Top 100 Overestimate Quotes
#1. When you're leading, you're generally trying to lead change, and I think it was Roy Amara, who said about technology, "We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run." And I think the same applies to change within an organization.
Harry West
#2. We overestimate the event and underestimate the process. Every fulfilled dream occurred because of dedication to the process.
John C. Maxwell
#3. In normal life we hardly realize how much more we receive than we give, and life cannot be rich without such gratitude. It is so easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements compared with what we owe to the help of others.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#4. Don't overestimate everyone else and underestimate yourself
Tanya Burr
#5. We often overestimate what we can do in a day, but underestimate what we can do in a year.
Glen Smith
#6. The general tendency to overestimate the probability of conjunctive events leads to unwarranted optimism in the evaluation of the likelihood that a plan will succeed or that a project will be completed on time.
Daniel Kahneman
#7. It would hardly be possible to exaggerate man's wretchedness if it were not so easy to overestimate his sensibility
George Santayana
#8. One can hardly overestimate people's need to talk about themselves and to be listened to.
Erich Fromm
#9. How do people make the judgments and how do they assign decision weights? We start from two simple answers, then qualify them. Here are the oversimplified answers: People overestimate the probabilities of unlikely events. People overweight unlikely events in their decisions.
Daniel Kahneman
#10. It's hard to avoid 'unconscious overclaiming.' In unconscious overclaiming, we unconsciously overestimate our contributions relative to others. This makes sense, because we're far more aware of what we do than what other people do. Also, we tend to do the work that we value.
Gretchen Rubin
#11. People overestimate what they can accomplish in the near term and underestimate what they can accomplish in the long term.
David House
#12. We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don't let yourself be lulled into inaction.
Bill Gates
#13. Dunning-Kruger effect: the tendency for some people to substantially overestimate their abilities. The less competent people are, the more they overestimate their abilities - which makes a strange kind of sense.
Anonymous
#14. People often overestimate what they can reasonably achieve in a year. But they vastly underestimate what they can achieve in 5 years.
Steve Pavlina
#15. One is apt to overestimate beauty when it is rare.
Mark Twain
#16. We underestimate God and we overestimate evil. We don't see what God is doing and conclude that he is doing nothing. We see everything that evil is doing and think it is in control of everyone.
Eugene H. Peterson
#17. I wouldn't overestimate the importance of my popularity in the country and abroad but at the end of the day it's not as important because I believe that my presence here could make some difference and it could encourage people.
Garry Kasparov
#18. Unfortunately, we generally find it difficult to assess very small probabilities. We typically overestimate them (thinking the events more likely than they are) and underestimate very high probabilities.
David J. Hand
#19. Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.
H.L. Mencken
#20. The biologists have essentially been pushed aside. Al Gore's just an opportunist. The person who is really responsible for this overestimate of global warming is Jim Hansen. He consistently exaggerates all the dangers.
Freeman Dyson
#21. People always overestimate how complex business is. This isn't rocket science. We've chosen one of the world's simplest professions.
Jack Welch
#22. We can not overestimate the fervent love of liberty, the intelligent courage, and the sum of common sense with which our fathers made the great experiment of self-government.
James A. Garfield
#23. You can concede to an opponent something he hasn't earned. It's one thing to underestimate an opponent. But maybe the worst thing is to overestimate. You always play your strengths. But that doesn't mean you become predictable.
Chuck Knox
#24. You shouldn't underestimate an enemy, but it is just as fatal to overestimate him.
George S. Patton
#25. It would be hard for me to overestimate the importance of reading. Nothing can expand the mind and heart like the magic al world of books. ... Our libraries are an essential resource for our children, our communities, and our future.
Danielle Steel
#26. As John Maxwell has written, "You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything."9
Greg McKeown
#27. Professed authors who overestimate their vocation are too full of themselves to be agreeable companions. The demands of their egotism are inveterate.
Henry Theodore Tuckerman
#28. God does not give us more than we can handle, I am told but I wonder if God doesn't overestimate me just a little. Or perhaps, and this is likely, I underestimate God.
Julia Cameron
#29. You can't overestimate the need to plan and prepare. In most of the mistakes I've made, there has been this common theme of inadequate planning beforehand. You really can't over-prepare in business!
Chris Corrigan
#30. Human communication and literature are all made of words; thus, it's hard to overestimate their unbelievable power.
Sahara Sanders
#31. Children often overestimate their importance in the parent's life
Altaf Tyrewala
#32. Most people overestimate risk, failure and danger and underestimate the value of being curious.
