Quotes & Sayings About Underestimating

Success means crossing a limit. To cross a limit you need to assume that you have a limit. Assuming a limit is underestimating yourself. If you have no boundaries then where is your success? — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

We were not for underestimating magic - a life-conductor like the sap between the tree-stem and the bark. We know that it keeps dullness out of religion and poetry. It is probable that without it we might die. — Freya Stark

The mistake we make in thinking of character as something unified and all-encompassing is very similar to a kind of blind spot in the way we process information. Psychologists call this tendency the Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE), which is a fancy way of saying that when it comes to interpreting other people's behavior, human beings invariably make the mistake of overestimating the importance of fundamental character traits and underestimating the importance of situation and context. — Malcolm Gladwell

I believe you!' the artiste exclaimed finally and extinguishes his gaze. 'I do! These eyes are not lying! How many times have I told you that your basic error consists in underestimating the significance of the human eye. Understand that the tongue can conceal the truth, but the eyes - never! A sudden question is put to you, you don't even flinch, in one second you get hold of yourself and know what you must say to conceal the truth, and you speak quite convincingly, and not a wrinkle on your face moves, but - alas - the truth which the question stirs up from the bottom of your soul leaps momentarily into your eyes, and it's all over! They see it, and you're caught! — Mikhail Bulgakov

Underestimating one's enemy was a classic tactical mistake
one that was usually born out of stupidity or arrogance or both. (Harry Smith) — Vince Flynn

There is no greater danger than underestimating your opponent. — Laozi

The truth about change is that we tend to overestimate its speed while underestimating its reach. — Jeffrey J. Selingo

Once a priest told us that no one gets up in the pulpit without promulgating a heresy. He was joking, of course, but what I suppose he meant was the truth was so pure, so holy, that it was hard to emphasize one aspect of the truth without underestimating another, that we did not see things as a whole, but through a glass darkly, as St. Paul said. — Dorothy Day

All my life, people have been underestimating me. — Hugh Carey

I spent an awful lot of my life underestimating myself and, as a result, not exceeding my own expectations. — Jane Pauley

Once again, human history proved that the worst mistake possible in politics was underestimating one's opponents. Van — Greg Bear

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know - and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me - has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby. — H.L. Mencken

People always make this totally artificial distinction between what is commercial and what is good. They quote that maxim "Nobody ever lost money underestimating the public's taste" and I think that's very wrongheaded. I like to believe the audience is actually intelligent, because it's made up of other people like yourself. — Douglas Adams

I've spent my whole life with people underestimating me. — Donna Shalala

H. L. Mencken once said that nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public. That is not true. I have come to believe that it pays to make all your layouts project a feeling of good taste, provided that you do it unobtrusively. An ugly layout suggests an ugly product. There are very few products which do not benefit from being given a first class ticket through life. — David Ogilvy

The secret of creativity is then to place yourself in situations where you've got to be creative, but this is done only when one doesn't know in advance that one will have to be creative. This, in turn, is so because we underestimate our creative resources; quite properly, we cannot believe in our creativity until we experience it; and since we thus necessarily underestimate our creative resources we do not consciously engage upon tasks which we know require such resources; hence the only way in which we can bring our creative resources into play is by similarly underestimating the difficulty of a task. — Albert O. Hirschman

No misfortune is worse than underestimating the enemy. Underestimating the enemy, I risk losing my treasure. — Laozi

Groups tend to believe their work is harder, more strategic, or just more valuable while underestimating those contributions from other groups. — Steven Sinofsky

It's not like I want to be friends with you now, Frankie. Don't even talk to me, I seriously can't deal with you.
I'm just writing to say I underestimated you. I significantly underestimated you. I don't actually think it is possible to overestimate you. Although you are not a nice person. — E. Lockhart

Don't make a career out of underestimating me." - Claire de Haven — James Ellroy

[People] are woefully underestimating this country and what it can achieve. — Boris Johnson

Just because I give you my all, doesn't mean I'm a pushover. Don't make the mistake of underestimating me. Push too hard and you'll see how strong I really am! — Karen Gibbs

The loss of any army is always caused by underestimating the enemy. Therefore gather information and watch the enemy carefully. — Zhuge Liang

There's no underestimating the intelligence of the American public. — H.L. Mencken

Overestimating the intelligence of the enemy is, if anything, more dangerous than underestimating it. — Neal Stephenson

