Quotes about expert
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“So from there on I made all their science fiction films, and the more I did of these films the more I liked it because the studio left me alone. No one at that time was an expert at making sf films so I claimed to be one. I wasn't, of course, but the studio didn't know that so they never argued with me, no matter what I did. In most of my sf films I tried to create an atmosphere because I think if you shoot an imaginative film--a film in which you ask an audience to believe things that are bizarre--you have to make them believe it. You can't do this with the story or actors alone, you have to create a kind of atmosphere while shooting it in which the audience's credibility will be suspended to the point where they don't say to themselves: "That's impossible!"”

Jack Arnold (director)

Jack Arnold in The Horror People http://eric.b.olsen.tripod.com/arnold.html (1976)

Imagination, Thinking, Science, Time

“Present-day applications are rather different in many respects. Present-day programs are often very large and are being developed by teams that collaborate over periods spanning several years. These teams may be scattered across the globe. The programmers are not the future users of the system they develop and they have no expert knowledge of the application area in question. The problems that are being tackled increasingly concern everyday life: automatic bank tellers, airline reservation, salary administration, electronic commerce, automotive systems, etc. Putting a man on the moon was not conceivable without computers.”

Hans van Vliet (1949) Dutch computer scientist

Source: Software Engineering: Principles and Practice, 2007, p. 2

Life, Question, Knowledge, Problem

“If it be granted that the Britons, generally speaking, were expert in hunting, it is still uncertain what animals were obnoxious to the chase; we know however, at least, that the hare was not anciently included; for Cæser tells us, "the Britons did not eat the flesh of hares, notwithstanding the island abounded with them." And this abstinence, he adds, arose from a principle of religion; which principle, no doubt, prevented them from being worried to death: a cruelty reserved for more enlightened ages.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 2
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Britons

Death, Age, Religion, Animals

“The foresight of financial experts was, as so often, a poor guide to the future.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

Source: Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went (1975), Chapter XI, The Fall, p. 136

Future

“We will likely also find that the nature of the problem to be solved will be a principal determinant of the mix. With our growing understanding of the organization of judgmental and intuitive processes, of the specific knowledge that of the specific knowledge that is required to perform particular judgmental tasks, and of the cues that evoke such knowledge in situations in which it is relevant, we have a powerful new tool for improving expert judgment. We can specify the knowledge and the recognition capabilities that experts in a domain need to acquire, and use these specifications for designing appropriate learning procedures.”

Herbert A. Simon book Administrative Behavior

Source: 1940s-1950s, Administrative Behavior, 1947, p. 137.

Understanding, Nature, Knowledge, Problem

“The supreme end of education is expert discernment in all things — the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and the counterfeit.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

"It's written by Charles Grosvenor Osgood (1871-1964), as part of a 1917 preface to Boswell's 'Life of Johnson.'" The Samuel Johnson Sound Bite Page http://www.samueljohnson.com/apocryph.html#2 Retrieved 2013-07-07 Misattributed

Education

“Now, we are entering a new phase in our relationship with Iraq, and we are very committed to making a major civilian commitment to Iraq’s future. We’ll be opening, as you know, and running consulates in Irbil and Basra, we’ll have civilian experts available to work with not only Iraqi counterparts, but also Americans and to support American businesses in the years to come, as we do in our diplomatic – especially our commercial diplomatic work all over the world. And so it’s time for the United States to start thinking of Iraq as a business opportunity.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

And the sacrifice that the Iraqi people have made for your freedom is one that we highly respect. Remarks at the Business Forum Promoting Commercial Opportunities in Iraq, June 3, 2011 http://www.state.gov/secretary/20092013clinton/rm/2011/06/164954.htm Secretary of State (2009–2013)

People, World, Business, Support

“The governments principally involved, to the extent permitted by elementary prudence, should begin now and continue to make joint contributions from their stockpiles of normal uranium and fissionable materials to an international atomic energy agency. We would expect that such an agency would be set up under the aegis of the United Nations. […] The atomic energy agency could be made responsible for the impounding, storage and protection of the contributed fissionable and other materials. The ingenuity of our scientists will provide special safe conditions under which such a bank of fissionable material can be made essentially immune to surprise seizure. The more important responsibility of this atomic energy agency would be to devise methods whereby this fissionable material would be allocated to serve the peaceful pursuits of mankind. Experts would be mobilized to apply atomic energy to the needs of agriculture, medicine and other peaceful activities. A special purpose would be to provide abundant electrical energy in the power-starved areas of the world.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

Eisenhowers proposal for the establishment of the International Atomic Energy Agency
1950s, Atoms for Peace (1953)

World, Peace

“We often interact with professionals who exercise their judgment with evident confidence, sometimes priding themselves on the power of their intuition. In a world rife with illusions of validity and skill, can we trust them? How do we distinguish the justified confidence of experts from the sincere overconfidence of professionals who do not know they are out of their depth? We can believe an expert who admits uncertainty but cannot take expressions of high confidence at face value. As I first learned on the obstacle field, people come up with coherent stories and confident predictions even when they know little or nothing. Overconfidence arises because people are often blind to their own blindness.”

Daniel Kahneman (1934) Israeli-American psychologist

Don’t Blink! The Hazards of Confidence, The New York Times, 19 October 2011, 15 May 2014 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/magazine/dont-blink-the-hazards-of-confidence.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0, "Don't Blink! The Hazards of Confidence" (2011)

People, World, Exercises, Confidence

“The absurdity of monetary system which robs people first of their fair share in the "free market economy" and then - through some of the most inefficient procedures imaginable - returns some of this money in the form of welfare payments to the same people, has rarely been exposed by the "experts" nor been discussed in public.”