Deepak Chopra
#34. There has been so much underestimating of animal cognition that to perhaps overestimate it, as I probably do, is probably a healthy reaction.
Frans De Waal
#35. Don't underestimate your opponent, but don't overestimate them, either.
Nancy Pelosi
#36. To overestimate the originality of one's thoughts is perhaps a less serious defect than being unaware of their newness. There is a more pronounced lack of sensitivity in underestimating (ourselves and others) than in overestimating.
Eric Hoffer
#37. Most of us overestimate what we can accomplish in two years, but we underestimate what we can accomplish in ten years.
Mark Batterson
#38. Lenin was always prone to overestimate the physical danger to himself: in this respect he was something of a coward.
Orlando Figes
#39. THE MISCONCEPTION: You calculate what is risky or rewarding and always choose to maximize gains while minimizing losses. THE TRUTH: You depend on emotions to tell you if something is good or bad, greatly overestimate rewards, and tend to stick to your first impressions.
David McRaney
#40. Sam: "You - you greatly overestimate my self-control."
Grace: "I'm not looking for self-control.
Maggie Stiefvater
#41. We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.
Roy Amara
#42. They imply that a region of space the size of a pea would be stretched larger than the observable universe in a time interval so short that the blink of an eye would overestimate it by a factor larger than a million billion billion billion.
Brian Greene
#43. You always overestimate what you can get done in a year and underestimate what you can get done in 10 years.
Bill Gates
#44. Never underestimate your power to change yourself; never overestimate your power to change others.
Wayne W. Dyer
#45. Most of us make two basic errors with respect to intelligence: 1. We underestimate our own brainpower. 2. We overestimate the other fellow's brainpower.
David J. Schwartz
#46. (J)ust as we tend to underestimate the role of luck in life in general, we tend to overestimate it in games of chance.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
#47. We systematically overestimate the value of access to information and underestimate the value of access to each other.
Clay Shirky
#49. I can't overestimate the importance of accepting ourselves exactly as we are right now, not as we wish we were or think we ought to be.
Pema Chodron
#50. It is also true that the less competent a person is in a given domain, the more he will tend to overestimate his abilities. This often produces an ugly marriage of confidence and ignorance that is very difficult to correct for.
Sam Harris
#51. It's hard to overestimate the teenage appetite for high drama ...
David Nicholls
#52. Once you have mastered time, you will understand how true it is that most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a year - and underestimate what they can achieve in a decade!
Tony Robbins
#53. It is very easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements in comparison with what we owe others.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#54. Success treads on the heels of every right effort; and though it is possible to overestimate success to the extent of almost deifying it, as is sometimes done, still in any worthy pursuit it is meritorious.
Samuel Smiles
#55. The climate-studies people who work with models always tend to overestimate their models. They come to believe models are real and forget they are only models.
Freeman Dyson
#56. The truth about change is that we tend to overestimate its speed while underestimating its reach.
Jeffrey J. Selingo
#57. Under bad manners, as under graver faults, lies very commonly an overestimate of our special individuality, as distinguished from our generic humanity.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#58. We are prone to overestimate how much we understand about the world and to underestimate the role of chance in events.
Daniel Kahneman
#59. I think you overestimate the maturity of adults, he wrote me in his final letter, a letter he sent only after I'd broken down and written him first, after a year of silence.
Maggie Nelson
#60. Here were two undeniable truths in the Realms: It was very easy to overestimate a drow and even easier to underestimate a dwarf.
R.A. Salvatore
#61. You can't overestimate the importance of psychology in chess, and as much as some players try to downplay it, I believe that winning requires a constant and strong psychology not just at the board but in every aspect of your life.
Garry Kasparov
#62. People often overestimate what will happen in the next two years and underestimate what will happen in ten.
Bill Gates
#63. we tend to overestimate what we can accomplish in a year.
Mark Batterson
#64. Words in books can remind us of truth, and help awaken us to it. But in themselves, words are just paint and writers are just painters ... Let us not overestimate the power of any form of literature.
David James Duncan
#65. We overestimate the power of people who become cogs in giant organizations. The fact that they become cogs actually limits what they can do ... There's something very corrupting that happens to people who think they're going to work from inside a corrupt system.
Howard Zinn
#66. If you are insecure, guess what? The rest of the world is, too. Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think.
Timothy Ferriss
#67. It's almost impossible to overestimate the unimportance of most things.
John Logue
#68. Humans are terrible at predicting the future. We really overestimate what we can do in the short term and underestimate what we can do in the long term ... If we can glimpse even a couple of years into the future, even that's difficult to do.
