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An expert has knowledge, experience and skill

• Expert: A person who is very knowledgeable about or skilful in a particular area. Cambridge Dictionary
• Expert: A person with a high level of knowledge or skill relating to a particular subject or activity.Cambridge Dictionary
• Expert: Having or showing special skill or knowledge because of what you have been taught or what you have experienced. Merriam Webster
• Specialisation,  Mastery,  Skill,  Excellence,  Talent

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An expert knows how to avoid the worst mistakes

• 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
• An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field. Niels Bohr
• Mistakes

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An expert knows what to pay attention to and what to ignore

• An expert is someone who has succeeded in making decisions and judgements simpler through knowing what to pay attention to and what to ignore. Edward de Bono
• Attention

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To become an expert, you need to focus your energies on a specific field

• The most eminent creators are consistently those who have immersed themselves utterly in their chosen field, have devoted their lives to it, amassed tremendous knowledge of it, and continually pushed themselves to the front of it. Geoff Colvin
• Gather in your resources, rally all your faculties, marshal all your energies, focus all your capacities upon mastery of at least one field of endeavor. John Haggai
• One reason so few of us achieve what we truly want is that we never direct our focus; we never concentrate our power. Most people dabble their way through life, never deciding to master anything in particular. Tony Robbins
• People hardly ever reach an elite level in more than a single domain of activity. Paul Fletovich
• Very narrow areas of expertise can be very productive. Develop your own profile. Develop your own niche. Leigh Steinberg
• We are all experts in our own little niches. Alex Trebek
• Focus

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Expertise requires investing in knowledge

• Read an hour every day in your chosen field. This works out to about one book per week, 50 books per year, and will guarantee your success. Brian Tracy
• An investment in knowledge pays the best interest. Benjamin Franklin
• Knowledge

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Expertise requires hard work and persistent practice, often over many years

• Try, try, try, and keep on trying is the rule that must be followed to become an expert in anything. Clement Stone
• The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert—in anything. Daniel Levitin
• In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours. Malcolm Gladwell
• Observe, record, tabulate, communicate. Use your five senses. . . . Learn to see, learn to hear, learn to feel, learn to smell, and know that by practice alone you can become expert. William Osler
• The expert at anything was once a beginner.
• Becoming an expert in almost anything requires literally years of work. People will do this only if they have some initial success, enjoy the work, and are supported by the social climate. Expertise is not solely a cognitive affair. Earl Hunt
• Hard work,  Diligence

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Some say it is better to be an expert on a few things than to know many things superficially

• For the individual, too, it is better to know a few things well, or preferably one thing exceptionally well, than it is to know many things superficially. Richard Koch
• Jack of all trades, master of none
• It is he who specializes who survives and thrives.

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Others believe it is better to be a generalist than an expert or specialist

• Since we cannot know all there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything. Blaise Pascal
• It is entirely possible to be a jack of all trades, master of many. How? Specialists overestimate the time needed to “master” a skill and confuse “master” with “perfect.” Tim Ferriss
• In a world of dogmatic specialists, it’s the generalist who ends up running the show. Tim Ferriss
• Diversity of intellectual playgrounds breeds confidence instead of fear of the unknown. Tim Ferriss
• The specialist who imprisons himself in self-inflicted one-dimensionality — pursuing an impossible perfection — spends decades stagnant or making imperceptible incremental improvements while the curious generalist consistently measures improvement in quantum leaps. It is only the latter who enjoys the process of pursuing excellence. Tim Ferriss
• The more the world is specialized the more it will be run by generalists. Marcel Masse
• A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. Robert A. Heinlein

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Whatever the truth, it’s important to look for ideas outside your area of expertise if you want to be creative

• To be creative, be an explorer and search for ideas outside your area. Looking for good ideas is like prospecting for gold.  If you look in the same old places, you’ll find tapped out veins.  Roger von Oech
• The creative person wants to be a know-it-all. He wants to know about all kinds of things: ancient history, nineteenth- century mathematics, current manufacturing techniques, flower arranging, and hog futures. Because he never knows when these ideas might come together to form a new idea. It may happen six minutes later or six months, or six years down the road. But he has faith that it will happen. Carl Ally
• Creativity

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Some argue that becoming an expert means knowing more and more about less and less

• An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less. Nicholas M. Butler
• Every man gets a narrower and narrower field of knowledge in which he must be an expert in order to compete with other people. The specialist knows more and more about less and less and finally knows everything about nothing. Michael Garrett Marino
• The expert knows more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
• Specialized meaninglessness has come to be regarded, in certain circles, as a kind of hall-mark of true science. Aldous Huxley
• Ignorance

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Others are cynical about just how much some experts know

• Expert: a man who makes three correct guesses consecutively. Laurence J. Peter
• An expert is somebody who is more than 50 miles from home, has no responsibility for implementing the advice he gives, and shows slides. Edwin Meese III quotes
• An expert is an ordinary fella away from home. Bum Phillips