Margrit Kennedy (1939–2013) German architect

Source: Interest and Inflation Free Money (1995), Chapter Three, Who Would Profit From a New Monetary System?, p. 71

Money, People, Imagination

“We follow two rules in the matter of optimization:
Rule 1: Don't do it.
Rule 2 (for experts only). Don't do it yet - that is, not until you have a perfectly clear and unoptimized solution.”

Michael A. Jackson (1936) British computer scientist

Principles of program design, 1975

Optimism

“The mystique of science is an essential tool for technocratic rule. Through it we are all taught that science, as the paradigm of all expert knowledge, has an objective, superior, and special truth that only the superintelligent few can understand. Science education, like it or not, does a great job in foisting these myths on most of us.”

Jay Lemke (1946) American academic

Source: Talking Science: Language, Learning, and Values. 1990, p. 149

Truth, Education, Understanding, Knowledge

“On cutting open avocados- It's a food that ain't worth injuring yourself for. If it's a hassle to get into, leave it to the experts.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

The Podfather Trilogy, Episode 3 Christmas
On Food

Food

“I took that opportunity to tell him something that, er, I had long thought of telling somebody that was about to enter the world of really high secrecy. And I said, 'Henry, you're about to get a lot of clearence higher than top secret that you did not know existed. That's going to have a sequence of effects on you. First, a great exhileration that you're getting all this amazing information that you didn't know even existed. And the next phase is you'll feel like a fool for not having known about any of this. but that won't last long. Fairly soon, you'll come to think that everyone else is foolish. What would this expert be telling me if he knew what I knew? So in the end, you stop listening to them.”

Daniel Ellsberg (1931) American economist and whistleblower

On talking to Henry Kissinger about the effects of gaining high security clearence after Kissinger's first National Security Council with then president Nixon. 'The Most Dangerous Man in America - Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers' 2009 Documentary.

Secret, World, Fools, Feeling

“Craft, I would argue, is not an essential part of art, though skill is. That skill may indeed find its expression in draughtsmanship or carving, realised through the hand of the artist, but it may also be directed towards the selection of material or the choice of an expert fabricator.”

Nicholas Serota (1946) British curator

The Dimbleby Lecture 2000

Art, Parting

“The outstanding people realised that the job involved more than just writing a good strategic plan. It was also important that top management should understand the plan and be prepared to adopt it. Consequently, the best strategists made sure that executives were involved in decisions at an early stage. The less outstanding people didn’t see this, and it had been overlooked by the experts. But, as soon as we showed them our findings, they could see that it made sense.”

David C. McClelland (1917–1998) American psychological theorist

David C. McClelland (1998) in: Katherine Adams, "Interview by David C. McClelland , in Competency, vol. 4 no.3, Spring 1997, pp.18–23; Republished in orientamento.it http://www.orientamento.it/indice/interview-with-mcclelland/, 19/11/2015

People, Understanding, Decision, Sense

“The wide experience to be gained at the Scots Bar has its advantages. It does not enable one to become such an expert in any single department as the English specialist… but it tends to a sound knowledge of the legal principles common to all branches of the law. The Scottish Judges have always been more interested in principle than in precedent and the Bar have conformed to this lead. In the House of Lords this feature of Scottish advocacy has been often remarked and admired.”

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan (1873–1952) British judge

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), At the Scottish bar, p. 48

Law, Knowledge, Housing

“The managers - these administrators, experts, directing engineers, production executives, propaganda specialists, technocrats - are the only social group among almost all of whose members we find an attitude of self-confidence. Bankers, capitalist owners, liberal politicians, workers, farmers, shopkeepers-all these display, in public and private, doubts and fears and worries and gloom. But no one who comes into contact with managers will fail to have noticed a very considerable assurance in their whole bearing. They know that they are indispensable in modern society.”

James Burnham (1905–1987) American philosopher

Source: The Managerial Revolution, 1941, p. 281, as cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 13-4

Fear, Confidence, Self-confidence

“This conclusion represents the sound, considered, and independent judgment of the expert career prosecutors within the Department of Justice. I have been personally briefed on multiple occasions about these findings. I concur with the investigative team’s judgment and the determination about our inability to meet the required federal standard.”

Eric Holder (1951) 82nd Attorney General of the United States

2010s, Update on Investigations in Ferguson (2015)

Justice, Personality

“I'm an Internet expert too. It's all right to wire the industrial zone only, but there are many problems if other regions of the North are wired.”

Kim Jong-il (1941–2011) General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea

North Korea Dear Leader Kim Jong Il: "I'm an Internet expert too", Ars Technica, 2007-10-05, 2008-01-01 http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071005-north-korea-dear-leader-kim-jong-il-im-an-internet-expert-too.html,

Problem

“Democracy will never be supplanted by a republic of experts - and that is a very good thing.”

Thomas Piketty book Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Source: Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013), p. 2.

Democracy

“Management experts can do much harm simply by being doctrinaire when, because of some customarily accepted formula, they tear apart established ways of doing things even though the existing structure is producing satisfactory results. They evidence a form of professional conceit-not confined to them by any means-which contributes invariably to the bad opinion which many successful executives hold of the management expert. It is a serious thing to operate on a going concern, because an institution is made up of people with established ways of doing things; people who, in consequence, develop certain institutional attachments which are an important part of institutional success. They are like the traditions of a family. Men take pride in them.”

