Expert In Nothing Quotes & Sayings

A good writer is an expert on nothing except himself. And on that subject, if he is wise, he holds his tongue. Some of you may wonder why I am reluctant to submit to interviews on television and radio and in the press. The answer is that nothing that I write is authentic. It is the stuff of dreams, not reality. Yet I am treated by the media as though I wrote espionage handbooks. — John Le Carre

In 1991, only two years into the Bush administration, Condoleezza Rice suddenly left her powerful job as the top Russia expert on the National Security Council and went back to California - to get a life. — Elaine Sciolino

Show up, shine and do the damn thing! — Catrice M. Jackson

I'm convinced, though I'm no expert in biology, if you cut a dog's brain open it would just be a perfect little human brain, with none of the bad parts. — J. David Osborne

Expert: a man who makes three correct guesses consecutively. — Laurence J. Peter

Whatever field one choose to achieve the level of skill commensurate with the status of a world class expert, it requires 10,000 hours of practice — Sunday Adelaja

Nothing would be more fatal than for the Government of States to get in the hands of experts. Expert knowledge is limited knowledge, and the unlimited ignorance of the plain man who knows where it hurts is a safer guide than any rigorous direction of a specialized character. — Winston S. Churchill

In seeking a lawyer, you are looking for an advocate, an expert advisor on the law and on your rights and responsibilities, a strategist, a negotiator, and a litigator. — Laura Wasser

If you picture other people as superior to yourself, you will realize that
mental image. Putting a preacher, a saint, a prophet, an expert or anybody up on a pedestal in your personal view, fundamentally accomplishes nothing but the effect of putting you in a pit. — Thomas Daniel Nehrer

Being a "promising beginner" is fun, but being an actual expert is infinitely more gratifying. — Angela Duckworth

There are men and women who are experts in the field of handwriting analysis. They are called graphologists, and they attend graphological schools in order to get their degrees in graphology. You might think that this situation would call for a graphologist, but there are time when an expert's opinion in unnecessary. For instance, if a friend of yours brought you her pet dog, and said she was concerned because it wasn't laying eggs, you would not have to be a veterinarian to tell her that dogs do not lay eggs and so there was nothing to worry about. — Lemony Snicket

When I fly in a helicopter, I insist there be two sets of controls, one for me in case something happens to the pilot. I'm no expert, but I know enough to at least get the thing on the ground. Nothing scares me like the thought of not being in control. — Jack Nicklaus

True artistry in perfumery is the marriage of notes that may juxtapose each other but become harmonious in a blend. Born of pure creativity and an astounding knowledge of literally thousands of synthetics and hundreds of Essential oils, they must possess the ability to marry disparate and conjugal notes into a harmonious blend. — Marian Bendeth

According to population expert Dr. Paul Ehrlich, we should currently be experiencing a dystopian dreamscape where "survivors envy the dead," which seems true only when I look at Twitter. Yet — Chuck Klosterman

It's really hard to break through the clutter and get the attention of the top investors, as they typically only look at deals that come in from a warm, credible referral. There's absolutely nothing more credible than getting an endorsement from a well-known subject matter expert who has already put their own money into your company. — Scott Weiss

I may not be an expert in women, but I know enough about them to know that fine means definitely not fucking fine . — Vi Keeland

Handguns were in-room weapons. Under expert control in high-pressure situations the average range for a successful engagement was about eleven feet. — Lee Child

Most advice on child-rearing is sought in the hope that it will confirm our prior convictions. If the parent had wished to proceedin a certain way but was made insecure by opposing opinions of neighbors, friends, or relatives, then it gives him great comfort to find his ideas seconded by an expert. — Bruno Bettelheim

An expert is someone called in at the last minute to share the blame. — Sam Ewing

I pledged to become the world's greatest expert in a field I knew nothing about. — A. J. Jacobs

Every kind of perfection is purchased at a high price on earth, where everything is perhaps purchased too dear; one is an expert in one's department at the price of being also a victim of one's department. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The knowledge of the individual citizen is of less value than the knowledge of science. The former is the opinion of individuals. It is merely subjective and is excluded from policies. The latter is objective - defined by science and promulgated by expert spokesmen. This objective knowledge is viewed as a commodity which can be refined ... and fed into a process, now called decision-making. This new mythology of governance by the manipulation of knowledge-stock inevitably erodes reliance on government by people. — Ivan Illich

