Overestimate Quotes

Of course people have insulted me ... that's just the reality of living a life in which you stand out. Does it bother me? No. Those people overestimate the weight I give their opinion. I'm just going to be me, unapologetically. You don't have to applaud, you don't have to cheer ... but I know you're watching. ~ Steve Maraboli

You can't overestimate what happens when you encourage regulators to believe that the goal of regulation is not to regulate. ~ Joseph Stiglitz

I find as long as I acknowledge the truth of something, then that's it. I know what it is and then I can operate. But if I overestimate the downside of something or the challenge of something and I get too obsessed about the difficulty of it, then I don't leave enough room to be open to the upside, the possibility. ~ Michael J. Fox

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

Men and women run away from every goal, whether worldly or spiritual, because they overestimate the initial task. The proper way is a bit at a time. It is the same if someone eats too much; they should diminish it daily by a small bit, gradually. In that way, before a year or two have passed, they will have cut down what they eat by half, reducing it in such a way that their body does not notice. So it is with worship, withdrawing into solitude, attending to the service of God, and prayer. When a person enters upon the Way of God, for a while their prayers will be short. But after that, if they pray with their whole heart, their prayers will go on and on without end. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi

Human communication and literature are all made of words; thus, it's hard to overestimate their unbelievable power. ~ Sahara Sanders

Correct Overestimated Feedback Fears

One of the reasons anxious people fear feedback is that they tend to judge their performance more harshly than others judge them. If you're feeling anxious, you'll probably overestimate the likelihood that any feedback you'll get will be negative - the negative predictions thinking error.
Let's say you need to get feedback on your delivery of an upcoming presentation. You fear that you'll get crucified, that people will say your presentation style is horrible and won't say anything nice. How likely does this feared outcome feel? You might say, "It feels 99% likely." How likely is it in reality? You think, "Objectively, maybe 50%?" Your answer of 50% may still be an overestimate, but at least it jump-starts the shift in your thinking. It alters you that your anxious feelings are, to some extent, clouding your perceptions.
Although it seems strange that people can shift their thinking just based on whether they are asked to think with their anxious mind or their objective mind, this isn't as far-fetched as it sounds. There's lots of research evidence that people's thinking changes based on how they're asked to think about something. For example, my own doctoral research asked people in relationships how their judgments of their romantic partner compared to reality. People recognized that they tended to view their partners more positively than warranted by reality.
Experiment: Think of a current area in your life wh ~ Alice Boyes

One can hardly overestimate people's need to talk about themselves and to be listened to. ~ Erich Fromm

It is as much of a mistake to underestimate yourself as to overestimate yourself. ~ Christie Golden

A friend should always underestimate your virtues and an enemy overestimate your faults ~ Mario Puzo

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

Don't overestimate your challenges and underestimate your ability to deal with them. ~ Simerjeet Singh

Children often overestimate their importance in the parent's life ~ Altaf Tyrewala

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.

At times I can certainly see a subject clearly and distinctly, think my way through it, great sweeping thoughts that I can scarcely grasp but which all at once give me an intense feeling of importance. Yet when I try to write them down they shrivel into nothing, and that's why I lack the courage to commit them to paper - in case I become too disillusioned with the fatuous little as they that emerges. But let me impress just one thing upon you, sister. Wash your hands of all attempts to embody those great, sweeping thoughts. The smallest, most fatuous little essay is worth more than the flood of grandiose ideas in which you like to wallow. Of course you must hold on to your forebodings and your intuitions. They are the sources upon which you draw, but be careful not to drown in them. Just organise things a little, exercise some mental hygiene. Your imagination and your emotions are like a vast ocean from which you wrest small pieces of land that may well be flooded again. The ocean is wide and elemental, but what matter are the small pieces of land you reclaim from it. The subject right before you is more important than those prodigious thoughts of Tolstoy and Napoleon that occurred to you in the middle of last night, and the lesson you gave that keen young girl and Friday night is more important than all your vague philosophizing. Never forget that. Don't overestimate your own intensity; it may give you the impression that you were cut out for greater things than the so-calle ~ Etty Hillesum