On your life, underestimating the proclivities of finches is likely to lead to great internal hemorrhaging. — Charles Darwin

Don't ever make the mistake most New Yorkers do, of underestimating Chicago. They think it's only a postage stamp on a very large envelope, and they're the envelope. — Jeffrey Archer

The good thing about people underestimating models is that the bar is set so low, you tend to impress people more easily. — Cindy Crawford

More men are ruined by underestimating the value of money than by overestimating it. Let us, then, abandon the affectation of despising money, and frankly own its value. — Orison Swett Marden

I'm used to people not paying me a whole lot of attention and underestimating me and, frankly, for me a big challenge is to have people believe that I can be the president of the United States. — Carol Moseley Braun

I pity anyone who makes the mistake of underestimating you, Dr. Gibson."
"My lady, the sentiment is returned in full. — Lisa Kleypas

I'd never bought the idea that you don't lose money by underestimating the intelligence of the audience. Although perhaps I should add that I've never really made that much money. — John Lloyd

Okay." He popped everything into the fridge. "Now I just need to grab some things from upstairs."
"For the pie?"
"For you. Give me like...five minutes. And--" he flashed his toothiest grin "--take you clothes off."
I froze. "When you said you wanted lemon meringue pie and filthy sex, I didn't think you meant together."
"That's what you get for underestimating me. — Alexis Hall

A warrior of light who trusts too much in his intelligence will end up underestimating the power of his opponent. — Paulo Coelho

1995 government shutdown from GOP underestimating Clinton. — Newt Gingrich

I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. — Markus Zusak

But that is the danger of life sometimes, underestimating ourselves and our future. — Sarah Dalton

It would be especially tragic if the people who most cherish ideals of peace, who are most anxious for political cooperation on a wider than national scale, made the mistake of underestimating the pace of economic change in our modern world. — Lester B. Pearson

The most dangerous shortsightedness consists in underestimating the mediocre. — Georges Bernanos

there's a lot of intelligence out there being wasted by underestimating students' potential to develop. — Carol S. Dweck

I also argued before the war that the administration was underestimating Arab nationalism and Iraqi nationalism, that it was not going to be as easy to rule Iraq as they thought. — Juan Cole

The power of an idea is never to be underestimated. Many a thought has survived long after its host has ceased to be. It is the power of an idea that no shield can defend against, nor sword divide, nor poison infect. As such, we must aspire to create ideas, rather than preserve life. In a sense, this is how we achieve true immortality and live on past our time. — A.J. Darkholme

No one has ever gone broke underestimating the insecurities of the gay and lesbian consumer. — Dan Savage

Ours is a bourgeois civilization. I am not using this term in its Marxian sense. Chicken! In the vocabularies of modern art and religion it is bourgeois to consider that the universe was made for our safe use and to give us comfort, ease, and support. Light travels at a quarter of a million miles per second so that we can see to comb our hair or read in the paper that ham hocks are cheaper than yesterday. De Tocqueville considered the impulse toward well-being as one of the strongest impulses of a democratic society. He can't be blamed for underestimating the destructive powers generated by this same impulse. — Saul Bellow

We hold ourselves back not just out of fear of seeming too aggressive but also by underestimating our abilities. Ask a woman to explain why she's successful and she'll credit luck, hard work, and help from others. Ask a man the same question and he's likely to explain, or at least think, "C'mon, I'm awesome!"4 — Sheryl Sandberg

This is something we're very committed to, it's something that I think people are underestimating right now as they've seen some of the dot-com promises not come through. I think they're missing the fact that the basic technology is moving forward, the new platforms are here and this vision of the digital decade will be a reality. — Bill Gates

His father had told him time and again never to underestimate the power of something that could kill you. — C.J. Hill

I am far from underestimating the importance of dividends, but I rank dividends below human character. — Theodore Roosevelt

No one in this world, so far as I know - and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me - has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. — H.L. Mencken

I think anybody who doesn't think I'm smart enough to handle the job is underestimating. — George W. Bush

Don't make the mistake of underestimating your enemies. — Bohdi Sanders

Both me and Edgar are firm believers in never underestimating or talking down to an audience, and giving an audience something to do, to give them something which is entirely up to them to enter into the film and find these hidden things and whatever. — Simon Pegg

Happens to me all the time ... People are always underestimating my dumbness. — Janet Evanovich

