The following is a list of statements made many years ago by experts in their fields. At the time they were said they sounded intelligent. With the passing of time, they sound idiotic.

Isn't it kind of silly to think that tearing someone else down builds you up?

We are free to choose our paths, but we can't choose the consequences that come with them.

Don't wait until people are dead to give them flowers.

Honesty is always the best policy, even when it's not the trend.

Small changes can make huge destination differences.

It's especially hard to admit that you made a mistake to your parents, because, of course, you know so much more than they do.

Self-confidence is usually little more than wishful thinking in a thigh-high pair of Come F*ck Me boots.

Science gropes and staggers toward improved understanding.

I think it's a gift to become a star, to become a celebrity.

Inspiration is an awakening, a quickening of all man's faculties, and it is manifested in all high artistic achievements.

I hopes the candidate [Donald Trump] is given fake intelligence briefings ... because you can't trust him.

When men will not be reasoned out of a vanity, they must be ridiculed out of it.

One of the principal objects of theoretical research in my department of knowledge is to find the point of view from which the subject appears in its greatest simplicity.

Better to have something to say than to have to say something.

In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced nor cried aloud: Under the bludgeoning of chance my head is bloody, but unbowed.