Marshall E. Dimock (1903–1991) American writer

Source: The Executive in Action, 1945, p. 79; as cited in Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 406-7

Men, People, Family, Way

“Need distraction
Need romance and candlelight
Need random violence
Need entertainment tonight
Need the evidence
Want the testimony of
Expert witnesses
On the brutal crimes of love.”

Neil Young (1945) Canadian singer-songwriter

I'm the Ocean
Song lyrics, Mirror Ball (1995)

Love

“If an expert says it can't be done, get another expert.”

David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973) Israeli politician, Zionist leader, prime minister of Israel

As quoted in Words from the Wise : Over 6,000 of the Smartest Things Ever Said (2007) by Rosemarie Jarski, p. 170

“Don't take too seriously all that the neighbors say. Don't be overawed by what the experts say. Don't be afraid to trust your own common sense.”

Benjamin Spock (1903–1998) American pediatrician and author of Baby and Child Care

Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care (1945)

Sense

“In my own household, for example, an electric refrigerator has been in service for nineteen years, with only a single minor repair: an admirable job. Both automatic refrigerators for daily use and deepfreeze preservation are inventions of permanent value. Though one cannot bestow any such unqualified commendation upon the design of the contemporary motor car, one can hardly doubt that if biotechnic criteria were heeded, rather than those of market analysts and fashion experts, an equally good product might come forth from Detroit, with an equally long prospect of continued use.”

Lewis Mumford book The Myth of the Machine

Megatechnic Costs and Benefits
The Myth of the Machine (1967-1970), The Pentagon of Power (1970)

Cars, Fashion

“The purpose of education, so one would think, is to introduce the young into life, and that means: into the society where they are born and into the physical universe that surrounds the society. The method of education often consists in the teaching of some basic myth. The myth is available in various versions. More advanced versions may be taught by initiation rites which firmly implant them into the mind. Knowing the myth, the grown-up can explain almost everything (or else he can turn to experts for more detailed information). He is the master of Nature and of Society. He understands them both and he knows how to interact with them. However, he is not the master of the myth that guides his understanding.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend (1924–1994) Austrian-born philosopher of science

How To Defend Society Against Science (1975)

Life, Education, Understanding, Nature

“The UK's Channel 4 premiered a 75-minute film titled, The Great Global Warming Swindle. Through interviews with prize-winning climate experts and others, this masterful documentary explains the origins of global warming alarmism; factually addresses claims of manmade global climate change; exposes the motivations of organizations, scientists and activists sounding the alarm; and explains why it's been extremely difficult, if not downright career killing, for scientists to question global warming orthodoxy publicly. While presenting hard facts, it is artfully done, making it watchable for the layman and scientist alike.”

Anthony Watts (1958) American television meteorologist

Film can be found online, Chico Enterprise-Record, March 23, 2007.
Other

Motivation, Question, Change

“[About Algol W] It was not only a worthy successor of ALGOL 60, it was even a worthy predecessor of PASCAL […] I was astonished when the working group, consisting of all the best known international experts of programming languages, resolved to lay aside the commissioned draft on which we had all been working and swallow a line with such an unattractive bait.”

C. A. R. Hoare (1934) British computer scientist

The Emperor's Old Clothes

“Some people think that being in government for a long time is a bad thing. But the more you stay, the more you learn. I am now an expert in governance.”

Yoweri Museveni (1944) President of Uganda

As quoted in "Pressure builds for change" https://web.archive.org/web/201204251111/http://www.global-briefing.org/2012/04/pressure-builds-for-change/ (April 2012), by Benon Herbert Oluka, Global: The International Briefing 2010s

People, Thinking, Learning, Time

“It will be enough to define the technocracy as that society in which those who govern justify themselves by appeal to technical experts who, in turn, justify themselves by appeal to scientific forms of knowledge. And beyond the authority of science, there is no appeal.”

Theodore Roszak (1933–2011) American social historian, social critic, writer

Knowledge, Science

“Like most experts, I've always defined a planet in common-sense terms: Can you beam down to it? Is it populated by green-skinned women? Would Galactus eat it for food?”

John Hodgman book The Areas of My Expertise

August 24, 2006
The Areas of My Expertise (2005), Appearances on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Women, Food, Sense

“I'm not saying that all college students are subhuman — I'm just saying that if you aim to spend a few years mastering the art of pomposity, these are places where you can be taught by undisputed experts.”

Lester Bangs (1948–1982) American music critic and journalist

"The Clash" (December 1977), p. 235
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (1988)

Art

“The mechanism by which the interaction of democratic decisions and their implementation by the experts often produces results which nobody has desired is a subject which would deserve much more careful attention than it usually receives.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

Lecture I. Freedom and the Rule of Law: A Historical Survey - 1. Principles and Drift in Democratic Process
1940s–1950s, The Political Ideal of the Rule of Law (1955)

Decision

“The conscience is a dilemma for the believer in evolution. He doesn't know why it exists. Neither do the experts. Why would evolution create something that tells us that it's wrong to lie, to steal, to kill, and to commit adultery? Was primitive man committing these sins before he evolved a conscience? If he wasn't, why didn't his conscience evolve? If he was, why did the conscience evolve?”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think (2009)

Lie

“Our amendment earmarks $10 million out of the account called Army Research, Development, Test and Evaluation. The money would go to a research program administered by the Army Medical Research and Materiel Command in the DoD, for identifying the biological mechanisms behind the illnesses — particularly the neurological and immunological ones; the chronic disease effects; better diagnostic criteria for the illnesses; and identification of treatments. The MRMC will design a research plan for that purpose, relying heavily on the expertise outside DoD and the VA. It will be subject to peer review by experts, a significant number of which will be independent of DoD.$10 million will have a large impact on veterans who rely on the government to take care of them after they have taken care of us.I urge my colleagues to support the Kucinich-Shays-Sanders amendment. Vote 'yes' to restore research funding for Gulf War Illnesses.”

