Top 83 Cass Sunstein Quotes
#1. If you go to Cass Sunstein, what net neutrality means is now if you go to FoxNews, you will have Arianna Huffington, a little box pop up with her showing that "Bill O'Reilly is wrong on this" or "here's an opposing view of Bill O'Reilly".
Glenn Beck
#2. Multiple international bodies have specified that the absence of scientific evidence of potential damage is not sufficient justification for taking risks. As the jurist Cass Sunstein points out, the precautionary principle is costly, and when interpreted strictly it can be paralyzing.
Daniel Kahneman
#3. AWAY OF EASING THE BURDEN THAT FREEDOM OF CHOICE IMPOSES IS to make decisions about when to make decisions. These are what Cass Sunstein and Edna Ullmann-Margalit call second-order decisions. One kind of second-order decision is the decision to follow a rule.
Barry Schwartz
#4. Do people know which risks lead to many deaths and which risks lead to few?" the legal scholar Cass Sunstein asks. "They do not. In fact, they make huge blunders." Sunstein draws this observation from the work of Paul Slovic, author of The Perception of Risk.
Eula Biss
#5. If Star Wars had been released in the late '60s, or late '80s, or late '90s, adjusting for technology, it fits spectacularly well.
Cass Sunstein
#6. A lot of people are focused on climate change as a defining challenge of our time. A lot of people think it is a non-problem, at least in the United States.
Cass Sunstein
#7. The middle class is not doing well, and trade policy might have something to do with that, and so someone who is going to be fixated on those things, who has a business background, has some appeal.
Cass Sunstein
#8. It's deeply human to do both the worst things and the best things because of your fear of loss.
Cass Sunstein
#9. Almost all gun control legislation is constitutionally fine. And if the court is right, then fundamentalism does not justify the view that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms.
Cass Sunstein
#10. Catholicism is a wide tent in terms of political and legal positions. We could have nine Catholics on the Supreme Court and a great deal of diversity toward the law.
Cass Sunstein
#11. If you have a regulation that's going to save hundreds of thousands of lives annually and not cost very much, that sounds like a very good idea.
Cass Sunstein
#13. The U.S. is blessed with tremendously creative and imaginative law students at places like Chicago, Harvard, Columbia and Yale.
Cass Sunstein
#14. This part of the 21st century is preoccupied with risk, and there's a lot that law can do to make lives longer and healthier.
Cass Sunstein
#15. The fear of loss is an engine of horrors, but also a source of the greatest forms of heroism. There's not a lot of art that puts that in bold letters. It's psychologically very interesting and acute, I think. That's not the central reading, I think, of the New Testament.
Cass Sunstein
#16. My own view is that institutions are a glory, and for all their imperfections, something really to be proud of. It is true that things can be a lot better than they are. It's okay to emphasize that.
Cass Sunstein
#17. I'm interested in how the Internet spreads information.
Cass Sunstein
#18. It might also count as an insult to dignity, and a form of infantilization, if the government constantly reminds people of things that they already know.
Cass R. Sunstein
#19. Game Of Thrones is arguably the hottest thing on television.
Cass Sunstein
#20. The 'cash for clunkers' program was a big success in part because it gave people the sense that the economy was moving.
Cass Sunstein
#21. As a matter of history, the Fourteenth Amendment was not understood to ban segregation on the basis of race.
Cass Sunstein
#22. I'll tell you an explanation that I find commonly overrated and speculative in the extreme: the idea that things that succeed in popular culture do that because they hit the temper of the times.
Cass Sunstein
#23. Democrats want to use government power to make people's lives go better; Republicans respond that people know more than politicians do. We think that both might be able to agree that nudging can maintain free markets, and liberty, while also inclining people in good directions.
Cass Sunstein
#24. My role in the government was not to think about narratives and consistency with narratives, but think of the human consequences of rules.
Cass Sunstein
#25. Economists suggest that we should assess the value of decisions in terms of two considerations: the costs of decisions and the costs of errors.
Cass R. Sunstein
#26. There are some lawyers who think of themselves as basically instruments of whoever their clients are, and they pride themselves on their professional craft.
