On Experts

‘Practice makes perfect. Imperfect is better.’
— Paul Bley
‘An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while sweeping on to the grand fallacy.’
— Arthur Bloch
‘An expert is a man who has made all the 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
‘If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible he is almost certainly right, but if he says that it is impossible he is very probably wrong.’
— Arthur C. Clarke
‘To punish me for my contempt of authority, Fate has made me an authority myself.’
— Albert Einstein
‘Always listen to the experts. They’ll tell you what can’t be done and why. Then do it.’
— Robert Heinlein
‘If I want to stop a research program I can always do it by getting a few experts to sit in on the subject, because they know right away that it was a fool thing to try in the first place.’
— Charles F. Kettering
‘The trouble with specialists is that they tend to think in grooves.’
— Elaine Morgan
‘The Wright brothers first flight was not reported in a single newspaper because every rookie reporter knew what could and couldn’t be done.’
— Edward Murrow
‘Even when the experts all agree, they may well be wrong.’
— Bertrand Russell
‘In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.’
— Shunryu Suzuki
‘A man is wise with the wisdom of his time only, and ignorant with its ignorance. Observe how the greatest minds yield in some degree to the superstitions of their age.’
— Henry David Thoreau
‘I said that an expert was a fella who was afraid to learn anything new because then he wouldn’t be an expert any more.’
— Harry S. Truman