Misguided Confidence Quotes

The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.

No, I don't think you're paranoid. I think you're the opposite of paranoid. I think you walk around with the insane delusion that people like you.

A man who claims to be fearless is an idiot or a liar.

Because I'd done 30 plays or so at Oxford, I thought that I was an actress anyway because that's what I was doing!

Logic is a system whereby one may go wrong with confidence.

He is also wary of people who think they know the path.

The folly of mistaking oneself for an oracle is built right into us.

I used to think that growing up in New York made me ready for everything - for everything. Before I really got a chance to travel, I thought that I was better prepared for the world because I was from New York.

Inexperienced girls flatter themselves with the notion that it is in their power to make a man happy.

Johnny English is someone who really means well it's just that he's not as good as he thinks he is, and I think that maybe that's the British male in a nutshell.

A man often believes himself leader when he is led; as his mind endeavors to reach one goal, his heart insensibly drags him towards another.

How many times had those awful words - "I know what I'm doing" - been uttered throughout history as prelude to disaster?

People have little idea, by and large, of the investment world. They are convinced they have an advantage.

The promotion of "self-esteem" in our schools has been so successful that people feel free to spout off about all sorts of things - and see no reason why their opinions should not be taken as seriously as the views of people who actually know what they are talking about.

I had long since insisted upon interpreting the things that Fate forced me to do as victories of my own will and intelligence, and now this bad habit had grown into a sort of frenzied arrogance. In the nature of what I was calling my intelligence there was a touch of something illegitimate, a touch of the sham pretender who has been placed on the throne by some freak chance. This dolt of a usurper could not foresee the revenge that would inevitably be wreaked upon his stupid despotism.

The saying that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing is, to my mind, a very dangerous adage. If knowledge is real and genuine, I do not believe that it is other than a very valuable posession, however infinitesimal its quantity may be. Indeed, if a little knowledge is dangerous, where is a man who has so much as to be out of danger?

Do not believe just because you want to believe.

You all have a relative who is an expert even though they really don't know what they're talking about.

It quite often happens that the old man is subject to the delusion of a great moral renewal and rebirth, and from this experience he passes judgments on the work and course of his life, as if he had only now become clear-sighted; and yet the inspiration behind this feeling of well-being and these confident judgements is not wisdom, but weariness .

How often have I not heard a perfectly intelligent female says, in the tone of one clinching an argument, 'Edgar says -- ' And all the time you are perfectly aware that Edgar is a perfect fool.