Quotes about experts

America has always been a country of amateurs where the professional, that is to say, the man who claims authority as a member of an ?lite which knows the law in some field or other, is an object of distrust and resentment.

— W. H. Auden

An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes, which can be made, in a very narrow field.

— Niels Bohr

An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less.

— Nicholas Butler

The public do not know enough to be experts, but know enough to decide between them.

— Samuel Butler

A professional; is someone who can do his best work when he doesn't feel like it.

— Alistair Cooke

It is surely a matter of common observation that a man who knows no one thing intimately has no views worth hearing on things in general. The farmer philosophizes in terms of crops, soils, markets, and implements, the mechanic generalizes his experiences of wood and iron, the seaman reaches similar conclusions by his own special road; and if the scholar keeps pace with these it must be by an equally virile productivity.

— Charles Horton Cooley

How much a dunce that has been sent to roam, excels a dunce that has been kept at home.

— William Cowper

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

— Edgar Degas

A lot of fellows nowadays have a B. A., M. D., or Ph. D. Unfortunately, they don't have a J. O. B.

— Fats Domino

A specialist is a person who fears the other subjects.

— Martin H. Fisher

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.

— Malcolm S. Forbes

We do not need to be shoemakers to know if our shoes fit, and just as little have we any need to be professionals to acquire knowledge of matters of universal interest.

— Georg Hegel

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

— Robert Heinlein

Do not be bullied out of your common sense by the specialist; two to one, he is a pedant.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

An expert is someone who knows a lot about the past.

— Tom Hopkins

One who limits himself to his chosen mode of ignorance.

— Elbert Hubbard

Specialized meaninglessness has come to be regarded, in certain circles, as a kind of hall-mark of true science.

— Aldous Huxley

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

— Henry Kissinger

This world is run by people who know how to do things. They know how things work. They are equipped. Up there, there's a layer of people who run everything. But we --we're just peasants. We don't understand what's going on, and we can't do anything.

— Doris Lessing

We have not overthrown the divine right of kings to fall down for the divine right of experts.

— Harold Macmillan

There is nothing an economist should fear so much as applause.

— Herbert Marshall

The more the world is specialized the more it will be run by generalists.

— Marcel Masse

Given one well-trained physician of the highest type he will do better work for a thousand people than ten specialists.

— William James Mayo

Brain surgeons earn 10 times that of a general practitioner... it pays to be an expert.

— Alan Pease

Make three correct guesses consecutively and you will establish a reputation as an expert.

— Laurence J. Peter

An expert is an ordinary fella away from home.

— Bum Phillips

My definition of an expert in any field is a person who knows enough about what's really going on to be scared.

— P. J. Plauger

Experts often possess more data than judgment.

— Colin Powell

What is an expert? Someone who is twenty miles from home.

— American Proverb

A specialist is someone who does everything else worse.

— Ruggiero Ricci

There is nothing so stupid as an educated man, if you get him off the thing he was educated in.

— Will Rogers

Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken.

— Bertrand Russell

Where there are two Phd's in a developing country, one is head of state and the other is in exile.

— Lord Samuel

Good counselors lack no clients.

— William Shakespeare

No man can be a pure specialist without being in the strict sense an idiot.

— George Bernard Shaw

Consultants are people who borrow your watch and tell you what time it is, and then walk off with the watch.

— Robert Townsend

Only by strict specialization can the scientific worker become fully conscious, for once and perhaps never again in his lifetime, that he has achieved something that will endure. A really definitive and good accomplishment is today always a specialized ac

— Max Weber

An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while sweeping on to the grand fallacy.

— Steven Weinberg

An ordinary man away from home giving advice.

— Oscar Wilde