Fiction

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• I’ve become less conservative since the Republican Party started becoming goofy.

  Richard Posner

  Party, Becoming, Conservative

  "Judge Posner: GOP has gone 'goofy'" by William Bergstrom, www.politico.com. July 6, 2012.

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• 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.

  Richard Posner

  Children, Couple, Drunk

  "Hero Federal Appeals Judge Burns Down the Case Against Gay Marriage" by Michelle Dean, gawker.com. September 5, 2014.

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• 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.

  Richard Posner

  Mean, Thinking, Order

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• 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

  Richard Posner

  Diversity, People, Achievement

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

  Richard Posner

  Past, People, Achievement

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• 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.

  Richard Posner

  Dog, Children, People

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• The confidentiality of the judicial process would not matter greatly to an understanding and evaluation of the legal system if the consequences of judicial behavior could be readily determined. If you can determine the ripeness of a cantaloupe by squeezing or smelling it, you don't have to worry about the produce clerk's mental processes.

  Richard Posner

  Worry, Understanding, Clerks

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• I do not know what has caused MacKinnon to become, and, more surprisingly, to remain, so obsessed with pornography, and so zealous for censorship. But let us not sacrifice our civil liberties on the altar of her obsession.

  Richard Posner

  Sacrifice, Government, Liberty

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• 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. 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.

  Richard Posner

  Running, Mistake, Smart

  "Reagan-Appointed Judge: Deregulation Movement Made ‘A Fundamental Mistake’". www.huffingtonpost.com. August 24, 2012.

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• 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.

  Richard Posner

  Spiritual, Atheist, Science

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• Violent video games played in public places are a tiny fraction of the media violence to which modern American children are exposed. Tiny - and judging from the record of this case, not very violent compared to what is available to children on television and in movie theaters today.

  Richard Posner

  Children, Government, Media

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• 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.

  Richard Posner

  Spiritual, Atheist, Science

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• But Friedman seemed to share Friedrich Hayek's extreme and inaccurate view that socialism of the sort that Britain embraced under the old Labour Party was incompatible with democracy, and I don't think that there is a good theoretical or empirical basis for that view. The Road to Serfdom flunks the test of accuracy of prediction!

  Richard Posner

  Party, Thinking, Views

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• 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.

  Richard Posner

  Government, Two, Space

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• 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.

  Richard Posner

  Government, Issues, People

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