Leadership reveals itself in the big moments, but is forged in the small. It is the exponential and compounding product of our many incremental behaviors and actions; all of which arise out of our choices in values, beliefs & emotions. Choices all. Not a one is thrust upon us. — Christopher Babson

Philosophy ... is indeed outrageous, inherently so. It seeks to disquiet the foundations of our lives and to offer us in recompense nothing better than itself- and this on the basis of no expert knowledge, of nothing closed to the ordinary human being, once ... [one] lets himself or herself be informed by the process and ambition of philosophy. — Stanley Cavell

The idea of gas engines was by no means new, but this was the first time that a really serious effort had been made to put them on the market. They were received with interest rather than enthusiasm and I do not recall any one who thought that the internal combustion engine could ever have more than a limited use. All the wise people demonstrated conclusively that the engine could not compete with steam. They never thought that it might carve out a career for itself. That is the way with wise people
they are so wise and practical that they always know to a dot just why something cannot be done; they always know the limitations. That is why I never employ an expert in full bloom. If ever I wanted to kill opposition by unfair means I would endow the opposition with experts. They would have so much good advice that I could be sure they would do little work. — Henry Ford

An expert gives an objective view. He gives his own view. — Morarji Desai

The geometrician teaches me how to work out the size of my estates rather than how to work out how much a man needs in order to have enough ... You geometers can calculate the area of circles, can reduce any given shape to a square, can state the distances separating starts. Nothing's outside your scope when it comes to measurement. Well, if you're such an expert, measure a man's soul; tell me how large or how small that is. You can define a straight line; what use is that to you if you've no idea what straightness means in life? — Seneca The Younger

Our unconscious reactions come out of a locked room, and we can't look inside that room. but with experience we become expert at using our behavior and our training to interpret - and decode - what lies behind our snap judgment and first impressions. — Malcolm Gladwell

I am an 'expert' on life!
Does it mean I 'know' it all?
No, it means quite the opposite..
For, I do not know, so I have to 'live' it all..
That makes an 'expert'! — Abha Maryada Banerjee

I wasn't an expert or even the biggest Dennis Hopper fan in the world. All I knew about him were through his associations with James Dean and Andy Warhol, the fact that he made 'Easy Rider.' I thought his story would have a really great outlaw literary quality to it. — Tom Folsom

Someone has said that Satan knows nothing of true pleasure and satisfaction, that he is an expert only in amusements. David had learned the difference, and we would do well to imitate him. True pleasure comes from knowing God, being known by God, and being at rest in His presence. — David Jeremiah

It was cruel, though, to want to, and tempting, so I'd become an expert at almost. — Ali Smith

If we insist that public life be reserved for those whose personal history is pristine, we are not going to get paragons of virtue running our affairs. We will get the very rich, who contract out the messy things in life the very dull, who have nothing to hide and nothing to show and the very devious, expert at covering their tracks and ambitious enough to risk their discovery. — Charles Krauthammer

Cooking is a craft, I like to think, and a good cook is a craftsman - not an artist. There's nothing wrong with that: the great cathedrals of Europe were built by craftsmen - though not designed by them. Practicing your craft in expert fashion is noble, honorable and satisfying. — Anthony Bourdain

Of the hundreds of Negro high schools recently examined by an expert in the United States Bureau of Education only eighteen offer a course taking up the history of the Negro, and in most of the Negro colleges and universities where the Negro is thought of, the race is studied only as a problem or dismissed as of little consequence. For example, an officer of a Negro university, thinking that an additional course on the Negro should be given there, called upon a Negro Doctor of Philosophy of the faculty to offer such work. He promptly informed the officer that he knew nothing about the Negro. He did not go to school to waste his time that way. He went to be educated in a system which dismisses the Negro as a nonentity. — Carter G. Woodson