If whatever follows these two words is not fully aligned with your perception of how the creative Source of the universe would be speaking, then make the correction on the spot. Say to yourself "I am the resurrection and the life in thought and feeling." According to The "I AM" Discourses of Saint Germain: "It immediately turns all the energy of your Being to the center in the brain which is the source of your Being. You cannot overestimate the Power in this Statement. There is no limit to what you can do with it. It was the Statement that Jesus used most ~ Wayne W. Dyer

To measure up to all that is demanded of him, a man must overestimate his capacities ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

It is almost impossible to overestimate the value of true humility and its power in the spiritual life. For the beginning of humility is the beginning of blessedness and the consummation of humility is the perfection of all joy. Humility contains in itself the answer to all the great problems of the life of the soul. It is the only key to faith, with which the spiritual life begins: for faith and humility are inseparable. In perfect humility all selfishness disappears and your soul no longer lives for itself or in itself for God: and it is lost and submerged in Him and transformed into Him. ~ Thomas Merton

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

As Paul Saffo, a forecaster of large-scale change at Discern Analytics, observes wisely, 'Change is never linear. Our expectations are linear, but new technologies come in S curves, so we routinely overestimate short-term change and underestimate long-term change.' Never mistake a clear view for a short distance, he adds. ~ Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran

I never overestimate the audience, nor do I underestimate them. I just have a very rational idea as to who we're dealing with, and that we're not making a picture for Harvard Law School, we're making a picture for middle-class people, the people that you see on the subway, or the people that you see in a restaurant. Just normal people. ~ Billy Wilder

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

Never underestimate your power to change yourself; never overestimate your power to change others. ~ Wayne W. Dyer

Teenage drinking has been declining since 1999, but students vastly overestimate their classmates' use of alcohol, drugs, and cigarettes. For example, a study conducted at a Midwestern high school when teenage alcohol use was peaking found that students believed that 92% of their peers Frank alcohol and 85% smoked cigarettes. When researchers surveyed the school to unearth the actual statistics, they learned that 47% of students had consumed alcohol and 17% smoked. ~ Alexandra Robbins

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

Lenin was always prone to overestimate the physical danger to himself: in this respect he was something of a coward. ~ Orlando Figes

The truth about change is that we tend to overestimate its speed while underestimating its reach. ~ Jeffrey J. Selingo

We overestimate the wisdom of adults and underestimate the wisdom of children. ~ Tina Brescanu

Overestimate the small. ~ T. William Watts

We often overestimate what we can do in a day, but underestimate what we can do in a year. ~ Glen Smith

(People) either overestimate Satan's influence and power, living with an inflated, erroneous perspective of his abilities. Or they underestimate him. They don't assign him any credit at all for the difficulties he's stirring up beneath the surface of our lives ... Satan is not God. And he is not God's counterpart or peer ... Satan is nothing but a copycat trying desperately to convince you he's more powerful than he actually is ... So even though he's given temporary clearance to strategize and antagonize, we don't need to pray from a position of fear or weakness against him ... But we can't expect to experience this power unless we're serious about joining the battle in prayer. ~ Priscilla Shirer

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

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

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

You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything. ~ John C. Maxwell

Each underestimates her own power and overestimates the other's. ~ Deborah Tannen

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

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

Polls show that Americans significantly overestimate the percentage of the federal budget allocated to foreign aid. In November 2013, a Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that, on average, Americans believe that 28 percent of the federal budget is spent on foreign assistance, and more than 60 percent of people say that's too much. But in reality we spend less than 1 percent of the budget on foreign aid. ~ Hillary Rodham Clinton

We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run. ~ Roy Amara

Reasonably accurate appraisal of one's own capabilities is, therefore, of considerable value in successful functioning. Large misjudgments of personal efficacy in either direction have consequences. People who grossly overestimate their capabilities undertake activities that are clearly beyond their reach. As a result, they get themselves into considerable difficulties, undermine their credibility, and suffer needless failures. Some of the missteps, of course, can produce serious, irreparable harm ~ Albert Bandura

People often overestimate what they can reasonably achieve in a year. But they vastly underestimate what they can achieve in 5 years. ~ Steve Pavlina