Cass Sunstein
#27. It's very common to say that Star Wars in the late '70s, that was kind of perfect for Cold War culture and the aftermath of Vietnam in the '60s to have an upbeat, hopeful, cartoonish tale of a hero's journey. I think those explanations are easy to offer and almost always wrong.
Cass Sunstein
#28. Today, we are announcing that agencies are releasing their final regulatory reform plans, including hundreds of initiatives that will reduce costs, simplify the system, and eliminate redundancy and inconsistency.
Cass Sunstein
#29. Partyism certainly isn't as horrible as racism; no one is enslaved or turned into a lower caste. But according to some measures, partyism now exceeds racism. In
Cass R. Sunstein
#30. Faust seems to have exerted a big influence on Star Wars. You know, the "give up your soul for immortality" or something.
Cass Sunstein
#31. I strongly believe that the Second Amendment creates an individual right to possess and use guns for purposes of both hunting and self-defense.
Cass Sunstein
#32. How do things, whether they are movies, or plays, Hamilton, or people, ideas - how do they become transformative or iconic? That is in some ways what the actual Star Wars saga gets at, with the tale of the rise and the fall of the empire and the rise and the fall of Republics.
Cass Sunstein
#33. Once we know that people are human and have some Homer Simpson in them, then there's a lot that can be done to manipulate them.
Cass Sunstein
#34. We might have new issues involving information technology for example, or new questions arising out of the war on terror, or new issues arising from natural disasters that can't be anticipated.
Cass Sunstein
#35. We often see a temper of the times connection, and it's just like a fairy tale. It's not true.
Cass Sunstein
#36. I would reject the distinction between a Keynesian moment and a behavioral moment.
Cass Sunstein
#37. To become an extremist, hang around with people you agree with.
Cass R. Sunstein
#38. People are more likely to object to nudges that appeal to unconscious or subconscious processes.
Cass R. Sunstein
#39. I got into the genesis of Star Wars, and the tale seemed to me endlessly fascinating.
Cass Sunstein
#40. By itself, partyism is not the most serious threat to democratic self-government. But if it decreases government's ability to solve serious problems, then it has concrete and potentially catastrophic consequences for people's lives. I
Cass R. Sunstein
#41. If manipulation really does increase welfare, then it would seem to be justified and even mandatory on ethical grounds.
Cass R. Sunstein
#42. There is no liberty without dependency. That is why we should celebrate tax day.
Cass Sunstein
#43. Most problems are best solved privately, not through government. There's a problem of discourtesy in the world, which is best handled through social norms, which are indispensable. But you wouldn't want the government to be mandating courtesy.
Cass Sunstein
#44. Somewhat more broadly, I will suggest that animals should be permitted to bring suit, with human beings as their representatives, to prevent violations of current law.
Cass Sunstein
#45. I think that every state in the union should recognize same-sex marriage.
Cass Sunstein
#46. Well, I've liked Star Wars since the late '70s. I liked it a lot.
Cass Sunstein
#47. If there's a regulation that's saving 10,000 lives and costing one job, it's worth it.
Cass Sunstein
#48. There's a big difference between the role of an academic and the role of someone in government. That's a cliche, but in academic life if you say things that are common sense and people nod their heads, it's not very useful. You're not adding anything.
Cass Sunstein
#49. If government is to respect people's autonomy, or to treat them with dignity, it should not deprive them of freedom. It should treat them as adults, rather than children or infants.
Cass R. Sunstein
#50. Social scientists emphasize that people use the "availability heuristic," which means that we assess risks by asking whether a bad (or good) event is cognitively "available." It
Cass R. Sunstein
#51. Emotions can get in the way of truth-seeking. People do not process information in a neutral way.
Cass R. Sunstein
#52. The multiple failures of top-down design, and the omnipresence of unintended consequences, can be attributed in large part, to the absence of relevant information.
Cass R. Sunstein
#53. Covertly influencing decision processes such as that the resulting decision is aligned with higher-order desires may actually enhance autonomy.
Cass R. Sunstein
#54. We are blind to the fact that what we do to them deprives them of their rights; we do not want to see this because we profit from it, and so we make use of what are really morally irrelevant differences between them and ourselves to justify the difference in treatment.
