Recently a friend questioned something I blogged, saying “But, you’re the expert.” Ummm…No. The quotations below reflect my thoughts on being an expert, or others’ claims to be such.  My favorites?  Mena Grabowski Trott, Annie Lennox, and Paul Newman ( Yeah…Well…).

I talk about myself. That’s what I am. I’m a blogger. I have always decided that I was going to be an expert on one thing, and I am an expert on this person, and so I write about it.  – Mena Grabowski Trott

Everybody is an expert on one thing – that’s what I learned in my high school journalism class – and that’s, of course, his own life. And everybody deserves to live and have his story told.  – William T. Vollmann

The top experts in the world are ardent students. The day you stop learning, you’re definitely not an expert. – Brendon Burchard

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. – Malcolm Forbes

I’d like people to remember me for a diligent expert workman. I think a poet is a workman. I think Shakespeare was a workman. And God’s a workman. I don’t think there’s anything better than a workman. – Laurence Olivier

As a freelance writer, I’d be asked to become an expert for various magazines on any subject, whether food or wine or history or the life span of veterinarians. I was completely unschooled in any of these things. – John Hodgman

Please don’t ask me for the actual answer to anything, because I don’t have it. Because all I do is look at stuff and ask questions. What can I say? I just think the world’s barking mad. Look, I’m not an expert. I’m just an ordinary person. – Annie Lennox

Who’s to say who’s an expert? – Paul Newman