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

Unrealistic optimism is a pervasive feature of human life; it characterizes most people in most social categories. When they overestimate their personal immunity from harm, people may fail to take sensible preventive steps. If people are running risks because of unrealistic optimism, they might be able to benefit from a nudge. In fact, we have already mentioned one possibility: if people are reminded of a bad event, they may not continue to be so optimistic. ~ Richard H. Thaler

A puzzling limitation of our mind: our excessive confidence in what we believe we know, and our apparent inability to acknowledge the full extent of our ignorance and the uncertainty of the world we live in. We are prone to overestimate how much we understand about the world and to underestimate the role of chance in events. Overconfidence is fed by the illusory certainty of hindsight. ~ Daniel Kahneman

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

Also, even if technocrats provide reasonable estimates of a risk, which itself is an iffy enterprise, they cannot dictate what level of risk people ought to accept. People might object to a nuclear power plant that has a minuscule risk of a meltdown not because they overestimate the risk, but because they feel that the cost of a catastrophe, no matter how remote, are too dreadful. And of course any of these trade-offs may be unacceptable if people perceive that the benefits would go to the wealthy and powerful while they themselves absorb the risks. Nonetheless, understanding the difference between our best science and our ancient ways of thinking can only make our individual and collective decisions better informed. It can help scientists and journalists explain a new technology in the face of the most common misunderstandings. And it can help all of us understand the technology so that we can accept or reject it on grounds that we can justify to ourselves and to others. ~ Steven Pinker

It is quite possible that I have underestimated you, Gwyneth. But that's no reason for you to overestimate yourself. ~ Kerstin Gier

Most people overestimate others' talents and underestimate their own. ~ Orrin Woodward

Make way for the sweetest humiliation when you underestimate their intelligence while overestimating your knowledge. ~ Criss Jami

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

It is our friends who should overestimate our capacities. They should have an exaggerated opinion of our moral fortitude, our aesthetic sensibilities, and our intellectual scope. Why, they should practically imagine us leaping through a window in the nick of time with the works of Shakespeare in one hand and a pistol in the other! ~ Amor Towles

Entrepreneurs often underestimate costs and overestimate rewards. But the fact that they estimate & still take action sets them apart from peers. ~ Ryan Lilly

We are prone to overestimate how much we understand about the world and to underestimate the role of chance in events. ~ Daniel Kahneman

Never underestimate your listener's intelligence, or overestimate you listener's information. ~ Eric Sevareid

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

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

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

Sam: "You - you greatly overestimate my self-control."
Grace: "I'm not looking for self-control. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

We underestimate the power of science, and overestimate the power of personal observation. A peer-reviewed, journal-published, replicated report is worth far more than what you see with your own eyes. Our own eyes can deceive us. People can fool themselves, hallucinate, and even go insane. The controls on publication in major journals are more trustworthy than the very fabric of your brain. If you see with your own eyes that the sky is blue, and Science says it is green, then sir, I advise that you trust in Science.
This is not what most scientists will tell you, of course; but I think it is pragmatically true. Because in real life, what happens is that your eyes have a little malfunction and decide that the sky is green, and science will tell you that the sky is blue. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

Many people confuse the statement "almost all terrorists are Moslems" with "almost all Moslems are terrorists." Assume that the first statement is true, that 99 percent of terrorists are Moslems. This would mean that only about .001 percent of Moslems are terrorists, since there are more than one billion Moslems and only, say, ten thousand terrorists, one in a hundred thousand. So the logical mistake makes you (unconsciously) overestimate the odds of a randomly drawn individual Moslem person (between the age of, say, fifteen and fifty) being a terrorist by close to fifty thousand times!

[...]Our inferential machinery, that which we use in daily life, is not made for a complicated environment in which a statement changes markedly when its wording is slightly modified. Consider that in a primitive environment there is no consequential difference between the statements "most killers are wild animals" and "most wild animals are killers". There is an error here, but it is almost inconsequential. Our statistical intuitions have not evolved for a habitat in which these subtleties can make a big difference. ~ Nicholas Nassim Taleb

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

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

Self-confidence is very important. If you don't think you can win, you will take cowardly decisions in the crucial moments, out of sheer respect for your opponent. You see the opportunity but also greater limitations than you should. I have always believed in what I do on the chessboard, even when I had no objective reason to. It is better to overestimate your prospects than underestimate them. ~ Magnus Carlsen