Dennis Kucinich (1946) Ohio politician

Speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, Congressional Record (20 June, 2005) http://frwebgate5.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/waisgate.cgi?WAISdocID=239772330196+0+0+0&WAISaction=retrieve.

Money, War, Disease, Support

“The experimental psychologist… needs historical sophistication within his own sphere of expertness. Without such knowledge he sees the present in distorted perspective, he mistakes old facts and old views for new, and he remains unable to evaluate the significance of new movements and methods. In this matter I can hardly state my faith too strongly. A psychological sophistication that contains no component of historical orientation seems to me to be no sophistication at all.”

Edwin Boring (1886–1968) American psychologist

Source: A History of Experimental Psychology, 1929, p. ix; As cited in: Baldwin R. Hergenhahn (2008). An Introduction to the History of Psychology. p. 5

Faith, Knowledge

“It has changed a bit, of course. The speed and all that. But let me tell you something: in the olden times, let's say the year, I don't know, in the Sixties for instance, we would eat a plate of spaghetti and run out onto the pitch. Then people started saying 'they're too full', meaning you'd get bloated like a pig if you ate spaghetti. But this shows you those guys were clever because nowadays all the medical experts recommend pasta for athletes and footballers because you digest it slowly.”

Alfredo Di Stéfano (1926–2014) Argentine association football player

The Guardian interview (2008)

People, Guy, Change, Time

“I have been surprised at the unanimity with which the notion of the unacceptability of a Doomsday Machine is greeted. I used to be wary of discussing the concept for fear that some colonel would get out a General Operating Requirement or Development Planning Objective for the device, but it seems that I need not have worried. Except by some scientists and engineers who have overemphasized the single objective of maximizing the effectiveness of deterrence, the device is universally rejected. It just does not look professional to senior military officers, and it looks even worse to senior civilians. The fact that more than a few scientists and engineers do seem attracted to the idea is disquieting, but as long as the development project is expensive, even these dedicated experts are unlikely to get one under way.”

Herman Kahn (1922–1983) American futurist

The Magnum Opus; On Thermonuclear War

Fear, Way, Idea, Universe

“Whether computers are used for engineering design, medical data processing, composing music, or other purposes, the structure of computing is much the same. We are extremely short of talented people in this field, and so we need departments, curricula, and research and degree programs in computer science… I think of the Computer Science Department as eventually including experts in Programming, Numerical Analysis, Automata Theory, Data Processing, Business Games, Adaptive Systems, Information Theory, Information Retrieval, Recursive Function Theory, Computer Linguistics, etc., as these fields emerge in structure… Universities must respond [to the computer revolution] with far reaching changes in the educational structure.”

George Forsythe (1917–1972) Stanford University computer scientist

As cited in Donald Knuth (1972). "George Forsythe and the Development of Computer Science" http://www.stanford.edu/dept/ICME/docs/history/forsythe_knuth.pdf. Comms. ACM. "Educational implications of the computer revolution," 1963

People, Education, Music, Game

“The unacceptability of the Doomsday Machine raises awkward, unpleasant, and complicated questions that must be considered by both policy maker and technician. If it is not acceptable to risk the lives of the three billion inhabitants of the earth in order to protect ourselves from surprise attack, then how many people would we be willing to risk? I believe that both the United States and NATO would reluctantly be willing to envisage the possibility of one or two hundred million people (i. e., about five times more than World War II deaths) dying from the immediate effects, even if one does not include deferred long-term effects due to radiation, if an all-out thermonuclear war results from a failure of Type I Deterrence. With somewhat more controversy, similar numbers would apply to Type II Deterrence. (For example, some experts would concede the statement for an all-out Soviet nuclear attack on Europe, but not if the Soviets restricted themselves to the use of conventional weapons.) We are willing to live with the possibility partly because we think of it as a remote possibility. We do not expect either kind of deterrence to fail, and we do not expect the results to be that cataclysmic if deterrence does fail.”

Herman Kahn (1922–1983) American futurist

The Magnum Opus; On Thermonuclear War

Death, War, People, World

“These experts who offer to do our thinking for us rarely share their conclusions about work, for all its saliency in the lives of all of us. Among themselves they quibble over the details.”

Bob Black book The Abolition of Work

The Abolition of Work (1985)
Context: These experts who offer to do our thinking for us rarely share their conclusions about work, for all its saliency in the lives of all of us. Among themselves they quibble over the details. Unions and management agree that we ought to sell the time of our lives in exchange for survival, although they haggle over the price. Marxists think we should be bossed by bureaucrats. Libertarians think we should be bossed by businessmen. Feminists don't care which form bossing takes so long as the bosses are women. Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as clearly, none of them have any objection to power as such and all of them want to keep us working.
You may be wondering if I'm joking or serious. I'm joking and serious. To be ludic is not to be ludicrous. Play doesn't have to be frivolous, although frivolity isn't triviality: very often we ought to take frivolity seriously. I'd like life to be a game — but a game with high stakes. I want to play for keeps.

Thinking

“I am a bard; I will not disclose secrets to slaves;
I am a guide: I am expert in contests.”

