Underestimated Talent Quotes

Fred VanVleet's story - here's a kid who's not very fast, not very tall, undrafted, had every excuse to not make it big and here he is and he's gonna be one of the top free agents.

A lot of people, when they see my career, they hear or remember, 'Sat on the bench four years in college, got cut by the Packers, worked in a grocery store, and then won the Super Bowl.' That's kind of the timeline the people see when they hear 'Kurt Warner.'

The promoters in New Zealand weren't looking at me, they didn't see the potential. But when I was fighting in China they brought me over there as a journeyman so all their guys could whup up on me. Then they realised that's not gonna happen because I kept whupping up on their guys. Then they decided, 'Let's bring this guy into our team.'

I still don't think the world has seen the best Andre Ward. Initially, I just wanted to get in there and win.

Anybody who carries the albatross of that teen-idol thing - well, people tend to look and say: 'There he is again. It's Fabian.' It's a very tough thing. Everybody wants to discount your talent because you have become so... I don't know... a god, if you will.

That's what I am, Frank thought, an ordinary genius. He had unlocked the secret of radio. The sport of the ordinary! Brillliant me like Reed Seymour couldn't figure this out for the life of them! Reed was ashamed of radio. ...radio was a cinch if you kept reaching down and grabbing up handfuls of the ordinary.

The lesson here is very simple. But it is striking how often it is overlooked. We are so caught in the myths of the best and the brightest and the self-made that we think outliers spring naturally from the earth. We look at the young Bill Gates and marvel that our world allowed that thirteen-year-old to become a fabulously successful entrepreneur. But that's the wrong lesson. Our world only allowed one thirteen-year-old unlimited access to a time sharing terminal in 1968. If a million teenagers had been given the same opportunity, how many more Microsofts would we have today?

I am probably the best example of an actor who has built his career on flops.

I think, often, child actors are, like, overlooked a little bit.

I happen to love Saint-Saens in general. I think he's a brilliant composer and sometimes underrated in a way because people like to pass him off as fluffy and not being serious.

Rove, of course, is an exceptionally good, exceptionally skillful campaign guy, and Bush himself is really gifted at the political end of politics. But he's always been, as he says, misunderestimated.

The lot of critics is to be remembered by what they failed to understand.

Everyone pretty much acknowledges that he's the man, and I still feel that underrates him.