Quotes About Expertise

Our time is so specialised that we have people who know more and more or less and less.

Zsa Zsa Gabor is an expert housekeeper. Every time she gets divorced, she keeps the house.

Give away everything you know, one bite at a time.

I understand how every healthy child, every new road, puts a country on a better path, but instability and war will arise from time to time, and I'm not an expert on how you get out of those things.

In fact, the only way to remain creative over time--to not be undone by our expertise--is to experiment with ignorance, to stare at things we don't fully understand.

I remember having a little bit of a feeling of awe at how differently we looked at the world. It was very foreign to me that they had the ability to stand firm in the face of an expert opinion.

First time my master's in English literature ever proved useful.

Let specialists obsess about minutiae. Soros's motto was "Invest first, investigate later.

The people who are the best in the world specialize at getting really good at the questions they don't know.

A brilliant author or businesswoman or senator or software engineer is brilliant only in tiny bursts. The rest of the time, they're doing work that most any trained person could do.

Just about everything you learned in school about life is wrong, but the wrongest thing might very well be this: Being well rounded is the secret to success.

Depth of knowledge combined with good judgment is worth a lot. Depth

You really can't try to do everything, especially if you intend to be the best in the world.

Just about everything you learned in school about life is wrong, but the wrongest thing might very well be this: Being well rounded is the secret to success. When

It's insulting to call a professional talented. She's skilled, first and foremost. Many people have talent, but only a few care enough to show up fully, to earn their skill. Skill is rarer than talent. Skill is earned. Skill is available to anyone who cares enough.

people who are the best in the world specialize at getting really good at the questions they don't know. The people who skip the hard questions are in the majority, but they are not in demand.

The driving force that gets people to pay a specialist is that their disease is unpredictable or hard to diagnose. The reason we're here is to solve the hard problems.

If you want to be a superstar, then you need to find a field with a steep Dip—a barrier between those who try and those who succeed.

Expertise gives you enough insight to reinvent what everyone else assumes is the truth. Sure, it's possible to randomly challenge the conventions of your field and luckily find a breakthrough. It's far more likely, though, that you will design a great Web site or direct a powerful movie or lead a breakthrough product development if you understand the status quo better than anyone else. Beginner's luck is dramatically overrated. Emotional

Plenty of people are good at what you do. Very good at it. Perhaps as good at it as you are.

The future belongs to chefs, not to cooks or bottle washers. It's easy to buy a cookbook (filled with instructions to follow) but really hard to find a chef book.

Skill and attitude are essential. Authority is not.

The Dip is the difference between the easy "beginner" technique and the more useful "expert" approach in skiing or fashion design.

You've got on a white coat. (Ephani) Awesome cognitive powers you have there. (Alexion)