Taliesin (534–599) Welsh bard

Book of Taliesin (c. 1275?), The First Address of Taliesin
Context: I am a bard; I will not disclose secrets to slaves;
I am a guide: I am expert in contests.
If he would sow, he would plough; he would plough, he would not reap.
If a brother among brothers,
Didactic Bards with swelling breasts will arise
Who will meet around mead-vessels,
And sing wrong poetry
And seek rewards that will not be,
Without law, without regulation, without gifts.
And afterwards will become angry.

Secret

“Trust the expert.”

Virgil book Aeneid

Variant translations:
Trust one who has gone through it.
Believe one who has had experience.
Source: Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book XI, Line 283; cf. "experto crede".

“A tolerable expertness in military movements is a business that requires time and practice. It is not a day, or even a week, that will suffice for the attainment of it.”

Alexander Hamilton Federalist Papers

No. 29
The Federalist Papers (1787–1788)
Context: A tolerable expertness in military movements is a business that requires time and practice. It is not a day, or even a week, that will suffice for the attainment of it. To oblige the great body of the yeomanry, and of the other classes of the citizens, to be under arms for the purpose of going through military exercises and evolutions, as often as might be necessary to acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the character of a well-regulated militia, would be a real grievance to the people, and a serious public inconvenience and loss. It would form an annual deduction from the productive labor of the country, to an amount which, calculating upon the present numbers of the people, would not fall far short of the whole expense of the civil establishments of all the States. To attempt a thing which would abridge the mass of labor and industry to so considerable an extent, would be unwise: and the experiment, if made, could not succeed, because it would not long be endured. Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped; and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year.

Business, Time

“The Lacedaemonians fought a memorable battle; they made it quite clear that they were the experts, and that they were fighting against amateurs.”

Herodotus book Histories

Book 7, Ch. 211.
The Histories

Fight

“The genius of America farm experts is very well demonstrated here: they can take a solution and divide it neatly into two problems.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

The Unsettling of America : Culture & Agriculture (1996), p. 62.
Context: Once plants and animals were raised together on the same farm — which therefore neither produced unmanageable surpluses of manure, to be wasted and to pollute the water supply, nor depended on such quantities of commercial fertilizer. The genius of America farm experts is very well demonstrated here: they can take a solution and divide it neatly into two problems.

Problem

“You don't pick generals off park benches. … They are experts at what they do and lot of thinking goes into it.”

Tom Clancy (1947–2013) American author

1990s, CNN interview (1999)
Context: My vision for this book and the others in the series is to let people know what kind of commanders we have. You don't pick generals off park benches. … They are experts at what they do and lot of thinking goes into it. And I want to get across to people the intellectual dimension of command, to let people know that it's hard to be a general. And the people we have with general stars on their shoulders are pretty smart and pretty good guys.

Thinking

“Another may be more expert in casting [throwing] his opponent; but he is not more social, nor more modest, nor better disciplined to meet all that happens, nor more considerate with respect to the faults of his neighbors.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VII, 52

“No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Letter to Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton (15 June 1877), as quoted in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1999) Elizabeth M. Knowles, p. 642; this has also been published without the word "insipid".
1870s
Context: No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense.

Life

“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.

World, Intelligence, Problem

“The pedant and the priest have always been the most expert of logicians—and the most diligent disseminators of nonsense and worse. The liberation of the human mind has never been furthered by dunderheads; it has been furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries and then went roistering down the highways of the world, proving to all men that doubt, after all, was safe—that the god in the sanctuary was finite in his power and hence a fraud. One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

"Clinical Notes" in The American Mercury (January 1924), p. 75; also in Prejudices, Fourth Series (1924)
1920s
Context: Critical note.—Of a piece with the absurd pedagogical demand for so-called constructive criticism is the doctrine that an iconoclast is a hollow and evil fellow unless he can prove his case. Why, indeed, should he prove it? Is he judge, jury, prosecuting officer, hangman? He proves enough, indeed, when he proves by his blasphemy that this or that idol is defectively convincing—that at least one visitor to the shrine is left full of doubts. The fact is enormously significant; it indicates that instinct has somehow risen superior to the shallowness of logic, the refuge of fools. The pedant and the priest have always been the most expert of logicians—and the most diligent disseminators of nonsense and worse. The liberation of the human mind has never been furthered by dunderheads; it has been furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries and then went roistering down the highways of the world, proving to all men that doubt, after all, was safe—that the god in the sanctuary was finite in his power and hence a fraud. One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent.

Men, God, World, Intelligence

“So I sat down and made a list of everything I felt I should know more about. Astrophysics, oceanography, marine biology, genetics… Then when I'd finished the list I read one book in each of these areas. When I'd finished I went back and read a second book until I'd read ten books in each area. I thought that it wouldn't turn me into a terrific, fantastic expert but I'd at least have enough material there to know if I was saying something wrong.”

Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) American speculative fiction writer

Phlogiston interview (1995)
Context: When I started writing my first novel,... And Call Me Conrad, they always say: "Write about what you know" and I said "Well, if I get a nice sort of combination SF and Fantasy with these resonances from Greek Mythology it might be pretty good. It would also give me a chance to start filling in my background on all those things I don't know much about but should if I want to be an SF writer."
So I sat down and made a list of everything I felt I should know more about. Astrophysics, oceanography, marine biology, genetics... Then when I'd finished the list I read one book in each of these areas. When I'd finished I went back and read a second book until I'd read ten books in each area. I thought that it wouldn't turn me into a terrific, fantastic expert but I'd at least have enough material there to know if I was saying something wrong. And I'd also know where to turn to get the information I want to make it right.
While I was doing this, to keep the words and cheques flowing I wrote books involving mythology. And once I started picking up things involving astrophysics I'd write stories that played with those sorts of things. So that's why I started out with mythology.

