Louis Agassiz Quotes

Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.

One may have broad or narrow talents, but only education renders them useful. Schools set up to train people will develop the intelligence of those who have it and end the stupidity of those who do not, providing a specialty to those who have narrow talent and broad knowledge to those with all-around ability.

We all know a lot about something. We all have a passion about something.

The necessity of knowing a little about a great many things is the most grievous burden of our day. It deprives us of leisure on the one hand, and of scholarship on the other.

Since we cannot be universal and know all that is to be known of everything, we ought to know a little about everything. For it is far better to know something about everything than to know all about one thing. This universality is the best. If we can have both, still better; but if we must choose, we ought to choose the former.

There is a danger one has to really be knowing much more because you can't be too narrow on science.

If you want knowledge, you must toil for it; if food, you must toil for it; and if pleasure, you must toil for it: toil is the law.

Read more. Read. Read. Read. Deeply, widely, read. Learn all kinds of subjects. The smarter you are as an actor, the better an actor you'll be.

[Theodore Roosevelt] was a naturalist on the broadest grounds, uniting much technical knowledge with knowledge of the daily lives and habits of all forms of wild life. He probably knew tenfold more natural history than all the presidents who had preceded him, and, I think one is safe in saying, more human history also.

Your musical soul is like facets of a jewel, and you stick out one facet at a time ... (and) I tend to work real hard on whatever it is I do, to get it up to speed, up to a professional level. I tend to bury myself in one thing for years at a time.

The works which this man [Joseph Banks] leaves behind him occupy a few pages only; their importance is not greatly superior to their extent; and yet his name will shine out with lustre in the history of the sciences.

All other men are specialists, but his specialism is omniscience.

Be the best at what you do. Get to know more about your field than anybody alive.

Science, Nature,-O, I've yearned to open some page.

To achieve some depth in your field requires a lot of sacrifices.

But the best read naturalist who lends an entire and devout attention to truth, will see that there remains much to learn of his relation to the world, and that it is not to be learned by any addition or subtraction or other comparison of known quantities, but is arrived at by untaught sallies of the spirit, by a continual self-recovery, and by entire humility.

Civilization enables us constantly to profit from knowledge which we individually do not possess and because each individual's use of his particular knowledge may serve to assist others unknown to him in achieving their ends that men as members of civilized society can pursue their individual ends so much more successfully than they could alone.

In all living there is a certain narrowness of application which leads to breadth and power. We have to concent on a thing in order to master it. Then we must be broad enough not to be narrowed by our specialties.

It matters little whether a man be mathematically or philologically or artistically cultivated, so he be but cultivated.

If it's knowledge and wisdom you want, then seek out the company of those who do real work for an honest purpose.

Knowledge is power, especially when it is hitched to a workhorse.

Mastery... is to work toward simplicity; replace complex technology with knowledge, hard work, and skill.

You want it to be hard. If it's hard, then that means others can't do it easily and you can charge for that value.

The specialist is one who never makes small mistakes while moving toward the grand fallacy.

And, in fine, the ancient precept, "Know thyself," and the modern precept, "Study nature," become at last one maxim.