Dr. Watson's summary list of Sherlock Holmes's strengths and weaknesses:
1. Knowledge of Literature: Nil.
2. Knowledge of Philosophy: Nil.
3. Knowledge of Astronomy: Nil.
4. Knowledge of Politics: Feeble.
5. Knowledge of Botany: Variable. Well up in belladonna, opium, and poisons generally. Knows nothing of practical gardening.
6. Knowledge of Geology: Practical but limited. Tells at a glance different soils from each other. After walks has shown me splashes upon his trousers, and told me by their colour and consistence in what part of London he had received them.
7. Knowledge of Chemistry: Profound.
8. Knowledge of Anatomy: Accurate but unsystematic.
9. Knowledge of Sensational Literature: Immense. He appears to know every detail of every horror perpetrated in the century.
10. Plays the violin well.
11. Is an expert singlestick player, boxer, and swordsman.
12. Has a good practical knowledge of British law. — Arthur Conan Doyle

A rifle is elegant. It's an extension of your will. Take aim, squeeze the trigger, make things happen. In the hands of an expert with stillness inside of him, there's nothing more deadly than a good rifle. — Brandon Sanderson

Nothing ever really ends. That's the horrible part of being in the short-story business - you have to be a real expert on ends. Nothing in real life ends. 'Millicent at last understands.' Nobody ever understands. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

A blind person could make a lifelong study of the eye, properties of light, the sight process and become a great expert in the field, but in another sense he would know nothing about sight. A person could know a great deal about God and yet not know God. — Stephen Covey

Every man gets a narrower and narrower field of knowledge in which he must be an expert in order to compete with other people. The specialist knows more and more about less and less and finally knows everything about nothing. — Konrad Lorenz

I got a crash-course education in urban fantasy. I suddenly had to look up all these other writers I was supposed to be in a genre with. I instantly had to become an expert in this genre I knew almost nothing about. — Carrie Vaughn

You must remember that the common criminal will always join the armed forces for, if nothing else, regular meals and expert training in the use of guns. — Warren Ellis

The situation has provided a cue; this cue has given the expert access to information stored in memory, and the information provides the answer. Intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition. — Herbert Simon

There's nothing worse than when someone takes a community education course and becomes an expert on how yoga is the best way to burn the visceral fat that's housed deep in your abdomen. — Dan John

None of our men are 'experts.' We have most unfortunately found it necessary to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert because no one ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job. A man who knows a job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he is always pressing forward and never gives up an instant of thought to how good and how efficient he is. Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a state of mind in which nothing is impossible. The moment one gets into the 'expert' state of mind a great number of things become impossible. — Henry Ford

Cole kissed me.. It was the sort of kiss that would take a long time to recover from. You could take each of our kisses, from the very first moment we'd met and put them on a slide in a microscope, and I was pretty sure what you'd find. Even an expert would see nothing on the first one, and then on the next one, the start of something - mostly outnumbered, easily destroyed - and then more and more until finally this one, something that even the untrained eye could spot. Evidence that we'd probably never be cured of each other, but we might be able to keep it from killing us. — Maggie Stiefvater

No, you can take it from an expert in cover-ups-I've lived through Watergate-that nothing less than a resurrected Christ could have caused those men to maintain to their dying whispers that Jesus is alive and is Lord. Two thousand years later, nothing less than the power of the risen Christ could inspire Christians around the world to remain faithful-despite prison, torture, and death. — Charles Colson

But mining is also an intellectual exercise, requiring the combined skills of a plumber, a carpenter, and an electrician as well as an explosives expert. You had to be able to judge the load strength of a beam or the friability of rock at a glance and do instant calculations in your head, because one false step or misplaced stick of dynamite could blow you into body parts or at least send a few digits flying off on their own. So this was the mental procedure, which even a little girl could learn: First, size up the situation. Make sure you have all the facts, and nothing but the facts - no folklore, no conventional wisdom, no lazy assumptions. Then examine the facts for patterns and connections. Make a prediction. See if it works. And if it doesn't work, start all over again. — Barbara Ehrenreich

When I was in power, I found that experts can't be trusted. For this simple reason: unlike tyrants, they are under no delusion that a country, a people is their body. Under this delusion a tyrant takes everything personally. An expert takes nothing personally. Nothing is ever precisely his fault. If a bridge collapses, or a war miscarries, he has already walked away. He still has his expertise. Also,
people imagine that because a thing is big, it has had a great deal of intelligent thought given to it. This is not true. A big idea is even more apt to be wrong than a small one, because the scale is inorganic. The Great Wall, for instance, is extremely stupid. The two biggest phenomena in the world right now are Maoism and American television, and both are extremely stupid. — John Updike