Books, Reading

“I emphatically disagree with statements of so-called military experts that victory was ours for the taking at any time during my period of command with the limited forces at our disposal and without widening the scope of the conflict. Korea's mountainous terrain literally soaks up infantry. We never had enough men, whereas the enemy not only had sufficient manpower to block our offensives, but could make and hold small gains of his own.”

Mark W. Clark (1896–1984) American general

Source: From the Danube to the Yalu (1954), p. 2

Men, Mountain, Time, Victory

“America is a nation of experts without roots; we are always creating tacticians who are blind to strategy and strategists who cannot take a step”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

Superman Comes to the Supermarket (1960)
Context: America is a nation of experts without roots; we are always creating tacticians who are blind to strategy and strategists who cannot take a step, and when the culture has finished its work the institutions handcuff the infirmity.

“Most work serves the predatory purposes of commerce and coercion and can be abolished outright. The rest can be automated away and/or transformed — by the experts, the workers who do it — into creative, playlike pastimes whose variety and conviviality will make extrinsic inducements like the capitalist carrot and the Communist stick equally obsolete.”

Bob Black (1951) American anarchist

The Libertarian as Conservative (1984)
Context: Most work serves the predatory purposes of commerce and coercion and can be abolished outright. The rest can be automated away and/or transformed — by the experts, the workers who do it — into creative, playlike pastimes whose variety and conviviality will make extrinsic inducements like the capitalist carrot and the Communist stick equally obsolete. In the hopefully impending meta-industrial revolution, libertarian communists revolting against work will settle accounts with “libertarians” and “Communists” working against revolt. And then we can go for the gusto!

“In the media age, everybody was famous for 15 minutes. In the Wikipedia age, everybody can be an expert in five minutes.”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

Wired Magazine article http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.08/colbert.html (14 August 2006) Context: Get your own entry in an encyclopedia... In the media age, everybody was famous for 15 minutes. In the Wikipedia age, everybody can be an expert in five minutes. Special bonus: You can edit your own entry to make yourself seem even smarter.

Age

“I've always wanted to be an expert on tadpoles. I've always fancied being a tadpole expert. It's a wonderful life if you become an experty tadpoleous, as they are known in the trade. You get invited to all the smart parties and social gatherings.”

Peter Cook (1937–1995) British architect

"The Tadpole Expert" (1964)
E. L. Wisty

“Experts can explain anything in the objective world to us, yet we understand our own lives less and less. In short, we live in the postmodern world, where everything is possible and almost nothing is certain.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern World (1994)
Context: There appear to be no integrating forces, no unified meaning, no true inner understanding of phenomena in our experience of the world. Experts can explain anything in the objective world to us, yet we understand our own lives less and less. In short, we live in the postmodern world, where everything is possible and almost nothing is certain.

World, Understanding

“You write a story about loneliness, and you grab them all because everybody's an expert on that one. ”

Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) American speculative fiction writer

Loneliness

“From my point of view, what’s beautiful in the sport is something you don’t need to know too much about tactics or anything to see. If you find something beautiful, you don’t need to be an expert to know it. It’s like ballet.”

Pelé (1940–2022) Brazilian association football player

Beauty, Sport

“I have served our country under three presidents: in my most recent capacity under President Trump, as well as in my former position of National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. In that role, I was the Intelligence Community’s senior expert on Russia and the former Soviet republics, including Ukraine.”

Fiona Hill (presidential advisor) (1965) American policy adviser

House Intelligence Committee impeachment hearing (2019)

Intelligence, Communication, Country

“Part of my job is finding a way for you, the game experts, to have fun.”

Reggie Fils-Aimé (1961) American businessman

Source: E3 2004 Press Conference

Way, Game, Parting

“As recently also pointed out by Prof. S. N. Balagangadhara and Mr. Rajiv Malhotra, Western Hinduism experts are, with only little hyperbole, the only academic specialists who actively work for their own field of study to die.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

Well, I’ll grant you the criminologists. Elst, Koenraad. The Wikipedia lemma on "Koenraad Elst": a textbook example of defamation (2013) https://koenraadelst.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-wikipedia-lemma-on-koenraad-elst.html 2010s

Study

“After all the wild claims made about their findings, the experts themselves have finally spoken… In a normal setting, the ASI findings should finish once and for all the campaign of history denial by the Marxists and their Muslim camp followers. But the world of Indian secularism is a fantasy-land where hard facts don’t count for much. So, a great many diehards unflinchingly reject the findings of science.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

2000s, Ayodhya, the Finale (2003)

World, History, Science

“We are improving our attack systems as an answer to the United States building its missile defense system… Clearly, we have overtaken all our, so to speak, partners and competitors in this sphere, and this fact is acknowledged by the experts. No one has a high-precision hypersonic weapon…So, we feel confident in this sense.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

Cooperation, Terrorism, UK & USA, President Trump, Resolving Conflict, Defense, Crimea, The Media, Nuclear Weapons Policy: 15th Plenary Session (18 October 2018)

Feeling, Confidence, Sense, Self-confidence

“Attempting to define reality is a core feature of authoritarianism. This is what the Soviets did when they erased political dissidents from historical photos. This is what happens in George Orwell’s classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, when a torturer holds up four fingers and delivers electric shocks until his prisoner sees five fingers as ordered. The goal is to make you question logic and reason and to sow mistrust towards exactly the people we need to rely on: our leaders, the press, experts who seek to guide public policy based on evidence, ourselves.”

