#specialization

This is an age of specialization, and in such an age the repertory theater is an anachronism, a ludicrous anachronism. ↗

— Minnie Maddern Fiske

#ludicrous #repertory #specialization #such #theater

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

Too rigid specialization is almost as bad for a historian's mind, and for his ultimate reputation, as too early an indulgence in broad generalization and synthesis. ↗

— Samuel E. Morison

#bad #broad #early #generalization #his

I tell you, the old-fashioned doctor who treated all diseases has completely disappeared, now there are only specialists, and they advertise all the time in the newspapers. If your nose hurts, they send you to Paris: there's a European specialist there, he treats noses. You go to Paris, he examines your nose: I can treat only your right nostril, he says, I don't treat left nostrils, it's not my specialty, but after me, go to Vienna, there's a separate specialist there who will finish treating your left nostril. ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#health #over-specialization #science #funny

For no continuity of social act is possible without a corresponding social status and the many different kinds of act required in an industrial state, with its high degree of specialization, make for corresponding classification of status. ↗

— Kenneth Burke

#classification #continuity #corresponding #degree #different

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

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

— Beryl Smalley

#specialization #age