Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Cass Sunstein
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: September 21
Economist
Jurist
Lawyer
Legal Scholar
Philosopher
Political Scientist
Researcher
University Teacher
Writer
Concord
Massachusetts
Cass Robert Sunstein
Cass R. Sunstein
Cass R Sunstein
Cass Sunstein
Tell
Extreme
Ideas
Explanation
Find
Extremes
Things
Popular
Succeed
Speculative
Times
Overrated
Idea
Commonly
Culture
Temper

More quotes by Cass Sunstein

Image
I think that every state in the union should recognize same-sex marriage.
Cass Sunstein
Image
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
Image
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
Image
As a matter of history, the Fourteenth Amendment was not understood to ban segregation on the basis of race.
Cass Sunstein
Image
I have talked to Barack Obama about Star Wars recently, in the Oval Office, and he is definitely a fan. Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution creates executive privilege, and as for government regulation and information policy, so too for Star Wars, I will not disclose discussions in private with the President of the United States.
Cass Sunstein
Image
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
Image
We often see a temper of the times connection, and it's just like a fairy tale. It's not true.
Cass Sunstein
Image
Faust seems to have exerted a big influence on Star Wars. You know, the give up your soul for immortality or something.
Cass Sunstein
Image
Presumed consent preserves freedom of choice, but it is different from explicit consent because it shifts the default rule. Under this policy, all citizens would be presumed to be consenting donors, but they would have the opportunity to register their unwillingness to donate.
Cass Sunstein
Image
I talked to George Lucas once, not about Star Wars. Everyone wants to talk to him about Star Wars, and I didn't want to be one of those people. In person - at least on this occasion - he wasn't effervescent and giddy, as the Star Wars movies are. He's more focused.
Cass Sunstein
Image
Liberals are sometimes defined as people who can't take their own side in an argument.
Cass Sunstein
Image
There is no reason to believe that in the face of statutory ambiguity, the meaning of federal law should be settled by the inclinations and predispositions of federal judges. The outcome should instead depend on the commitments and beliefs of the President and those who operate under him.
Cass Sunstein
Image
Even though Star Wars is easily read as feminist for its time - and even for now, with Princess Leia's role - people wouldn't make a movie like that in 2016, where the guys are mostly the tough ones, and the women aren't in positions of authority.
Cass Sunstein
Image
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
Image
Whatever your gender, you can be a Star Wars fan. Of course I knew it from life before, but the core of enthusiastic female fans is a testimony to the non-gendered nature of the audience.
Cass Sunstein
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I'm also a big Bob Dylan fan. The songs on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan - which is one of his best early albums - they grow out of some of his difficulties with Suze Rotolo, and Hard Rain, people say it had to do with the Cuban missile crisis - probably not. He denied it. I believe him, but it certainly had to do with the time.
Cass Sunstein
Image
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