Cass R. Sunstein
#55. Liberals are sometimes defined as people who can't take their own side in an argument.
Cass Sunstein
#56. I am proud to say that the Federalist Society was founded in part at the University of Chicago, and one of its best characteristics has been an attack on liberal shibboleths by looking at real consequences and specific problems and by asking what law actually does.
Cass Sunstein
#57. A program that saves young people produces more welfare than one that saves old people.
Cass Sunstein
#58. So, I subscribe to the following reading: Star Wars is an essentially Christian tale.
Cass Sunstein
#59. The idea that Taylor Swift would become the giant pop icon of 2015, 2016 - she's really good, but I don't think it's written in the stars.
Cass Sunstein
#60. When I was an academic, I'd sometimes get a little feeling of excitement when I had an idea that was, I hoped, fresh. And whether anyone should act on that idea is a very different question.
Cass Sunstein
#62. Star Wars and Star Trek are good in different ways, and in fairness, you can't really rank them. But Star Wars is better. "YOUR
Cass R. Sunstein
#63. There is no proportional representation requirement in the Equal Protection Clause.
Cass Sunstein
#64. A system of limitless individual choices, with respect to communications, is not necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government.
Cass Sunstein
#65. Some of the Hulk movies have been merely okay. I think the thing to do ... there has to be some stab that makes it something we haven't seen before.
Cass Sunstein
#66. Janis believed that groups are especially likely to suffer from groupthink if they are cohesive, have highly directive leadership, and are insulated from experts.
Cass R. Sunstein
#67. If I may discuss the idea of explosion. The number of regulations issued in the last two years is approximately the same as the number issued in the last two years of the Bush administration.
Cass Sunstein
#68. If we understand "rights" to be legal protection against harm, then many animals already do have rights, and the idea of animal rights is not terribly controversial.
Cass R. Sunstein
#69. The opening scene in A New Hope, when you see the huge ship, it goes on, and on, and on, and on, and on ... that is like a joke of awesomeness.
Cass Sunstein
#70. We ought to ban hunting, I suggest, if there isn't a purpose other than sport and fun. That should be against the law. It's time now.
Cass Sunstein
#72. Probably, if we looked at Da Vinci or Michelangelo with care, we'd see a historical particularity that the work is not treated as having. It's certainly true of Shakespeare.
Cass Sunstein
#73. Those who believe in climate change, as I do, I think it's also fair to say that they are more receptive to confirming evidence than disconfirming evidence. They happen to be right, but their motivations are in play also.
Cass Sunstein
#74. Do not be misled by expert bravado or by an expert's own sense of how he or she is doing. Evidence is a much better guide than an impressive self-presentation.
Cass R. Sunstein
#75. I have argued in favor of a reformulation of First Amendment law. The overriding goal of the reformulation is to reinvigorate processes of democratic deliberation, by ensuring greater attention to public issues and greater diversity of views.
Cass Sunstein
#76. I think it may be that the fans of your least-favorite political candidate, whoever it is, are much more likable and light-side types than you might think going in. One way to reach them is to talk about Star Wars.
Cass Sunstein
#77. There is widespread support for nudges that are taken to have legitimate ends and to be consistent with the interests and the values of most choosers.
Cass R. Sunstein
#78. People are moderately more likely to favor approaches that involve reflection and deliberation.
Cass R. Sunstein
#79. They suggest that with respect to facts, partisan differences are much less sharp than they seem - and that political polarization is often an artifact of the survey setting.
Cass R. Sunstein
#80. There are bursts of things like Abraham Lincoln or Ronald Reagan or Franklin Delano Roosevelt or same-sex marriage that change very much what we thought we were all about.
Cass Sunstein
#81. I started to read as obsessively about Star Wars as I once did about Kant - and still do about behavioral economics and behavioral psychology.
Cass Sunstein
#82. I dealt with people with diverse political views. If you find people who are your political opponents, and talk to them for an hour, chances are you're going to like them, and they're not full of hate.
Cass Sunstein
#83. I think it's a very firm part of human nature that if you surround yourself with like-minded people, you'll end up thinking more extreme versions of what you thought before.
Cass Sunstein
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