Bill Maris
#69. One cannot overestimate the power of a good rancorous hatred on the part of the stupid. The stupid have so much more industry and energy to expend on hating. They build it up like coral insects.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
#70. You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.
John C. Maxwell
#71. Few people would engage in extended activity if they believed that there were a random connection between what they did and the rewards they received,"15 Lerner concluded that "for the sake of their own sanity," people overestimate the degree to which ability can be inferred from success.
Leonard Mlodinow
#72. A friend should always underestimate your virtues and an enemy overestimate your faults
Mario Puzo
#73. I've spent so much time making sure I don't underestimate my opponents that I've forgotten it's just as dangerous to overestimate them as well.
Suzanne Collins
#74. Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.
Bill Gates
#75. High-toned humanitarians constantly overestimate the sufferings of those they sympathize with.
H.L. Mencken
#76. Experience taught then and teaches now that blacks should never underestimate the level of violence that could be brought to bear against them by white authority, and that they should never overestimate the prospects for receiving understanding and support from white people.
Charles E. Cobb Jr.
#77. He claimed that there was no greater natural advantage in life than having an enemy overestimate your faults, unless it was to have a friend underestimate your virtues.
Mario Puzo
#78. In business, we say that people overestimate what you can do in a year and underestimate what you can do in a decade. This is true in philanthropy as well.
Marc Benioff
#79. Entrepreneurs often underestimate costs and overestimate rewards. But the fact that they estimate & still take action sets them apart from peers.
Ryan Lilly
#80. It is impossible to overestimate how humourless underpaid journalists can be.
David Lagercrantz
#81. It's not like I want to be friends with you now, Frankie. Don't even talk to me, I seriously can't deal with you.
I'm just writing to say I underestimated you. I significantly underestimated you. I don't actually think it is possible to overestimate you. Although you are not a nice person.
E. Lockhart
#82. Finally, there are the dangers inherent in any autobiographical work: the temptation to color events in ways favorable to the writer, the tendency to overestimate the interest one's experiences hold for others,
Barack Obama
#83. One cannot overestimate the options the West has available with which it can apply pressure on Russia.
Andrey Illarionov
#85. Most people overestimate others' talents and underestimate their own.
Orrin Woodward
#86. There is probably an element of malice in our readiness to overestimate people - we are, as it were, laying up for ourselves the pleasure of later cutting them down to size.
Eric Hoffer
#87. You shouldn't overestimate the power of a single judge.
Udo Di Fabio
#88. However, robust evidence shows that people systematically overestimate the probability of positive future contingencies, and underestimate the probability of negative ones - only those who are depressed or dysphoric come to accurate assessments.
Daniel Nettle
#89. Most men overestimate themselves. It's the only way they can reproduce. It's why we're all here, us humans. Overestimation.
Victor Robert Lee
#90. You overestimate the courage of those in power. They are often more interested in holding on to that power than in doing anything worthwhile with it.
Sherry Thomas
#91. People tend to overestimate my character," I say quietly. "They think that because I'm small, or a girl, or a Stiff, I can't possibly be cruel. But they're wrong.
Veronica Roth
#92. You can't overestimate what happens when you encourage regulators to believe that the goal of regulation is not to regulate.
Joseph Stiglitz
#93. I have in the past tended to overestimate the amount of change I can affect in the short run and then not fully appreciate the change I can affect in the long run. And so I've learned that it's critical to think carefully about the pace of change, and it's something that I've learned the hard way.
Harry West
#94. I tell you one thing that makes me feel I haven't wasted my life, and that is I've got some grandchildren. You can't overestimate the kind of opening to the future that gives a person, I think.
Helen Garner
#95. We grossly overestimate the length of the effect of misfortune on our lives. You think that the loss of your fortune or current position will be devastating, but you are probably wrong. More likely, you will adapt to anything, as you probably did after past misfortunes.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
#96. The more I live, the more I recognize that the teaching moments in my youth, especially those provided by my parents, have shaped my life and made me who I am. It is impossible to overestimate the influence of parents who understand the hearts of their children.
Robert D. Hales
#97. We usually overestimate what we think we can accomplish in one year-but we grossly underestimate what we can accomplish in a decade.
Tony Robbins
#99. Never underestimate yourself when you do what is right.
Never overestimate yourself when you do what is wrong.
Roy Bennett
#100. How can people be so blind?" I shrug. "Don't overestimate the masses. They love you until they hate you. They hate you until they love you.
Amanda Bouchet