I believe - though I may be wrong, because I'm no expert - that this war is about what most wars are about: hegemony, money, power and oil. — Dustin Hoffman

To study its effect on a living, struggling human body, he meant. To do that, you would need the right combination of hospital facilities, BSL-4 facilities, dedicated and expert professionals, and circumstances. You couldn't do it during the next outbreak at a mission clinic in an African village. You would need to bring Ebola virus into captivity - into a research situation, under highly controlled scrutiny - and not just in the form of frozen samples. You would need to study a raging infection inside somebody's body. That isn't easy to arrange. He added: "We haven't had an Ebola patient yet in the US." But for everything that happens, there is a first time. — David Quammen

Absolutely not. I'm an expert in procrastination, but the last thing I want you to think is that I'm incompetent, too. Because I'm actually pretty good at what I do. -Jo — Nicholas Sparks

A censor is an expert in cutting remarks. A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to. — Laurence J. Peter

Can't I just shoot you in the ass with paintball pellets? Those fuckers hurt. I'm an expert marksman with firearms. I could turn your ass red, green, blue, whatever the fuck color you want. — Tymber Dalton

Well, basically there are two sorts of opera," said Nanny, who also had the true witch's ability to be confidently expert on the basis of no experience whatsoever. "There's your heavy opera, where basically people sing foreign and it goes like "Oh oh oh, I am dyin', oh I am dyin', oh oh oh, that's what I'm doin'", and there's your light opera, where they sing in foreign and it basically goes "Beer! Beer! Beer! Beer! I like to drink lots of beer!", although sometimes they drink champagne instead. That's basically all of opera, reely. — Terry Pratchett

Look. I'm your expert consultant for a rather pathetic monetary wage, and under that agreement I have the option of selecting a technical assistant. He's mine."

She blew out a breath, paced to the window. Paced back. "Not just yours. It makes him mine, too. I don't know how to deal with a teenaged type person."

"Ah, well, I'd say you'd deal with him as you deal with everyone else. You order him around, and if he argues or doesn't jump quickly enough you freeze his blood with one of those vicious looks you're so good at and verbally abuse him. It always works so well for you."

"You think so?"

"There, see." He cupped her chin. "There it is now. I can actually feel my blood running cold. — J.D. Robb

Forget about being an expert or a professional, and wear your amateurism (your heart, your love) on your sleeve. Share what you love, and the people who love the same things will find you. — Austin Kleon

Is it too ingenuous to imagine that anything can be left to say about a garden? Garden literature, descriptive, reminiscent, and technical, has blossomed so profusely among us during the last decade, that he should be an expert indeed who ventures to add thereto. — Harrison Gray Otis Dwight

When you have a background in combat sports, people think you're this martial arts expert, but really I'm just a guy who is able to do certain things without making a mess of himself. — Rick Yune

No expert can predict the heavyweight division. Every punch can make the decision. — Vitali Klitschko

Nutt was technically an expert on love poetry throughout the ages and had discussed it at length with Miss Healstether, the castle librarian. He had also tried to discuss it with Ladyship, but she had laughed and said it was frivolity, although quite helpful as a tutorial on the use of vocabulary, scansion, rhythm and affect as a means to an end, to wit getting a young lady to take all her clothes off. At that particular point, Nutt had not really understood what she meant. It sounded like some sort of conjuring trick. — Terry Pratchett

How is it that you're such an expert on home pregnancy kits?"
You're asking that question of an Italian stallion like myself? The women call me 'sperm of thunder'. I don't dare stand too close for fear I may impregnate them with just a whiff of my manhood. — Jill Smolinski

He sat in the living room in the dark, an expert at waiting, a nineteen-year veteran of it, waiting for people who failed to appear, missed court dates because they forgot or didn't care, and took off. Nineteen years of losers, repeat offenders in and out of the system. Another one, that's all Louis was, slipping back into the life. — Elmore Leonard

And although one broken heart doesn't make me an expert in the subject, I believe you need both things - time and an emotional replacement - to fully mend one. — Emily Giffin

