A Quote by Philip Kitcher

The expert is a midwife. The expert is not someone who has the authority to pronounce the last word on the subject.

Philip Kitcher

Quote Topics

Authority Expert Last Midwife Pronounce Someone Subject Word

Quote Author

Philip Kitcher
Born: February 20, 1947

It was inevitable that in the proliferation of media and media channels and the natural debasing of authority that comes when you make an expert of someone who knows a few things and can be on television and you put the word "expert" underneath them, that is to say me, then eventually the very concept of expertise itself would become meaningless.

John Hodgman

Many people will tell you that an expert is someone who knows a great deal about the subject. To this I would object that one can never know much about any subject. I would much prefer the following definition: an expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in the subject, and how to avoid them.

Werner Heisenberg

On the subject of wild mushrooms, it is easy to tell who is an expert and who is not: The expert is the one who is still alive.

Donal Henahan

What's an expert? I read somewhere, that the more a man knows, the more he knows, he doesn't know. So I suppose one definition of an expert would be someone who doesn't admit out loud that he knows enough about a subject to know he doesn't really know how much.

Malcolm Forbes

while the executive should give every possible value to the information of the specialist, no executive should abdicate thinking on any subject because of the expert. The expert's information or opinion should not be allowed automatically to become a decision. On the other hand, full recognition should be given to the part the expert plays in decision making.

Mary Parker Follett

My success has depended wholly on putting things over on people, so I'm not sure that I'm that great a role model. I am, however, an expert on pretending to be an expert on pretending to be an expert.

Meryl Streep

I'm an expert in hookers. I'm an expert in doormats. I'm an expert in victims. They were the best parts. And when I woke up--sociologically, politically, and creatively--I could no longer take those parts and look in the mirror.

Shirley MacLaine

a little of the ready reliance on the expert comes from the desire to waive responsibillity, comes from the endless evasion of life instead of an honest facing of it. The expert is to many what the priest is, someone who knows absolutely and can tell us what to do. The king, the priest, the expert, have one after the other had our allegiance, but so far as we put any of them in the place of ourselves, we have not a sound society and neither individual nor general progress.

Mary Parker Follett

I never thought I'd be an expert at sword fighting, I never thought I'd be an expert in protein powders - I'm close to being an expert in both. It's great!

Liam McIntyre

An actor is an expert at being someone else. A speaker is an expert at being themselves.

Olivia

In attempting to explain F For Fake's state-side failure, it has occurred to me that perhaps the subject matter was at least partially to blame, and that this country is so blissfully enslaved by the notion of the special sanctity of the expert that an overtly anti-expert film was bound to go too much against the national grain.

Orson Welles

Select a subject that interests you and make an effort to become an expert in that field. I promise you, if you make the effort, and you become an expert, you will have a wonderful career.