Quotes & Sayings About Underestimating Things

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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