Quotes on Experts

When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it.

Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge the more likely they are to think so.

I said that an expert was a fella who was afraid to learn anything new because then he wouldn't be an expert anymore.

Now I'm a scientific expert; that means I know nothing about absolutely everything.

Place the lives of children in their formative years, despite the convictions of their parents, under the intimate control of experts appointed by the state, force them to attend schools where the higher aspirations of humanity are crushed out, and where the mind is filled with the materialism of the day, and it is difficult to see how even the remnants of liberty can subsist.

Most foreign policies that history has marked highly, in whatever country, have been originated by leaders who were opposed by experts.

It is, after all, the responsibility of the expert to operate the familiar and that of the leader to transcend it.

Arguments from authority carry little weight – authorities have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.

Revolution is not 'showing' life to people, but making them live. A revolutionary organization must always remember that its objective is not getting its adherents to listen to convincing talks by expert leaders, but getting them to speak for themselves, in order to achieve, or at least strive toward, an equal degree of participation.

Most of the time, we think fast. And most of the time we're really expert at what we're doing, and most of the time, what we do is right.

There are domains in which expertise is not possible. Stock picking is a good example. And in long-term political strategic forecasting, it's been shown that experts are just not better than a dice-throwing monkey.

There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner.

The line between normal and crazy seemed impossibly thin. A person would have to be an expert tightrope walker in order not to fall.

I am not one to rely upon the expert procedure. It is the psychology I seek, not the fingerprint or the cigarette ash.

I'm not the world's greatest expert, but I would have thought that the wizards, witches, trolls, unicorns, ... broomsticks and spells would have given her a clue?' - when J.K. Rowling insisted she wasn't writing fantasy.

Direct your eye inward, and you'll find / A thousand regions in your mind / Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be / Expert in home-cosmography

When we become expert in something, our tastes grow more esoteric and complex.

But we've all ended up giving body and soul to Africa, one way or another. Even Adah, who's becoming an expert in tropical epidemiology and strange new viruses. Each of us got our heart buried in six feet of African dirt; we are all co-conspirators here. I mean, all of us, not just my family. So what do you do now? You get to find your own way to dig out a heart and shake it off and hold it up to the light again.