A people who free themselves from foreign domination will be free culturally only if,
without complexes and without underestimating the importance of positive accretions from
oppressor and other cultures, they return to the upward paths of their own culture, which is
nourished by the living reality of its environment, and which negates both harmful influences
and any kind of subjection to foreign culture. Thus, it may be seen that if imperialist
domination has the vital need to practice cultural oppression, national liberation is necessarily
an act of culture — Amilcar Cabral

There has been so much underestimating of animal cognition that to perhaps overestimate it, as I probably do, is probably a healthy reaction. — Frans De Waal

This is a perverse thing, personally, but I would rather be in the cycle where people are underestimating us. It gives us latitude to go out and make big bets that excite and amaze people. — Mark Zuckerberg

I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I even simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant ... I AM HAUNTED BY HUMANS. — Markus Zusak

I am done underestimating [Donald] Trump and his appeal. — Christopher Michael Cillizza

It's funny to consider how important things like that felt to me then. Proving people wrong. Fighting stupidity. Wanting formal recognition. It took me a long time to learn that proving people wrong is purposeless, fighting stupidity is futile, and formal recognition prevents people from underestimating you - and thereby from ceding to you surprise and other tactical advantages. — Barry Eisler

Maybe love was no match for ice ... but Piper had used it to wake a metal dragon. Mortals did superhuman feats in the name of love all the time. Mothers lifted cars to save their children. And Piper was more than just a mortal. She was a demigod. A hero.
The ice melted on her blade. Her arm steamed under Khione's grip.
'Still underestimating me,' Piper told the goddess. 'You really need to work on that. — Rick Riordan

I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn't already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race-that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant. — Markus Zusak

My mistake was in underestimating the emotional force of a song you have already hear a thousand times. — Augusten Burroughs

You cannot commit the folly of underestimating the power of a mother. — Girdhar Joshi

I don't think there are enough words in the world that exist to express exactly just how much I love my son! He's right there in the front of my soul, he can turn me into an eagle, a lioness, a tigress, a swan! A goof or a queen! There's no underestimating just how much I love him; I surround him like the ocean surrounds the ships! I never wanted to change the world, until he came along and showed me that he deserves a better world to live in! — C. JoyBell C.

You'll have more than enough people underestimating you in your lifetime, Kyali Corwynall. You cannot afford to be one of them. — Amy Bai

I think there's been this long cycle of the big companies making a lot of money by underestimating people's intelligence and people are used to it now. So, they're so used to having their intelligence underestimated that, for most of them, it really isn't worth the bother of paying a little more attention to something that might hit them on a deeper level. But you can't really read people's minds. — J. Robbins

Those who say they give the public what it wants begin by underestimating public taste and end by debauching it. — T. S. Eliot

Nobody ever lost a dollar by underestimating the taste of the American public. — P.T. Barnum

To overestimate the originality of one's thoughts is perhaps a less serious defect than being unaware of their newness. There is a more pronounced lack of sensitivity in underestimating (ourselves and others) than in overestimating. — Eric Hoffer

We need to look to our laurels a bit with television in this country. I don't think enough risks are being taken in drama television in the U.K., and I think a lot of programme makers are underestimating the intelligence of the viewing public, basing it all on ratings. — Charles Dance

Climate change is real. Climate change is being substantially increased by humans and the carbon we put into the atmosphere. And it appears to be speeding up. If science has made any mistakes, science has been underestimating it. — James Balog

The generals have a saying: "Rather than make the first move it is better to wait and see. Rather than advance an inch it is better to retreat a yard." This is called going forward without advancing, pushing back without using weapons. There is no greater misfortune than underestimating your enemy. Underestimating your enemy means thinking that he is evil. Thus you destroy your three treasures and become an enemy yourself. When two great forces oppose each other, the victory will go to the one that knows how to yield. — Laozi

He's a complete fighter. He has some flaws, of course, but he has a good stand up game, good takedowns and a good ground game. He's a complete fighter, and that makes him dangerous. He hits hard, but I believe I can stop him. I believe I can finish this fight earlier. I'm not underestimating him, but I've learned a lot in my past fights. I have learned a lot in my fight against (Chris) Weidman, so it's likely that I will finish this fight before the fifth round. Whatever it takes. I'm training hard on my grappling skills and my striking, so I want to finish him with a knockout or a submission. — Lyoto Machida

The price tag you put on yourself decides your worth. Underestimating yourself will cost you dearly. — Apoorve Dubey