overestimation of knowledge Quotes

People who are very aware that they have more knowledge than the average person are often very unaware that they do not have one-tenth of the knowledge of all of the average persons put together. In this situation, for the intelligentsia to impose their notions on ordinary people is essentially to impose ignorance on knowledge.

I'm an idiot, basically. I don't think that I'm a dumb guy, but I also realise that I have access to about 0.1 percent of the information that I need to have a truly informed opinion about half the stuff I talk about. I'm like that loud guy in the bar, who kind of makes sense for about ten minutes, and then you realise he flunked everything at high school so you just laugh at him.

Was I ignorant, then, when I was seventeen? I think not. I knew everything. A quarter-century's experience of life since then has added nothing to what I knew. The one difference is that at seventeen I had no 'realism'.

Pride is a mental factor causing us to feel higher or superior to others. Even our study of dharma can be the occasion for the delusion of pride to arise if we think our understanding is superior to that of everyone else. Pride is harmful because it prevents us from accepting fresh knowledge from a qualified teacher. Just as a pool of water cannot collect on the tip of a mountain, so too a reservoir of understanding cannot be established in a mind falsely elevated by pride.

The plague of man is boasting of his knowledge.

We spend a good part of our lives trying desperately to convince ourselves as well as everybody else that we know more than we really do.

He that is conceited of his Wisdom, is readier to impose Error, than to receive Truth.

Nobody knows diddly. They just think they do. And the people that think they know the most know the least.