Michel de Montaigne Quotes

Man cannot live by incompetence alone.

No one, however smart, however well educated … is the suppository of all wisdom.

Knowledge and ability were tools, not things to show off.

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.

I'm not a great player, but I'm a damn good one.

He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.

Confidence comes from knowing what you're doing. If you are prepared for something, you usually do it. If not, you usually fall flat on your face.

I've never been fast, but I can move well enough to do what I need to do.

Experience is everything in this league.

Age is irrelevant. Experience is relevant.

There are roles that I can't do.

Of all the human qualities, the one I admire the most is competence. A tailor who is really able to cut and fit a coat seems to me an admirable man, and by the same token a university professor who knows little or nothing of the thing he presumes to teach seems to me to be a fraud and a rascal.

Authority does not equal competency.

If being smart is what you say it is, I will remain a fool my entire life.

Having only wisdom and talent is the lowest tier of usefulness.

The older I get the more I admire and crave competence, just simple competence, in any field from adultery to zoology.

Knowledge must become capability.

Timidity betrays want of powers, and audacity a want of skill. There are, indeed, two things, knowledge and opinion, of which the one makes its possessor really to know, the other to be ignorant.

Everybody knows something, and nobody knows everything.

Sufficiency's enough for men of sense.

There is a difference between people who are educated and people who are smart.

The world cares very little about what a man or woman knows; it is what the man or woman is able to do that counts.

The body must be credited with an immense fund of know-how.

The most confident critics are generally those who know the least about the matter criticized.

Knowledge gropes but meets not Wisdom's face.