Specialization Quotes

We know too much for one man to know too much.

Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.

An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field.

No one achieves greatness by becoming a generalist. You don't hone a skill by diluting your attention to its development. The only way to get to the next level is focus.

Everybody's got a different circle of competence. The important thing is not how big the circle is. The important thing is staying inside the circle.

Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select--doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and, yes, even beggarman and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. I am going beyond my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the contrary and they have been doing it for many thousands of years.

Better know nothing than half-know many things.

Specialization is for insects... The race of man? He's a whole other creature.

There is nothing so stupid as the educated man if you get him off the thing he was educated in.

Capitalism demands the best of every man - his rationality - and rewards him accordingly. It leaves every man free to choose the work he likes, to specialize in it, to trade his product for the products of others, and to go as far on the road of achievement as his ability and ambition will carry him.

If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things.

American and world history show that if you want minimal government, you can have it—but only if you want almost everyone in your society also to be a dirt-poor, subsistence farmer. If you want a prosperous, growing modern economy, you need high specialization and a huge, complex, interdependent network of individuals, businesses, research centers and education. And only government has the authority or money to regulate that network and to regularly pump in the targeted funds needed to sustain and grow it.

I’d like you to know that almost all of the directors I have met over the years have been decent, likable and intelligent. Nevertheless, many of these good souls are people whom I would never have chosen to handle money or business matters. It simply was not their game. They, in turn, would never have asked me for help in removing a tooth, decorating their home or improving their golf swing. … We are all duds at one thing or another. For most of us, the list is long. The important point to recognize is that if you are Bobby Fischer, you must play only chess for money.

All the guys at this top level, they're pretty much dangerous all over the place. If you're not good all over the place, you'll be in a little bit of trouble. It's hard to swim at the top end if you're only good at one thing.

I'm a football coach. I'm not a doctor ... They don't call plays, I don't do surgeries. We have a great deal here.

One thing I've had to realize in my career is that I can't do it all. Sometimes we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to make sure we're writing the next hit. There are other people out there, and that's what they do every day, and they have strengths that I don't have.

Specialisation is for insects!

Even today, I frequently meet scientists who, outside their own narrow discipline, are superstitious.

If you are known to do something well, people want to see you do that. But what you choose to do is up to you. After 'Delhi Belly,' I got some 40 scripts - some on the same lines as 'Delhi Belly.' So, I guess people only get stereotyped if they want to.

If your only tool is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.

Let me put it this way: I don't plan to retire. What would I do, become a brain surgeon? I mean, a brain surgeon can retire and write novels, but a novelist can't retire and do brain surgery - or at least he better not.

One strategy for getting ahead is being incredibly good at a particular skill; you need to be world-class to stand out for that skill. In my case, I layered fairly average skills together until the combination became special.

Physicists only talk to physicists, economists to economists-worse still, nuclear physicists only talk to nuclear physicists and econometricians to econometricians. One wonders sometimes if science will not grind to a stop in an assemblage of walled-in hermits, each mumbling to himself words in a private language that only he can understand.

Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge the more likely they are to think so.

Not everybody can do everything at a high level.