"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material but I know it when I see it"
- Potter Stewart
About this Quote
This quote by Potter Stewart is frequently utilized to describe the difficulty of defining profanity. Stewart was a Supreme Court Justice who was charged with identifying what constituted profanity in the 1964 case Jacobellis v. Ohio. In his viewpoint, Stewart wrote that he could not specify profanity, but he knew it when he saw it. This quote has become a popular phrase to describe the problem of defining something that is subjective and tough to measure.
Stewart's quote is typically used to explain the trouble of defining something that is not easily defined. It is a reminder that there are some things that can not be easily specified, however can still be recognized. This quote is also a pointer that in some cases it is much better to rely on our own judgement and intuition when it pertains to making choices. We may not be able to define something, however we can still recognize it when we see it.
This quote is written / told by Potter Stewart between January 23, 1915 and December 7, 1985. He was a famous Judge from USA.
The author also have 11 other quotes.
"In thinking about nanotechnology today, what's most important is understanding where it leads, what nanotechnology will look like after we reach the assembler breakthrough"
"So many people are working in vaudeville today that I looked for three weeks to book enough acts for an hour bill and didn't have them until the night before we opened in Buffalo and money was no object!"
"I never had the exposure to techniques and so forth that children have today with art workshops, but I always had crayons and pencils and still have work going right back to when I was five or six years old"
