The phrase "I know it when I see it" is a colloquial expression by which a speaker attempts to categorize an observable fact or event, although the category is subjective or lacks clearly defined parameters. The phrase was famously used by United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart to describe his threshold test for obscenity in Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964). Obscenity is not protected speech under the Miller test, and can therefore be censored.
I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that. —Justice Potter Stewart, concurring opinion in Jacobellis v. Ohio 378 U.S. 184 (1964), regarding possible obscenity in The Lovers.The expression became one of the most famous phrases in the entire history of the Supreme Court.
Stewart's "I know it when I see it" standard was praised as an example of candor and "realistic and gallant."
A well-known quotation of this phrase is found in Goldfinger, when M asks Bond: "What do you know about gold?" and Bond replies with "I know it when I see it."
Read more about I Know It When I See It: History
Famous quotes containing the words see it, when and/or see:
“Then turning to the disciples, Jesus said to them privately, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.””
—Bible: New Testament, Luke 10:23,24.
“I have a talent for silence and brevity. I can keep silent when it seems best to do so, and when I speak I can, and do usually, quit when I am done. This talent, or these two talents, I have cultivated. Silence and concise, brief speaking have got me some laurels, and, I suspect, lost me some. No odds. Do what is natural to you, and you are sure to get all the recognition you are entitled to.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“If we could see ourselves as others see us, we would vanish on the spot.”
—E.M. Cioran (b. 1911)