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Others question the judgement and common sense of experts

• An expert is a person who avoids small error as he sweeps on to the grand fallacy. Benjamin Stolberg
• Experts often possess more data than judgment. Colin Powell
• Expert: Someone who brings confusion to simplicity. Gregory Nunn
• No man can be a pure specialist without being in the strict sense an idiot. George Bernard Shaw
• There is nothing so stupid as an educated man, if you get him off the thing he was educated in. Will Rogers
• Common sense

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As an expert, it’s especially important to not stop thinking and to remain open to new possibilities

• An expert is a man who has stopped thinking – he knows! Frank Lloyd Wright
• Incestuous, homogeneous fiefdoms of self-proclaimed expertise are always rank-closing and mutually self- defending, above all else. Glenn Greenwald
• You must continue to gain expertise but avoid thinking like an expert. Denis Waitley
• In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few. Shunryu Suzuki
• Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. Bertrand Russell
• Possibility

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Even as an expert, it’s crucial to keep learning

• Never become so much of an expert that you stop gaining expertise. View life as a continuous learning experience. Denis Waitley
• Education is a lifelong experience. Experience is a lifelong education. Education plus experience equals expertise. Michael Bugeja
• Learning

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Don’t always believe an expert who says it can’t be done

• If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can’t be done. Peter Ustinov
• Always listen to experts. They’ll tell you what can’t be done and why. Then do it. Robert Heinlein

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• Sometimes it takes an expert to point out the obvious. Scott Allen
• An expert knows all the answers — if you ask the right questions.
• A genuine expert can always foretell a thing that is 500 years away easier than he can a thing that’s only 500 seconds off. Mark Twain
• It is, after all, the responsibility of the expert to operate the familiar and that of the leader to transcend it. Henry Kissinger
• My definition of an expert in any field is a person who knows enough about what’s really going on to be scared. J. Plauger
• When we become expert in something, our tastes grow more esoteric and complex. Malcolm Gladwell

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Humorous definitions

• Expert: An ordinary guy 50 miles from home.
• Expert: A man who is seldom in doubt but often in error.
• Expert: A man who tells you a simple thing in a confused way in such a fashion as to make you think the confusion is your own fault.
• Expert: A person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.
• Expert: A person who knows enough to complicate simple matters.
• Expert: An ordinary man away from home giving advice. Oscar Wilde
• Expert: Any person who has tried and failed – and can tell you why.
• Expert: One who tells you what’s going to happen tomorrow – then tells you why it didn’t.
• Expert: Someone who brings confusion to simplicity. Gregory Nunn
• An expert is anyone from out of town. Mars’s Rule
• An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing. Weber’s Definition
• An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less. Nicholas Murray Butler
• An expert is someone called in at the last minute to share the blame. Sam Ewing
• An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today. Laurence J. Peter
• An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while sweeping on to the grand fallacy. Weinberg’s Corollary
• A sports expert is the guy who writes the best alibis for being wrong.

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More humorous quotes

• A lot of fellows nowadays have a B. A., M. D., or Ph. D. Unfortunately, they don’t have a J. O. B. Fats Domino
• An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field. Niels Bohr
• An expert really doesn’t know any more than you do. He is merely better organized and has slides. Van Oech’s Law
• Being an expert on insanity doesn’t make you sane.
• Consultants are people who borrow your watch and tell you what time it is, and then walk off with the watch. Robert  Townsend
• Efficiency Expert: A man smart enough to tell you how to run your business and too smart to start his own.
• I am an expert of electricity; my father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison. C. Fields
• I’m not an expert on masturbation but I hold my own. Stewart Francis
• If the world should blow itself up the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can’t be done. Peter Ustinov
• If you see me talking to myself, don’t get alarmed. I’m getting expert advice.
• Make three correct guesses consecutively and you will establish a reputation as an expert. Laurence J. Peter
• Sometimes I talk to myself. I like to get advice from an expert.
• Sometimes I think the so-called experts actually ARE experts. Jack Handey
• Statistics: The only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions. Evan Esar
• The person with the least expertise has the most opinions. Gioia’s Theory
• To spot the expert pick the one who predicts the job will take the longest and cost the most. Warren’s Rule
• Users: Computer users are divided into three types: Novice users: people who are afraid that simply pressing a key might break their computer. Intermediate users: people who don’t know how to fix their computer after they’ve just pressed a key that broke it. Expert users: people who break other people’s computers.
• Whenever an expert is confounded by a seemingly insoluble problem the solution is immediately obvious to the first unqualified person who happens along.
• Where facts are few experts are many. Donald R. Gannon
• I have tried to know absolutely nothing about a great many things and I have succeeded fairly well. Robert Benchley

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