Making a woman fall for a man is a natural talent. You can practice it but you can't master it. Practice does not make you expert, but dampens your spirits every time you fail. — Girdhar Joshi

I have a black-belt in self-pity. I was an expert in the field. Still am. It's a skill you never forget. — Katja Millay

It is possible to enjoy the Mozart concerto without being able to play the clarinet. In fact, you can learn to be an expert connoisseur of music without being able to play a note on any instrument. Of course, music would come to a halt if nobody ever learned to play it. But if everybody grew up thinking that music was synonymous with playing it, think how relatively impoverished many lives would be. Couldn't we learn to think of science in the same way? — Richard Dawkins

Focus on identifying your target audience, communicating an authentic message that they want and need and project yourself as an "expert" within your niche. — Kim Garst

I appreciate and enjoy mathematics and science and all that side of things. I definitely have that side of me even though I'm not by any means an expert, but I love reading about physics and math and that kind of stuff. I wish I knew more than I did. I mean, I read books written for laymen, not textbooks or anything. — Chris Parnell

The interview went well. I found him warm but not eager, friendly but slightly impersonal, and he answered all questions concerning music with an engaging straightforwardness. Nonmusical questions he either evaded with the skill of an expert, or ignored, apparently from lack of interest in the subjects broached. Already he had the gift of fielding impertinent questions by offering quotable evasions instead. For instance, I remember asking him if he was a religious person. He replied that he didn't want to talk about religion.
"Why not?" I pursued.
"Because my music is so very odd already that I see no reason to make myself sound any odder. — Philip Glass

One becomes a beginner after one thousand days of training and an expert after ten thousand days of practice. — Masutatsu Oyama

If you hear an expert talking about the Internet and saying it [does] this, or it will do that, you should treat it with the same skepticism that you might treat the comments of an economist about the economy or a weatherman about the weather. — Danny Hillis

Azevedo Bandeira is an expert in the art of progressive intimidation, in the satanic maneuver of gradually humiliating his interlocutor by combining verities and gibes. — Jorge Luis Borges

But he hadn't appeared that night. Not the next morning, either. By the time she finally crossed paths with him the following afternoon, his mumbled "Merry Christmas" was the extent of their exchange.
It seemed they were back to silence.
I don't want you.
She tried to ignore the words echoing in her memory. They weren't true, she told herself. She was an expert at deceit; she knew a lie when she heard one.
Still. What else to believe, when he avoided her thus?
Although he rarely spoke to her over the next two days, Sophia frequently overheard him speaking of her. Even these remarks were the tersest of commands: "Fetch Miss Turner more water," or "See that her canopy doesn't go slack." She felt herself being tended, not unlike a goat. Fed, watered, sheltered. Perhaps she shouldn't complain. Food, water, and shelter were all welcome things.
But Sophia was not livestock, and she had other, more profound needs. Needs he seemed intent on neglecting, the infuriating man. — Tessa Dare

There's no expert on this planet who says that the government telling people what to do actually does any good with this issue, this is going to require an effort on everyone's part. — Michelle Obama

I'm not a policy expert - I am only arguing that there is more to an education than an economic ticket. — Rebecca Mead

An expert must be BOLD if he hopes to alchemize his homespun theory into
conventional wisdom. — Steven D. Levitt

Mr. Baggins was still officially their expert burglar and investigator. If he liked to risk a light, that was his affair. They would wait in the tunnel for his report. — J.R.R. Tolkien

A person who has experienced something is almost always far more expert on it than are the experts. — Gloria Steinem

I'm no expert in vibrators, but I was surprised to learn that one could fit in that little box. — Henry Blodget

The bible saw that can get a lot of people killed, so let's try and steer people away from that. I am not an expert on the bible. I am just saying. — Henry Rollins

Grappling with fate is like meeting an expert wrestler: to escape, you have to accept the fall when you are thrown. The only thing that counts is whether you get back up. — Ming-Dao Deng

If you have difficulty sleeping or are not getting enough sleep or sleep of good quality, you need to learn the basics of sleep hygiene, make appropriate changes, and possibly consult a sleep expert. — Andrew Weil

in 2013 in Sweden, an expert health advisory group, after spending two years reviewing 16,000 studies, concluded that a diet low in fat was an ineffective strategy for tackling either obesity or diabetes. — Nina Teicholz