quotations about experts
We have not overthrown the divine right of kings to fall down for the divine right of experts.
HAROLD MACMILLAN
speech, Aug. 16, 1950
Experts are like the blind men examining the elephant. One holds its tail and says the elephant is like a rope. Another embraces an elephant leg and says the beast is like a tree. The third man touches the elephant's ear and declares it to be an animial shaped like a giant leaf. Who is right? They all are--but they are also wrong.
TIMOTHY W. CUNNINGHAM & CLAY B. MANSFIELD
Pay Yourself First
No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense.
ROBERT GASCOYNE-CECIL
letter to Robert Bulwer-Lytton, June 15, 1887
An expert is just somebody from out of town with slides.
NAOMI JUDD
Naomi's Breakthrough Guide
The world is moving so fast, that we have few true experts on tomorrow. All we have are experts on yesterday.
GYAN NAGPAL
The Future Ready Organization
Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
Time Enough for Love
You can't always go by an expert opinion. A turkey, if you ask a turkey, should be stuffed with grasshoppers, grit and worms.
ANONYMOUS
Kiplinger's Personal Finance, Nov. 1967
An expert is someone called in at the last minute to share the blame.
SAM EWING
Mature Living
Post-adolescent Expert Syndrome: the tendency of young people around the age of eighteen, males especially, to become altruistic experts on everything.
DOUGLAS COUPLAND
Player One
An expert is someone who takes something you already know and makes it sound confusing.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
The function of the expert is not to be more right than other people, but to be wrong for more sophisticated reasons.
DAVID BUTLER
attributed, Quotable Quotes
Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair.
GEORGE BURNS
Life, December 1979
An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field.
NIELS BOHR
attributed, The Harvest of a Quiet Eye
We flee away from cities, but we bring
The best of cities, these learned classifiers,
Men knowing what they seek, armed eyes of experts.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"The Adirondacs", May-Day and Other Pieces
If a man is trained, purely and simply, to be expert and contented in a particular task he will not innovate; Freud would have remained an anatomist, Marx a philosopher, Darwin a field-naturalist.
JOHN PASSMORE
The Perfectibility of Man
An expert is a person that has his ignorance organized.
JIM O'BRYON
I Fail to Miss Your Point
Here's my definition of expert: Think of a complex video game. It wouldn't exist without a skilled programmer, but a 12-year-old aficionado will play it more skillfully than the computer wizard who constructed the line-by-line code. The programmer is the technician; the 12-year-old is the expert. The kid's ability captures the intersection of technology and humanity. This programmer may enter a conversation about the game feeling as though he has the upper hand--until he cannot answer when the 12-year-old asks, "When I pressed these two buttons and moved the joystick, why didn't the guy's head blow off?"
GREGORY HARTLEY
How to Become an Expert on Anything in Two Hours
Experts often possess more data than judgment.
COLIN POWELL
attributed, Doing Business in the New Latin America
There are as many opinions as there are experts.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
speech, Jun. 12, 1942
We all know something about machines, but experts know everything--if not about machines, at least about a particular machine. We are thus weighted down by a heavy reliance of experts, with much of our time spent in search of the right expert in whom to place confidence for the repair of our mechanical problems.
DONALD STABILE
Prophets of Order