I don't know who said it.
Just from my background, trusting experts or, in general/by proxy, authority is just one of (at least) four ways we humans know about our world. The other three are empiricism, intuition, and I think the study of texts (I forgot the proper term for what I mean😅).
I don't agree with the statement, with how it attempts to make a distinction between science, democracy and totalitarianism and religion via trust of experts. 'Trust of experts' is involved in so many things knowledge-related or how we know what we know. This includes science. Democracy and totalitarianism to a degree. Definitely religion.
