“When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it.”

—  G. K. Chesterton

Illustrated London News (6 April 1918)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert o…" by G. K. Chesterton?
G. K. Chesterton photo
G. K. Chesterton 229
English mystery novelist and Christian apologist 1874–1936

Related quotes

“A winner knows how much he still has to learn, even when he is considered an expert by others; a loser wants to be considered an expert by others before he has learned enough to know how little he knows.”

Sydney J. Harris (1917–1986) American journalist

“The innovator, however, must in the first place be discontented, he must doubt the value of what he is doing or question the accepted ways of doing it. And secondly, he must be prepared to take fresh paths, to venture into fields where he is by no means expert. This is true, at least, of major forms of innovation; they make it possible for other men to be expert, but are not themselves forms of expertise. Freud was not an expert psycho-analyst; before Freud wrote there was no such thing; he created the standards by which psycho-analysts are judged expert. Neither was Marx an expert in interpreting history in economic terms nor Darwin an expert in evolutionary biology. If a man is trained, purely and simply, to be expert and contented in a particular task he will not innovate; Freud would have remained an anatomist, Marx a philosopher, Darwin a field-naturalist.”

John Passmore (1914–2004) Australian philosopher

Source: The Perfectibility of Man (1971), p. 282.

“The Politician uses the language of diplomacy of which he is a master, and it consists in telling some of the truth without necessarily exhausting it. This is a most subtle and potent weapon in his well-stocked armory. For when a woman says, "no", she means "perhaps", when she says, "perhaps", she means "yes", if she says, "yes", she is no lady; but it is different with a Politician; when he says, "yes", he means "perhaps", if he says, "perhaps," he means "no", but if he says, "no", he is no politician.”

Peter de Noronha (1897–1970) Indian businessman

The Pageant of Life (1964), On Politicians

Arthur C. Clarke photo

“Clarke's Fourth Law: For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

Profiles of the Future (1999, London: Victor Gollancz) p. 143
On Clarke's Laws

“Everyone is an expert on T. V., just as he is on education; everyone has some education and a T. V. set.”

Judy LaMarsh (1924–1980) Canadian politician, writer, broadcaster and barrister.

Source: Memoirs Of A Bird In A Gilded Cage (1969), CHAPTER 9, C.B.C., p. 250

Donald J. Trump photo

“To me, for politicians to claim that we have an answer to every problem is silly. When you listen to some politicians reeling off their prepared answers, you almost fall for it. They're all experts. But nothing ever happens.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Source: 2010s, 2015, Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again (2015), p. 73

Stanisław Lem photo

“Like it or not, we have placed our destiny in the hands of the experts. A politician is, after all, a kind of expert, if self-styled. Even the fact that competent experts must serve under politicians of mediocre intelligence and little foresight is a problem that we are stuck with, because the experts themselves cannot agree on any major world issue.”

Stanisław Lem (1921–2006) Polish science fiction author

One Human Minute (1986)
Context: The book does not contain “everything about the human being,” because that is impossible. The largest libraries in the world do not contain “everything.” The quantity of anthropological data discovered by scientists now exceeds any individual’s ability to assimilate it. The division of labor, including intellectual labor, begun thirty thousand years ago in the Paleolithic, has become an irreversible phenomenon, and there is nothing that can be done about it. Like it or not, we have placed our destiny in the hands of the experts. A politician is, after all, a kind of expert, if self-styled. Even the fact that competent experts must serve under politicians of mediocre intelligence and little foresight is a problem that we are stuck with, because the experts themselves cannot agree on any major world issue. A logocracy of quarreling experts might be no better than the rule of the mediocrities to which we are subject. The declining intellectual quality of political leadership is the result of the growing complexity of the world. Since no one, be he endowed with the highest wisdom, can grasp it in its entirety, it is those who are least bothered by this who strive for power.

Morarji Desai photo

“An expert gives an objective view. He gives his own view.”

Morarji Desai (1896–1995) Former Indian Finance Minister, Freedom Fighters, Former prime minister

19th World Vegetarian Congress 1967

“He is transported to that curious world of decibels and negative frequencies where filter experts live.”

Arnold Tustin (1899–1994) British engineer

Arnold Tustin in: Rufus Oldenburger (1956) Frequency response. p. 139

Related topics