#specialization

It is a painful thing to say to oneself: by choosing one road I am turning my back on a thousand others. Everything is interesting; everything might be useful; everything attracts and charms a noble mind; but death is before us; mind and matter make their demands; willy-nilly we must submit and rest content as to things that time and wisdom deny us, with a glance of sympathy which is another act of our homage to the truth. ↗

— Antonin Sertillanges

#generalist #specialization #death

Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself- and thus make yourself indispensable. ↗

— André Gide

#inspirational #specialization #faith

Old Sam Hamilton saw this coming. He said there couldn’t be any more universal philosophers. The weight of knowledge is too great for one mind to absorb. He saw a time when one man would know only one little fragment, but he would know it well.” “Yes,” Lee said from the doorway, “and he deplored it. He hated it.” “Did he, now?” Adam asked... “Now you question it, I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know whether he hated it or I hate it for him... Maybe the knowledge is too great and maybe men are growing too small... Maybe kneeling down to atoms, they’re becoming atom-sized in their souls. Maybe a specialist is only a coward, afraid to look out of his little cage. And think what any specialist misses! The whole world over his fence!” “We’re only talking about making a living.” “A living? Or money?” Lee said excitedly. “Money’s easy to make if it’s money you want. But with a few exceptions people don’t want money. They want luxury, and they want love, and they want admiration. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#knowledge #money #specialization #education

Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom. ↗

— John Kenneth Galbraith

#aspect #being #cerebral #cherished #comes

Only by strict specialization can the scientific worker become fully conscious, for once and perhaps never again in his lifetime, that he has achieved something that will endure. A really definitive and good accomplishment is today always a specialized act. ↗

— Max Weber

#achieved #act #again #always #become

Of course, I am interested, but I would not dare to talk about them. In talking about the impact of ideas in one field on ideas in another field, one is always apt to make a fool of oneself. In these days of specialization there are too few people who have such a deep understanding of two departments of our knowledge that they do not make fools of themselves in one or the other. ↗

— Richard P. Feynman

#learning #self-awareness #specialization #thought-provoking #inspirational

God and the Devil are an effort after specialization and the division of labor. ↗

— Samuel Butler

#devil #division #effort #god #labor

The history of learning amounts to a history of specialization. ↗

— Beryl Smalley

#specialization #age

It is a wholly deplorable state of affairs when specialists in any discipline talk only to each other, and accordingly I have sought to write a book which will communicate some of the fruits of research in a manner which will make them accessible to all. ↗

— Richard Fletcher

#scholarship #specialization #communication

The ideal of an “all-round” education is out of date; it has been destroyed by the progress of knowledge. ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#learning-from-mistakes #specialization #dating