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Specialist Quotes

Browse 26 quotes about Specialist.

Specialist Quotes

“The greatest thing about our times is that you don't need permission to express yourself the way you wish. Sometimes people tell themselves they can't do it, because they're missing this or that, but historically, specialization is a recent convention. Most of us are born natural polymaths.”

SelfSelf EsteemSelf HelpExpressionSelf ImprovementPersonal GrowthPersonal DevelopmentSelf ConfidenceSelf MotivationConventionsPermissionSpecializationConventionPolymathsExpressing YourselfPolymathSpecialistExpressing OneselfConventionalismSpecializeExpressingConventional ThinkingPermission Of Others
Author:Nuno Roque
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“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.”

ThinkingReadingSpecialistGeneralist
Author:Sir Arthur Quiller Couch
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“The bigger the picture, the more unique the potential human contribution. Our greatest strength is the exact opposite of narrow specialization. It is the ability to integrate broadly. According to Gary Marcus, a psychology and neuroscience professor, who sold his machine learning company to Uber, "In narrow enough worlds, humans may not have much to contribute much longer.”

RangeAiBig PictureMachine LearningSpecialistGeneralist
Book:Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World / Messy / The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
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“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. (1930)”

TrainingIndoctrinationBehaviorismSpecialist
Book:Behaviorism
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“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.”

KnowledgeSpecialistGeneralist
Author:Henry Hazlitt
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“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.”

IntelligenceHiringSpecializationSpecialistGeneralist
Book:How Google Works
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“But, after all, the real specialist on Cannibalism is the Cannibal. Nobody could be more swiftly and splendidly on the spot than he is, when there is any Cannibalism going forward. The objection to the Cannibal as a judge of Cannibalism is not that he is ignorant of Cannibalism, or remote from Cannibalism, or not on the spot as a specialist in Cannibalism. It is that he is just the least tiny little bit biased.”

KnowledgeJudgementBiasSpecialist
Book:Avowals and Denials - A Book of Essays
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