Generalist Quotes

“Now I'm a scientific expert; that means I know nothing about absolutely everything.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey

“It is a painful thing to say to oneself: by choosing one road I am turning my back on a thousand others. Everything is interesting; everything might be useful; everything attracts and charms a noble mind; but death is before us; mind and matter make their demands; willy-nilly we must submit and rest content as to things that time and wisdom deny us, with a glance of sympathy which is another act of our homage to the truth.”
― Antonin Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods

“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

“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.”
― Sir Arthur Quiller Couch

“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, How Google Works

“The truth is that you aren’t lacking a destiny or purpose. There is a very good reason for your insatiable curiosity: you’re someone who’s going to shake things up, create something novel, solve complex, multidimensional problems, make people’s lives better in your own unique way. Whatever your destinies are, you can’t step into them while stifling your multipotentiality. You must embrace it and use it.”
― Emilie Wapnick, How to Be Everything

“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.”
― David Epstein, Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World / Messy / The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

“We just need more dots to connect. You should develop broad personal interests in a variety of subjects. What you present to the world should be narrow and show deep focus.

In other words, generalize internally, and specialize externally.”
― Chris Do, Pocket Full of Do

“Specialists and generalists are both valuable and necessary; it just depends on the context.”
― Emilie Wapnick, How to Be Everything

“Extreme specialization has been the greatest disaster of the modern academic world. It has created narrow Mandarins, ignorant of the universal nature of reality, incapable of connecting concepts from different fields to bring everything together in one ultimate, unified subject. The AC is everything the academic world is not. It’s about connecting everything. It demands that people be generalists, not the most narrow, blinkered specialists.”
― David Sinclair

“We all need a sense of meaning in our lives. The feeling that we're doing good in the world--that we're making a difference in some way--is essential.

Not everything we do needs to evoke a deep sense of meaning. That would be exhausting!

Multipotentialites are usually involved in a number of different projects. Some of these are naturally more meaningful than others (just as some are more profitable than others).

What matters isn't that everything we do is deeply meaningful, but that we have enough overall meaning to make us feel good about how we're spending our time on this earth.”
― Emilie Wapnick

“A specialist masters one branch. A generalist climbs the whole tree. Why? Generalists aren't hobbyists, they can master skillset after skillset, branch upon branch, and bring resources together where others remain siloed in the deep. Masters go both deep and wide.”
― RICHIE NORTON

“Leaders, by nature, oversee end-to-end transformation—turning raw thought and raw material into rare outcomes.”
― RICHIE NORTON

“Entrepreneurs set things in motion. Then, prioritize their attention on mastering their role.”
― RICHIE NORTON