Hillary Clinton What Happened

"Showing Up" https://books.google.com/books?id=UjAIDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA9, What Happened (2017), Simon & Schuster. Post Presidential Election

People, Making love, Photo, Question

“Socialism is directed towards a social-ethical end. Science, however, cannot create ends and, even less, instill them in human beings; science, at most, can supply the means by which to attain certain ends. But the ends themselves are conceived by personalities with lofty ethical ideals and — if these ends are not stillborn, but vital and vigorous — are adopted and carried forward by those many human beings who, half unconsciously, determine the slow evolution of society. For these reasons, we should be on our guard not to overestimate science and scientific methods when it is a question of human problems; and we should not assume that experts are the only ones who have a right to express themselves on questions affecting the organization of society.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1940s, Why Socialism? (1949)

Question, Problem, Science, Personality

“However, the fact that Khan is a Sharia scholar and an expert on Islamic jurisprudence makes it even clearer that Khan is an Islamist who thanked Saeed Ramadan, a father of the Muslim Brotherhood for using his sources. … Shouldn’t this suffice? To the anti-Christian crowds, it doesn’t, nothing will, nothing will ever will. To the Muslim Brotherhood, if the Muslim can produce a suicide bomber, the liberal can produce national suicide. And if in doubt, just see how one man (Khan) caused Donald Trump to decline a notch.”

Said Ramadan (1926–1995) Egyptian political activist

Walid Shoebat, What Every American Must Know About Sharia BEFORE They Vote: How Hillary Clinton Duped America By Pushing Khizr Khan, A Sharia Muslim Scholar http://shoebat.com/2016/08/04/what-every-american-must-know-about-sharia-before-they-vote-how-hillary-clinton-duped-america-by-pushing-khizr-khan-a-sharia-muslim-scholar/ (August 4, 2016) About

Making love, Suicide

“We sincerely welcome more foreign experts to China to spark innovation and pursue successful careers. And we welcome the talents from all over the world to be part of our modernization drive, and make even greater contribution to building a community with a shared future for mankind, to world peace and development, and to human progress.”

Han Zheng (1954) Chinese politician

Han Zheng (2019) cited in " China warns Taiwan of continued lockout from WHO assembly http://www.arabnews.com/node/1102951/world" on CCTV English, 28 September 2019.

World, Making love, Peace, Communication

“A pearl fishery is being established on the Malabar coast. Expert pearl divers are coming to Mysore from foreign lands. They will be with us for a short while until our own people can be trained. Believe me, there is glitter and romance in those pearls—and there is wealth and profit in them. Government is prepared to subsidise your training the youth in this field of work. You will also be assisted in case you suffer any financial losses in the pioneering years. Can I count on your cooperation?”

Tipu Sultan (1750–1799) Ruler of the Sultanate of Mysore

Tipu Sultan's address on 1788, Quoted in The Sword of Tipu Sultan, by Bhagwan S Gidwani https://books.google.com.sa/books?id=EimPBAAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PT262#v=onepage&q&f=true From Tipu Sultan's Decrees

People, Youth, Suffering, Loss

“We of the Shroud tend to believe in teaching those things we know we can teach, and in affairs of the heart—or gonads—there are no real experts. Love, like zen, cannot be learned, only felt.”

Steve Perry book The Man Who Never Missed

Source: The Man Who Never Missed (1985), Chapter 10 (p. 87)

Love, Making love, Learning, Heart

“The New World Alliance … was a short-lived precursor of the North American Greens. It was founded by Mark Satin (author of New Age Politics) after a nationwide Delphi-type survey among 500 academics, policy experts, and political activists interested in this emerging political paradigm. These new colleagues … were also exploring the relationship between personal and political transformation.”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

"Preface." In Woolpert, Stephen; Slaton, Christa Daryl; and Schwerin, Edward W., eds. (1998), Transformational Politics: Theory, Study, and Practice. State University of New York Press, p. xi. ISBN 978-0-7914-3945-6. Woolpert had been a member of the Alliance, see p. xi, and Slaton had worked with the Greens, see McLaughlin quote below.
New Age and Green activism

Age, World, Personality

“As a constitutional expert, and a jurist he got unequivocal recognition from the Congress and non-Congress parties. They believed that the letter and spirit of the Constitution was safe in his hands…He was a spiritualist to the core.”

Shankar Dayal Sharma (1918–1999) Indian politician

Source: Commissions and Omissions by Indian Presidents and Their Conflicts with the Prime Ministers Under the Constitution: 1977-2001, P.201.

“Although he had a top position in the Islamic Republic as the head of the Leadership Assembly of Experts, he always lived a humble life.”

Ali Meshkini (1922–2007) Iranian ayatollah

Imam Khamenei, IR Leader expresses condolences on Meshkini demise, The Office of the Supreme Leader, 31/07/2007, 2007-08-06 http://www.leader.ir/langs/EN/index.php?p=news&id=3586,

Life

“Almost one year has now passed since the horrifying events in Mina, as a result of which several thousand people tragically lost their lives- under the hot sun with thirsty lips- and this happened on the day of Eid while they were in the clothes of ihram. Shortly before that, another group of people were crushed to death in Masjid ul-Haraam while they were worshiping and performing tawaf and salat. Saudi rulers were at fault in both cases. This is what all those present, observers and technical analysts agree upon. Some experts maintain that the events were premeditated. The hesitation and failure to rescue the half-dead and injured people, whose enthusiastic souls and enthralled hearts were accompanying their praying tongues on Eid ul-Adha, is also obvious and incontrovertible. The heartless and murderous Saudis locked up the injured with the dead in containers- instead of providing medical treatment and helping them or at least quenching their thirst. They murdered them.”

