Experts, Expertise Quotes

The presence of American troops is fueling the insurgency in Iraq, as acknowledged by General Casey and numerous other experts, and is helping terrorist recruiters build their numbers across the globe.

By 2005, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.

I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.

We know too much for one man to know too much.

Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.

Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.

It is a mistake to hire huge numbers of people to get a complicated job done. Numbers will never compensate for talent in getting the right answer (two people who don't know something are no better than one), will tend to slow down progress, and will make the task incredibly expensive.

Practice isn't the thing you do once you're good. It's the thing you do that makes you good.

To become proficient in any field you must practise. There is simply no achievement without practice and the more practice, provided it is done intelligently, the greater will the proficiency be and the sooner will it be attained.

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

What the experts are telling me is that there's very little chance that Ebola is going to mutate into something that could spread directly through the air. The real concern is not whether Ebola could go airborne, but whether it could spread faster.

Repetition is the mother of skill.

No one achieves greatness by becoming a generalist. You don't hone a skill by diluting your attention to its development. The only way to get to the next level is focus.

Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one.

Everybody's got a different circle of competence. The important thing is not how big the circle is. The important thing is staying inside the circle.

Don’t ever ask a barber if you need a haircut.

Every master was once a beginner. Every pro was once an amateur.

People seem very arrogant when they say 'I'm right and you're wrong', but in practice we all believe we're right. We have a staggering arrogance in our own belief. That can be tempered by not being 100% certain; by being provisional. No matter what the debate is, very few people have the modesty to suspend judgement on a whole range of things; most intelligent people have an opinion and are expected to have an opinion by other people - but it always requires making a personal judgement that goes way-beyond your expertise. We do it all the time.

The idea that experts should manage society has ancient roots, going back to Plato’s philosopher kings in his Republic. To Plato, this meant a ruling class trained from birth to properly manage the state. To Rousseau, it meant the general will set out in his Social Contract. To Hegel, it meant a state responsible for the moral development of citizens. To Rawls, it meant a society that structures its basic rules to fairly distribute liberties and opportunities. To Lippmann, it meant an elite managing complex modern societies on behalf of a public he believed lacked the capacity for rational decision-making. To Sunstein, it meant experts pushing citizens to make wise choices through a series of “nudges.” All these ideas believe in empowering wise and virtuous experts to chart the nation’s course, manage society, make national plans, and sometimes restrain individuals so the greater system thrives.

To become an expert achiever in any human activity, it takes practice... practice... practice.

Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.

Make the hard ones look easy and the easy ones look hard.

I ask you to believe nothing that you cannot verify for yourself.

Knowledge is not skill. Knowledge plus ten thousand times is skill.

A man who knows a subject thoroughly, a man so soaked in it that he eats it, sleeps it and dreams it- this man can always teach it with success, no matter how little he knows of technical pedagogy.