Selected expertise quotes

1. If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things.

2. What a delightful thing is the conversation of specialists! One understands absolutely nothing and it's charming.

3. When we are sick, we want an uncommon doctor; when we have a construction job to do, we want an uncommon engineer, and when we are at war, we want an uncommon general. It is only when we get into politics that we are satisfied with the common man.

4. As a medical doctor, it is my duty to evaluate the situation with as much data as I can gather and as much expertise as I have and as much experience as I have to determine whether or not the wish of the patient is medically justified.

5. Windbags can be right. Aphorists can be wrong. It is a tough world.

6. I can embarrass myself very easily on guitar. It's funny because people say to me I can play anything; I'm God on the guitar. But I could make a big list of everything I can't play... I'm grateful that people don't notice that.

7. Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom.

8. Would you trust the linguistic intuitions of someone who has been studying Latin or Greek for three days?

9. It's so much easier to suggest solutions when you don't know too much about the problem.

10. Never hire someone who knows less than you do about what he's hired to do.

11. What's an expert? I read somewhere, that the more a man knows, the more he knows, he doesn't know. So I suppose one definition of an expert would be someone who doesn't admit out loud that he knows enough about a subject to know he doesn't really know how much.

12. If they think they can get anyone who could have better handled the complex and difficult issues surrounding North Korea, Iran and other controversies, they are not understanding the world right now.

13. I don't think most people associate me with leeches or how to get them off. But I know how to get them off. I'm an expert at it.

14. I think sometimes that people assume because I'm on television I'm an expert, but I think the whole point of what I do is that I'm not and I don't have any training. My approach isn't about a fancy ingredient or style. I cook what I love to eat.

15. Winning the Nobel Prize does not automatically qualify you to be commander in chief. I think George Bush has proved definitively that to be president, you don't need to care about science, literature or peace.

16. If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things.

17. I've forgotten more about national security than George W. Bush will ever learn.

18. Of science and logic he chatters, As fine and as fast as he can; Though I am no judge of such matters, I'm sure he's a talented man.

19. Everyone says you have to be a specialist, and if you conduct Wagner you cannot conduct Mozart - this is nonsense.

20. Let Each Man Exercise The Art He Knows.

21. I'm not a master, I'm a student-master, meaning that I have the knowledge of a master and the expertise of a master, but I'm still learning, So I'm a student-master. I don't believe in the word master, I consider the master as such when they close the casket.

22. Experts must read the patterns and judge their usefulness as evidence. Under any of numerous pressures, an expert may wish to misread a pattern or even to alter it. Americans had a touching trust in 'experts'.

23. So-called professional mathematicians have, in their reliance on the relative incapacity of the rest of mankind, acquired for themselves a reputation for profundity very similar to the reputation for sanctity possessed by theologians.

24. 'Economists are very good at saying that something cannot go on forever, but not so good at saying when it will stop.'

25. 'It is literally true that millions come easier to a trader after he knows how to trade, than hundreds did in the days of his ignorance.'

26. Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it.

27. I think that sick people in Ankh-Morpork generally go to a vet. It's generally a better bet. There's more pressure on a vet to get it right. People say 'it was god's will' when granny dies, but they get angry when they lose a cow.

28. Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.

29. An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject, and how to avoid them.

30. A musicologist is a man who can read music but can't hear it.

31. When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

32. Have you been watching American Idol? They have Simon Cowell and Paula Abdul judging the singing. Paula Abdul?! Getting Paula Abdul to judge a singing contest is like getting Christopher Reeve to judge a dance contest!

33. If all the economists in the world were laid end to end, they still wouldn't reach a conclusion.

34. Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought. In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or engineer. For such or such special knowledge I apply to such or such a savant. But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor the savant to impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure. I do not content myself with consulting authority in any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions, and choose that which seems to me the soundest. But I recognize no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such an individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others.

35. I've often been struck by the extensive knowledge that people have of sports, and particularly, their self-confidence in discussing it with 'experts.' While driving, I sometimes turn on radio talk shows on sports, and am always struck by this. People calling in have no hesitation in criticizing the coaches, the judgments of the people running the shows, etc. In contrast, when discussing matters of concern to human lives -- their own and others -- people tend to defer to 'experts,' though for the most part the expert knowledge is no more beyond them than how the local professional sports team should play their next game. That's where the indoctrination comes in: in the intensive training that brings people to feel that they must defer to alleged 'experts' on matters of very direct concern to them, far more so than sports. I do, however, agree that there can be negative aspects to the heavily promoted frenzy on spectator sports, loyalty to the home team, etc. Depends very much on how it is carried out.

36. An expert is a man who has stopped thinking - he knows!

37. I'm still not that familiar with it [Intelligent Design]. I'm more familiar with it than most people, but nowhere near as familiar with it as a genuine expert in the subject. I don't pretend to be a scientist. I'm the person who moderates the discussion between and among the scientists.

38. The Nobel Prize confers on an individual an authority which in economics no man ought to possess. This does not matter in the natural sciences. Here the influence exercised by an individual is chiefly an influence on his fellow experts; and they will soon cut him down to seize if he exceeds his competence. But the influence of the economist that mainly matters is an influence over laymen: politicians, journalists, civil servants and the public generally. There is no reason why a man who has made a distinctive contribution to economic science should be omnicompetent on all problems of society - as the press tends to treat him till in the end he may himself be persuaded to believe.

39. My thoughts are, we're going to get somebody who knows what they're talking about when it comes to rebuilding cities.

40. 'I'm not a <INSERT PROFESSION HERE>, but I'm a thinker...'

41. As happens with sports and hobbies, his enjoyment was solemnized by expertise, the rites of comparing, collating, a half-deliberate parody of scholarship like the recitation of batting averages.

42. Un peu de chaque chose, et rien du tout, a la francaise.

43. The intellectual world is divided into two classes - dilettantes, on the one hand, and pedants, on the other.

44. An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field.

45. If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done.

46. Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it.

47. 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.

48. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's there are few.

49. To my simple mind it is not obvious that a successful electrician is an authority on the immortal soul, any more than that a successful military strategist has an ear for music, or an admirable French cook a grasp of the higher mathematics.

50. I did not want to say these unpleasant things, but you have written to me, asking my opinion, and I give it to you, flat. If you would get over two ideas - first that any one who criticizes you is an evil and capitalist-controlled spy, and second that you have only to spend a few weeks on any subject to become a master of it - you might yet regain your now totally lost position as the leader of American socialistic journalism.

51. 'Are you seriously telling me that taxi drivers, restaurant waiters and workers at McDonald's will want to discuss these proposals with me? A draft bill is for the experts' --Regina Ip dismissing pleas for the government to give the public more time to digest Article 23 proposals, at Legislative Council, September 26, 2002