A Quote by Jef I. Richards

Commercial speech is like obscenity... we can't seem to define it, but we know it when we see it.

Jef I. Richards

Quote Topics

Commercial Define Know Like Obscenity See Seem Speech

Quote Author

Jef I. Richards
American - Educator

Whether my acting was obscene, or whether it was distasteful, well, Judge Rehnquist, who just recently passed away couldn't define pornography. His comment on pornography was, "I may not be able to define it but I know it when I see it." That's not law. That's definitely not law. Really, this trial should have been an organized crime trial. About murder and tax evasion and brutalizing people. Not about obscenity.

Harry Reems

I don't know how one actually would define obscenity. I'm sure the definition is different according to the age one is living in.

Jane Alexander

It showed a kind of obscenity you see only in nature, an obscenity so extreme that it dissolves imperceptibly into beauty.

Richard Preston

The concept of 'obscenity' is tested when one dares to look at something that he has an unbearable desire to see but has forbidden himself to look at. When one feels that everything that one had wanted to see has been revealed, 'obscenity' disappears, the taboo disappears as well, and there is a certain liberation.

Nagisa Oshima

For some reason, people find me funny. It's quite hard to define why a thought is funny. It's even harder to define why a person would be funny. It's a word that I can't define at all. But whether I know quite what it is or not, I seem to be it.

Wallace Shawn

I don't know that I could really define love. I can't . . . again, it's like trying to define what this creative force is. It's beyond my ability to really define. If I can define it, then it's not it. We're right back to that thing again.

Hubert Selby, Jr.

It's always easy to get people to condemn threats to free speech when the speech being threatened is speech that they like. It's much more difficult to induce support for free speech rights when the speech being punished is speech they find repellent.

Glenn Greenwald

Intelligence is like pornography. I can't define it, but I know if when I see it.

Jack McDevitt

I've noticed that girls between like 20 and 30 seem to know 'Can't Hardly Wait.' I got the goth kids who know 'Buffy.' I got this wide spectrum of people who range from like 8 to 13 who seem to know 'Scooby-Doo.' Then I get the international people who seem to know 'Austin Powers' and 'The Italian Job.'

Seth Green

Of course creativity is a mystery. We don't know what drives it or what constitutes it. It's one of those things, like genius, you know it when you see it but it's impossible to define.

Daniel Tammet

Leadership is like beauty - it's hard to define but you know it when you see it.

Warren G. Bennis

We [Americans] know Martin Luther King Jr. as a statue. We know him as a holiday. We know him as a speech. We don't know him as a man. Most people don't even know the whole speech, just "I have a dream." They don't know what his speaking voice was like, how he looked at his wife, or that he had four kids.

Ava DuVernay

Language is legislation, speech is its code. We do not see the power which is in speech because we forget that all speech is a classification, and that all classifications are oppressive.

Roland Barthes

Make no laws whatever concerning speech, and speech will be free; so soon as you make a declaration on paper that speech shall be free, you will have a hundred lawyers proving that "freedom does not mean abuse, nor liberty license," and they will define freedom out of existence.

Voltairine de Cleyre

I sometimes think that I might be slightly autistic. There might be a syndrome that hasn't been named. I don't seem to see the world in the same way that most people I know see it. They don't seem to be baffled by it.

John Banville

A Quote by Jef I. Richards

Quote Topics

Quote Author

Related Quotes

Related Authors