Quotes About Specialization

All men are ignorant, just on different subjects.

Any man who is only an economist is unlikely to be a good one.

It may be true, that men, who are mere mathematicians, have certain specific shortcomings, but that is not the fault of mathematics, for it is equally true of every other exclusive occupation.

Didn't happen anymore. Pizza delivery is a major industry. A managed industry. People went to CosaNostra Pizza University four years just to learn it. Came in its doors unable to write an English sentence, from Abkhazia, Rwanda, Guanajuato, South Jersey, and came out knowing more about pizza than a Bedouin knows about sand.

His mind was good, but he only understood one or two things in the whole world—samurai movies and the Macintosh—and he understood them far, far too well. It was a worldview with no room for someone like Juanita.

There aren't enough people out there that are becoming experts in technology as technology moves.

I only know how to write musicals.

I look at other members of my generation who have basically done one thing, and one thing well, and have been handsomely rewarded for it.

My generation was advised to focus on one area to excel.

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Most people are good at too many things. And when you say someone is focused, more often than not what you actually mean is they're very narrow.

The most educated person in the world now has to admit—I shall not say confess—that he or she knows less and less but at least knows less and less about more and more.

Segmented, routinized, and depersonalized, the job of the bureaucrat or specialist—whether it involved confiscating property, scheduling trains, drafting legislation, sending telegrams, or compiling lists—could be performed without confronting the reality of mass murder.

En mi época, quienes sabían alemán ya no se licenciaban. Se pasaban el resto de su vida sabiendo alemán. Creo que hoy en día sucede lo mismo con el chino. —Yo lo conozco poco, por eso hago mi tesis.

Finally, remember this fundamental principle: the more you narrow the field, the better and more safely you will work. Always prefer a monograph to a survey. It is better for your thesis to resemble an essay than a complete history or an encyclopedia.

If you're going to be an expert in something, then you need to be an expert in all aspects of it. From what makes it work to what makes it desirable to what makes it flawed.

Don't do anything that someone else can do.

In the best of all possible worlds, art would be unnecessary. Its offer of restorative, placative therapy would go begging a patient. The professional specialization involved in its making would be presumption. The generalities of its applicability would be an affront. The audience would be the artist and their life would be art.

When people focus on their narrow specialties, the different departments go to war. They don't function as the parts of one company. They act more like competing factions.

It is a scholar's weakness, to run narrow and deep.

Everything you learn in school can be outsourced to someone who learned it more cheaply or learned it more recently.

So here's the solution and it works and can be applied at any age: get good at three, four, or five things. Then find the intersection. Then become the best in the world at the intersection. That's how you can pretend to do your special purpose.

Go to the bookstore. Find a topic you would be willing to read five hundred books on.

If you're diversified into five businesses, as we once were, the businesses that only make up 3% of your sales are going to take 20% of your time, energy, and attention. It's just not worth it. Focus. Do what you do better than anyone else. And the results will probably be very positive, as they were for us once we decided to concentrate all our efforts on one line of business.