Ali Khamenei (1939) Iranian Shiite faqih, Marja' and official independent islamic leader

2016, Hajj hijacked by oppressors, Muslims should reconsider management of Hajj (September 2015)

Death, People, Soul, Failure

“You won’t be an artist if you live a thousand years. You’re merely an expert, and you know it. Those who can—do, those who can’t—criticise.”

Arthur C. Clarke book The Road to the Sea

The Road to the Sea, p. 294
2000s and posthumous publications, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (2001)

“Having been involved in a couple of lawsuits as an expert probability witness and having observed that a prudent skepticism is often less prized than an indefensible certainty, I turned down preliminary requests from both sides to testify.”

John Allen Paulos book A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper

Source: A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper (1995), Chapter 9, “Fraud Alleged in Pennsylvania Senate Race” (p. 45)

“Monopoly of public policy by experts—trade negotiators, government bureaucrats, think tankers, professors, journalists—helped create the populist backlash that empowered Trump.”

George Packer (1960) American journalist and writer

A Political Obituary for Donald Trump (2020)

Thinking, Help

“Experts on romance say for a happy marriage there has to be more than a passionate love. For a lasting union, they insist, there must be a genuine liking for each other. Which, in my book, is a good definition for friendship.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Love, Friendship, Marriage, Happiness

“There are too many experts, we lack true practitioners in marketing.”

Vladimer Botsvadze

“I drew a lot of scenes [in Preacher] of people vomiting. I'm probably the world's leading expert on drawing vomiting now.”

Steve Dillon (1962–2016) British comic artist

as quoted by Matt Adler, Comic Book Resources, "WWPhilly: Garth Ennis & Steve Dillon" https://www.cbr.com/wwphilly-garth-ennis-steve-dillon/ (22 June 2009) Miscellaneous Quotes

People, World, Drawing

“We are all experts and sometimes encounter limits in our fields, including those we call fools. Even the doctor can only heal the sick, but not raise the dead.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Fools, Dead

“We are living in a time of transition, when everything is going to be so different that the experts are possibly more handicapped by their traditional time-worn knowledge than are we, untrained and with minds empty of red tape and orthodoxy.”

Vera Stanley Alder (1898–1984) British artist

Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Chapter II Planning a Model World

Knowledge, Time

“Even though we (astronaut candidates) are doing science, we are in many ways the hands and the eyes of the experts who are on the ground, and so we are kind of an extension of them.”

Andreas Mogensen (1976) Danish astronaut

Source: Andreas Mogensen (2021) cited in " These astronauts will be able to unlock Mars’ secrets by looking at rocks on Earth https://www.euronews.com/next/2021/12/14/these-astronauts-will-be-able-to-unlock-mars-secrets-by-looking-at-rocks-on-earth" on Euro News, 14 December 2021.

Way, Science

“The idea of schooling free men in anything would have revolted Athenians. Forced training was for slaves. Among free men, learning was self-discipline, not the gift of experts.”

John Taylor Gatto book The Underground History of American Education

Source: The Underground History of American Education: An Intimate Investigation Into the Prison of Modern Schooling (2001), p. 62

Men, School, Idea, Learning

“Okay, firstly, academic historians write academic history for academics. It's a myth that you can't be a historian without having a degree. Ian Fletcher, the globally acknowledged expert in the Peninsular War, doesn't have a degree. He always tells me that, “The books we write are the ones which academics read to get their degrees from.””

Rick D Phillips

Source: https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-become-historian-without-studying-history-in-University

War, Books, History, Reading

“Overexcited Russian experts should forget their hate fantasies.”

Mikhail Khodaryonok (1954) Colonel of the Russian Armed Forces

"3 Wochen vor dem Angriff: Russischer Ex-Oberst machte 6 Vorhersagen zum Ukraine-Krieg - alle trafen ein" https://www.focus.de/politik/ausland/ukraine-krise/3-wochen-vor-dem-angriff-alle-trafen-ein-russischer-ex-oberst-machte-sechs-vorhersagen-zum-ukraine-krieg_id_86370800.html (In German; "3 weeks before the attack: Russian former colonel made 6 predictions about the war against Ukraine - all came true"), Focus.de, 22 April 2022

Hate, Forgetting

“Everyone was supposed to go to parliament to work with their heads. For some, working with their heads didn't work out, so they went on to employ their fists. As an expert in this matter I can say that they didn't manage to do it very well, either.”

Vitali Klitschko (1971) Ukrainian boxer and politician

2013
Source: [У депутатов новой Рады не получается работать ни головой, ни кулаками - Кличко, https://politics.segodnya.ua/politics/U-deputatov-novoy-Rade-ne-poluchaetsya-rabotat-ni-golovoy-ni-kulakami-Klichko-408225.html, 2022-06-13, politics.segodnya.ua, ru]

“When a criticism comes from an expert: the idiot considers it an insult, the intelligent one a help.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: Quando una critica proviene da un esperto: l'idiota la considera un insulto, l'intelligente un aiuto.
Source: prevale.net

Intelligence, Help

Quotes about expert page 4

Quotes about expert
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