Expert Quotes From

Advice

A consultant solves other people's problems. I could never do that. I want to help other people solve their own problems.

- Charles Handy  (1932 - ) Irish-born British management educator and writer

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Advice

When was the last time someone praised you for 'taking advice well'? In the advice game, we all would rather be perceived as the one dispensing wisdom rather than seeking it.

- Mark McCormack  (1930 - ) U.S. sports agent, promoter, and lawyer.The 110% Solution, 1991.

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Age

On my retirement I became a consultant to the company—but nobody consulted me.

- Billy Butlin  (1899 - 1980) South African-born British entertainment entrepreneur. The Billy Butlin Story, 1982.

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Business

A consultant is a person who takes your money and annoys your employees while tirelessly searching for the best way to extend the consulting contract.

- Scott Adams  (1957 - ) U.S. Cartoonist. The Dilbert Principle, 1996.

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Business

Don't study the idea to death with experts and committees. Get on with it and see if it works.

- Ken Iverson  (1925 - ) U.S. industrialist Speech, February 5, 1996.

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Business

The consultant...offers the advantage of generally having had no firsthand experience in the matters of interest, thereby assuring a clear mind uncluttered by any of the facts.

- Norman R. Augustine  (1935 - ) U.S. Businessperson.Augustine's Laws, 1986.

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Experts

'Experts' are those who don't need to bother with elementary questions anymore—thus, they fail to 'bother' with the true sources of bottlenecks, buried deep in the habitual routines of the firm, labelled 'we've always done it that way.

- Tom Peters  (1942 - ) U.S. management consultant and author. Thriving on Chaos, 1987.

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Experts

SPECIALIST, n. One who knows everything about something and nothing about anything else.

- Ambrose Bierce  (1842 - 1914) U.S. writer and journalist.The Devil's Dictionary, 1911.

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Experts

An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today.

- Laurence J. Peter  (1919 - 1990) Canadian writer

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Experts

An expert is a man who has stopped thinking. Why should he think? He is an expert.

- Attributed to Frank Lloyd Wright  (1867 - 1959) U.S. architect

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Experts

An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field.

- Attributed to Niels Bohr  (1885 - 1962) Danish physicist

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Experts

An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject, and how to avoid them.

- Werner Heisenberg  (1901 - 1976) German physicist.Physics and Beyond, 1971.

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Experts

Consultant specialists are a degree more remote (like bishops!); and therefore (again like bishops) they need a double dose of grace to keep them sensitive to the personal and the pastoral.

- Geoffrey Fisher  (1887 - 1972) British archbishop Lancet, 1949.

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Experts

One who limits himself to his chosen mode of ignorance.

- Attributed to Elbert Hubbard  (1856 - 1915) U.S. writer, printer, and editor. Definition of an expert.

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Experts

The specialist is a man who fears the other subjects.

- Martin H. Fischer  (1879 - 1962) German-born U.S. physician and author

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Experts

The trouble with specialists is that they tend to think in grooves.

- Elaine Morgan  (1920 - ) British writer and educator. The Descent of Woman, 1972.

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Experts

We do not know if there is a collective noun for experts, but 'an ascendancy' could be an apt one for the twenty-first century.

- Godfrey Golzen  (1930 - ) British business writer Smart Moves, 1990."An Ascendancy of Experts” (co-written with Andrew Garner)

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Experts

The foundation of the government of a nation must be built upon the rights of the people, but the administration must be entrusted to experts.

- Sun Yat-sen  (1866 - 1925) Chinese revolutionary and nationalist leader .The Three Principles of the People, 1953. (Frank W. Price)

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Humankind

No man can be a pure specialist without being in the strict sense an idiot.

- Attributed to George Bernard Shaw  (1856 - 1950) Irish playwright

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Knowledge

Specialist—A man who knows more and more about less and less.

- William J. Mayo  (1861 - 1939) U.S. Physician.Also attributed to Nicholas Butler. Modern Hospital, September 1939.

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Knowledge

There is no true expertise in the humanities without knowing all of the humanities. Art is a vast, ancient interconnected web-work, a fabricated tradition. Over-concentration on any one point is a distortion.

- Camille Paglia  (1947 - ) U.S. academic and author .The New York Times, May 5, 1991, Book review

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Management

There's this tendency to say to people: 'I want you to get good results. But I also want to review you along the way, I want you to tell me how you're getting those results and I want to review all these processes'...it turns experts into novices.

- Jeffrey Pfeffer  (1946 - ) U.S. management writer. Strategy and Business, 1998, Interview (Joel Kurtzman)

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Meetings

I come from an environment where, if you see a snake, you kill it. At General Motors, if you see a snake, the first thing you do is hire a consultant on snakes. Then, you spend a year talking about snakes.

- Attributed to H. Ross Perot  (1930 - ) U.S. business executive, politician, and philanthropist

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Proverbs

One fool is an expert on the other.

- Anonymous.  Yiddish proverb.

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Proverbs

Smooth seas do not make skilful sailors.

- Anonymous. African (Swahili) proverb.

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Proverbs

Two experts are never on good terms.

- Anonymous. African (Shona) proverb.

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Proverbs

The expert rider is the man on the horse.

- Anonymous . African (Hausa) proverb.

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