Jimmy Wales Quotes

The scientist, like the magician, possesses secrets. A secret — expertise — is somehow perceived as antidemocratic, and therefore ought to be unnatural

It ticks me no end when people get ticked off at those of us who comment audibly and in print on events and problems. That's what we're paid for. Why clutter up your mind with a bunch of facts that might inhibit the solve-ability of us who must express an opinion? After all, all the world cries out for a solution to its problems, and we supply them right and left. Come to think of it, it's we who should be giving our deplorers and detractors the blast; because 99% of the time they don't do as we say.

A lot of people really like to answer questions, and they really enjoy sharing their knowledge. Especially people who have valuable knowledge.

Bloggers create kind of a popularity. But they are not the experts, and we have to understand that.

A leading authority is anyone who has guessed right more than once.

At least believe this many humans, who are interested obviously in this topic. Many of them visited me after lectures and meetings, in hope that I can give concrete answers to their questions. For it was clear: If that does not know it, who is to then know it?

In our "age of the expert" the expert has his constituency — those who have a vested interest in commonly held opinions; elaborating and defining the consensus at a high level has, after all, made him an expert.

There is no democracy in physics. We can't say that some second-rate guy has as much right to opinion as Fermi.

We deeply want to be led by people who know what they're doing and who don't have to think about it too much.

I think that part of the growing popularity of the New Urbanism is not simply because it is so rational, and not simply because people care so much about community or even understand it, or the relation of sprawl to the ruination of the natural world. But they just don't like what is around. And they will be ruthless with it.

Some people still think knowledge is power.

Ten geographers who think the world is flat will tend to reinforce each other's errors ... Only a sailor can set them straight.

People are difficult to govern because they have too much knowledge.

You must have the confidence to override people with more credentials than you whose cognition is impaired by incentive-caused bias or some similar psychological force that is obviously present. But there are also cases where you have to recognize that you have no wisdom to add - and that your best course is to trust some expert.

I don't like Larry Merchant. He thinks he knows everything about a sport that he was never in. He walks around with papers and studies what he writes, he just pisses you off.

Just because somebody drops in on you from another dimension, don't assume they're wiser than you about anything at all, or that they can do anything better than you can do yourself. Discarnate or mortal, what matters about people is what they know.

I don't want to tell people what to think. I'm the least qualified person in the world for that. If I'd go around pretending to be the expert on everything, I'd become Dan Brown, and I don't understand that. We all do our research if we're good writers, and we all work hard to get it right, but that doesn't mean we're experts in the field. The best we can do is challenge people to learn the facts themselves.

I think I'm a reporter's editor. Being a good reporter is a specific skill, one I admire and don't possess myself - I appreciate people who know how to ask the right questions, who are excellent researchers, who know how to assemble information, and I enjoy working with them to shape their information into an article. Good reporters tend to be receptive to editing, and to a more collaborative form of writing in general, and you always end up learning more from how they work than you expect you will.

I think it's really nice to have an authenticity, it's a huge source for us to be able to lean on people who have that knowledge.

I didn't think of myself as importing, I thought it was more interesting to write about things people didn't know about than what they did. When I became aware that I was in fact "importing", I stopped doing it.

I think that you can't choose leadership. You have to deal with the leadership that the people respond to.

Mama was always saying I was a brain snob, that I didn't like people who didn't think. I didn't know if that was snobby. Who wanted to walk around explaining everything to people all the time?

I think if I was ever really going to be more serious about writing I'd have to try and find some way to do it with other people. I do find the silence kind of eerie.

I think it is important that people who are perceived as liberals not be afraid of talking about moral and community values.

What I think is dreadful about art is the way it's related to the money afterward. Not when you do it... But after that, it's like 5,000 rich people have access to it. A movie, even though it can be a bad movie or a good movie, it is more democratic. The people who buy my films, the people who buy my installations it's sometimes a foundation or a museum. When it's a foundation, it's related to very, very, very rich people - who are your enemies! Your enemies are feeding you. But you're not meeting them. So it's a very strange thing.