Generalist Vs Specialist Quotes & Sayings

With an endless assortment of children and animals living under one roof, there was always some absurd crisis that gave comic relief to my problems. — Sally Jessy Raphael

I am an idealist. I often feel I would like to be an artist in an ivory tower. Yet it is imperative that I speak to people, so I must desert that ivory tower. To do this, I am a journalist - a photojournalist. But I am always torn between the attitude of the journalist, who is a recorder of facts, and the artist, who is often necessarily at odds with the facts. My principle concern is for honesty, above all honesty with myself ... — W. Eugene Smith

If you crave for Knowledge, the banquet of Knowledge grows and groans on the board until the finer appetite sickens. If, still putting all your trust in Knowledge, you try to dodge the difficulty by specialising, you produce a brain bulging out inordinately on one side, on the other cut flat down and mostly paralytic at that: and in short so long as I hold that the Creator has an idea of a man, so long shall I be sure that no uneven specialist realises it. The real tragedy of the Library at Alexandria was not that the incendiaries burned immensely, but that they had neither the leisure nor the taste to discriminate ... but we may agree that, in reading, it is not quantity so much that tells, as quality and thoroughness of digestion. — Arthur Quiller-Couch

A generalizing specialist is more than just a generalist. A generalist is a jack-of-all-trades but a master of none, whereas a generalizing specialist is a jack-of-all-trades and master of a few. Big difference. — Jan Jursa

(Please excuse my lack of depth; I'm a generalist, not a specialist. Why bother learning all that biochemistry stuff - or how to design a building, or conn a boat, or balance accounts, or solve equations, or comfort the dying - when you can get other people to do all that for you in exchange for a blow job?) — Charles Stross

The dilemma is this. In the modern world knowledge has been growing so fast and so enormously, in almost every field, that the probabilities are immensely against anybody, no matter how innately clever, being able to make a contribution in any one field unless he devotes all his time to it for years. If he tries to be the Rounded Universal Man, like Leonardo da Vinci, or to take all knowledge for his province, like Francis Bacon, he is most likely to become a mere dilettante and dabbler. But if he becomes too specialized, he is apt to become narrow and lopsided, ignorant on every subject but his own, and perhaps dull and sterile even on that because he lacks perspective and vision and has missed the cross-fertilization of ideas that can come from knowing something of other subjects. — Henry Hazlitt

Before I got glasses, I thought Monet was the world's only realist landscape painter. — Jo Walton

He said human beings were like a wind blowing. He said that sometimes we're loud and sometimes we're a whisper, sometimes we're warm and sometimes we're frighteningly cold. But however we blow, we blow onwards, and leave no sign of us behind. — Ali Shaw

But they simply didn't know Sammy in the late hours, all his virulent bedtime prayers whispered away into his folded hands, releasing his worry and anxiety over the sinful so he could sleep well and fight the devil again in the daylight. And, easefully and kindly, he'd hold Abby in his arms, becoming just as lost as everyone else, just as blind in the dark. — Timothy Schaffert

A SINGULAR MOMENT. One that changes everyone and everything, and you can't go back. For me, it was the moment I fell in love. The moment I knew that the soul staring at me through magnificent, pain-filled blue eyes was the one I wanted to connect with mine for the rest of my life. The problem with that was, at that exact same moment, I could see his soul recognize that mine was not the one he wanted. Not ever. — Laurel Ulen Curtis

Favoring specialization over intelligence is exactly wrong, especially in high tech. The world is changing so fast across every industry and endeavor that it's a given the role for which you're hiring is going to change. Yesterday's widget will be obsolete tomorrow, and hiring a specialist in such a dynamic environment can backfire. A specialist brings an inherent bias to solving problems that spawns from the very expertise that is his putative advantage, and may be threatened by a new type of solution that requires new expertise. A smart generalist doesn't have bias, so is free to survey the wide range of solutions and gravitate to the best one. — Eric Schmidt

By the mid-17th century, telescopes had improved enough to make visible the seasonally growing and shrinking polar ice caps on Mars, and features such as Syrtis Major, a dark patch thought to be a shallow sea. — John Updike

Wash me." Damen had never performed a servile task in his life, but he supposed that this one would not overwhelm either his pride or his comprehension. By now he knew the customs of the baths. But he felt a sense of subtle satisfaction from Laurent, and a corresponding internal resistance. It was an uncomfortably intimate form of attendance; he was not restrained, and they were alone, one man serving another. All — C.S. Pacat

An Emperor confides in national soldiers, not in mercenaries. — Napoleon Bonaparte

Sometimes I'd go to his house. If I had some cool cards in my pack of Iceberg Updates, we'd compare collections, maybe swap a few. — China Mieville