There was a survey done a few years ago that affected me greatly. it was discovered that intelligent people either estimate their intelligence accurately or slightly underestimate themselves, but stupid people overestimate their intelligence and by huge margins. (And these were things like straight up math tests, not controversial IQ tests.) ~ Harvey Pekar

One cannot overestimate the options the West has available with which it can apply pressure on Russia. ~ Andrey Illarionov

The second illusion is historical myopia: the closer an era is to our vantage point in the present, the more details we can make out. Historical myopia can afflict both common sense and professional history. The cognitive psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman have shown that people intuitively estimate relative frequency using a shortcut called the availability heuristic: the easier it is to recall examples of an event, the more probable people think it is.10 People, for example, overestimate the likelihoods of the kinds of accidents that make headlines, such as plane crashes, shark attacks, and terrorist bombings, and they underestimate those that pile up unremarked, like electrocutions, falls, and drownings. ~ Steven Pinker

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

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

We systematically overestimate the value of access to information and underestimate the value of access to each other. ~ Clay Shirky

It's almost impossible to overestimate the unimportance of most things. ~ John Logue

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

People overestimate what they can accomplish in the near term and underestimate what they can accomplish in the long term. ~ David House

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

Some people seem to overestimate the amount of nonsense I am willing to accept from them. ~ Steve Maraboli

Don't underestimate your opponent, but don't overestimate them, either. ~ Nancy Pelosi

Lawyers forever overestimate their own intelligence and underestimate their clients'. ~ Portia Porter, Can You Stiff Your Divorce Lawyer

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

Don't overestimate the decency of the human race. ~ H.L. Mencken

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

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.

Wait," I said, and they paused mid-stride. "Thank you. Rafe told me you were the best of Dalbreck's soldiers. Now I know that he didn't overestimate your abilities." I turned to Sven. "And I'm sorry I threatened to feed your face to the hogs." Sven smiled. "All in a day's work, Your Highness," he said, and then he bowed. * ~ Mary E. Pearson

we tend to overestimate what we can accomplish in a year. ~ Mark Batterson

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

Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years. ~ Bill Gates

Suppose a would-be writer can't begin? I really believe there are many excellent writers who have never written because they never could begin. This is especially the case of people of great sensitiveness, or of people of advanced education. Professors suffer most of all from this inhibition. Many of them carry their unwritten books to the grave. They overestimate the magnitude of the task, they overestimate the greatness of the final result. A child in a prep school will write the History of Greece and fetch it home finished after school. "He wrote a fine History of Greece the other day," says his fond father. Thirty years later the child, grown to be a professor, dreams of writing the History of Greece
the whole of it from the first Ionic invasion of the Aegean to the downfall of Alexandria. But he dreams. He never starts. He can't. It's too big. Anybody who has lived around a college knows the pathos of those unwritten books. ~ Stephen Leacock

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

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

People often overestimate what will happen in the next two years and underestimate what will happen in ten. ~ Bill Gates

Their is no more insidious poison than hubris. ~ C.A.A. Savastano

Now, when a man has been underestimated by a friend, he has some cause for taking offense - since it is our friends who should overestimate our capacities. ~ Amor Towles

It is human nature to overestimate the thing you've never had. ~ Ellen Glasgow

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

We overestimate what we hear from others, what the facts may be. But the truth, it always lies in our hearts. When you choose the right person to love, you're happy. Even after one or two failed attempts, when there are obstacles in the way, soon enough things have a way of working out. But if you've tried all you could, and you're still suffering, then it's time to let go. Just ask your heart. If the pain is more than you can handle, then it's time to move on ~ Effrosyni Moschoudi

You shouldn't underestimate an enemy, but it is just as fatal to overestimate him. ~ George S. Patton

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

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

We tend to overestimate the impact of technology in the short term and underestimate it in the long term. ~ Roy Amara

Never underestimate yourself when you do what is right.
Never overestimate yourself when you do what is wrong. ~ Roy Bennett

It is impossible to overestimate the influence of parents who understand the hearts of their children. Research shows that during the most important transitions of life - including those periods when youth are most likely to drift away from the Church - the greatest influence does not come from an interview with the bishop or some other leader but from the regular, warm, friendly, caring interaction with parents. ~ Robert D. Hales