Jasper Fforde Quotes

There are as many opinions as there are experts.

For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert, but for every fact there is not necessarily an equal and opposite fact.

What my research has shown me is that experts tend on the whole to form very rigid camps; that within these camps, a dominant perspective emerges that often silences opposition; that experts move with the prevailing winds, often hero-worshipping their own gurus.

There are two sides to every question, exactly opposite to each other.

I met Edward Teller. Everything he believed in and stood for was antithetical to what I believed in and stood for. I like running into that in life. I like extreme points of view, a level of commitment - and I certainly love mastery.

For I am well aware that scarcely a single point is discussed in this volume on which facts cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I have arrived. A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.

It is not surprising that honest and well-informed experts can disagree about facts. But beyond the disagreement about facts, there is another deeper disagreement about values.

The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opponents than from his fervent supporters. For his supporters will push him to disaster unless his opponents show him where the dangers are. So if he is wise he will often pray to be delivered from his friends, because they will ruin him. But though it hurts, he ought also to pray never to be left without opponents; for they keep him on the path of reason and good sense.

When two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly half way between. It is possible for one side simply to be wrong.

Let’s never forget that whatever brilliant ideas you have or hear, that the opposite may also be true.

Never accept an expert's opinion if it violates your own because the experts can change their minds.

Protagoras asserted that there are two sides to every question, exactly opposite to each other.

Pundits forecast not because they know, but because they are asked.

Was it animal pee or human pee? Someone asked. How would I know? What, am I an expert in the study of pee?

Don't indulge your theories, think of your children and listen to the experts.

It's well known there's always two sides, if no more.

Just like I described in health care, yeah, somebody comes in, they got new ideas, maybe ideas that are completely opposite of my ideas. Maybe some of it goes, maybe some of that progress goes back. Maybe they think of some things we didn't think of, and so in some other areas - we can learn something.

If an outsider perceives 'something wrong' with a core scientific model, the humble and justified response of that curious outsider should be to ask 'what mistake am I making?' before assuming 100% of the experts are wrong.

You may be wrong, but you may be right.

there is a pernicious tendency to make the opinions of the expert prevail by crowd methods, to rush the people instead of educating them.

To appreciate a work of art, is it okay to like what you like, and the heck with the art critics and experts? Absolutely.

When I went on Fox News people asked me why I was going on those shows. Are you kidding? You have to go, especially to people you don't agree with.

What one approves , another scorns, And thus his nature each discloses: You find the rosebush full of thorns, I find the thornbush full of roses.

Republicans can also point to an alternate path. They can draw upon genuine experts to explain what should be done.