Specialization Quotes - Page 2

• The most effective way of utilizing human energy is through an organized rivalry, which by specialization and social control is, at the same time, organized co-operation.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Way, Energy, Social

  Charles Horton Cooley (1922). “Human Nature and the Social Order”

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• The fact that modern physics, the manifestation of an extreme specialization of the rational mind, is now making contact with mysticism, the essence of religion and manifestation of an extreme specialization of the intuitive mind, shows very beautifully the unity and complementary nature of the rational and intuitive modes of consciousness; of the yang and the yin.

  Fritjof Capra

  Essence, Unity, Intuition

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• The words graphic designer, architect, or industrial designer stick in my throat, giving me a sense of limitation, of specialisation within the specialty, of a relationship to society and form itself that is unsatisfactory and incomplete. This inadequate set of terms to describe an active life reveals only partially the still undefined nature of the designer.

  Alvin Lustig

  Life, Relationship, Nature

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• This...is an age of specialization, and in such an age the repertory theater is an anachronism, a ludicrous anachronism.

  Minnie Maddern Fiske

  Age, Theater, Anachronism

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• If I could relive my life, what I would do is work with scientists. But not one scientist, because they're locked into their little specializations. I'd go from scientist to scientist to scientist, like a bee goes from flower to flower.

  Agnes Denes

  Flower, Littles, Bees

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• The range of human knowledge today is so great that we're all specialists and the distance between specializations has become so great that anyone who seeks to wander freely between them almost has to forego closeness with the people around him.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Distance, People, Today

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• More and more of out colleagues fail to understand our work because of the high specialization of research problems. We must not be discouraged if the products of our labor are not read or even known to exist. The joy of research must be found in doing since every other harvest is uncertain.

  Theobald Smith

  Hard Work, Science, Joy

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• The whole of our civilization is founded on specialization, which implies the enslavement of those who execute to those who coordinate.

  Simone Weil

  Civilization, Bureaucracy, Whole

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• Intelligence augmentation decreases the need for specialization and increases participatory complexity.

  Jamais Cascio

  Needs, Decrease, Increase

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• For no continuity of social act is possible without a corresponding social status and the many different kinds of act required in an industrial state, with its high degree of specialization, make for corresponding classification of status.

  Kenneth Burke

  Degrees, Different, Kind

  Kenneth Burke (1962). “A grammar of motives, and A rhetoric of motives”

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

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Men, Race, Insects

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• Overemphasis of the competitive system and premature specialization on the ground of immediate usefulness kill the spirit on which all cultural life depends, specialized knowledge included.

  Albert Einstein

  Spirit, Depends, Premature

  Albert Einstein (2010). “Ideas And Opinions”, p.67, Broadway Books

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• In the general tendency toward specialization, philosophy too has established itself as a specialized discipline, one purified of all specific content. In so doing, philosophy has denied its own constitutive concept: the intellectual freedom that does not obey the dictates of specialized knowledge.

  Theodor Adorno

  Philosophy, Discipline, Intellectual

  Theodor W. Adorno (2012). “Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords”, p.6, Columbia University Press

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• We are in an age that assumes the narrowing trends of specialization to be logical, natural, and desirable. Consequently, society expects all earnestly responsible communication to be crisply brief.... In the meantime, humanity has been deprived of comprehensive understanding.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Communication, Humanity, Understanding

  R. Buckminster Fuller (1982). “Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking”, p.25, Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

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• Everyone is desirous of his own pursuits, and loves
  To spend his time in his accustomed art.

  Ovid

  Art, And Love, Habit

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• The main insight learned from interdisciplinary studies is the return to specialization

  George Stigler

  Return, Study, Insight

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• Imprisoning philosophy within the professionalizations and specializations of an institutionalized curriculum, after the manner of our contemporary European and North American culture, is arguably a good deal more effective in neutralizing its effects than either religious censorship or political terror

  Alasdair MacIntyre

  Religious, Philosophy, Political

  Alasdair MacIntyre (2007). “Edith Stein: A Philosophical Prologue, 1913-1922”, p.4, Rowman & Littlefield

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• Specialization is the great evil of civilization.

  Wendell Berry

  Civilization, Evil

  "Towards Home: Michael Pollan and Fritz Heag on Reviving the Domestic". Interview with Paul Schmelzer, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 16, 2013.

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• I love to exercise my creativity in many ways but as each year of specialization goes by I feel further and further from my other creative selves. I used to be able to see myself doing many things and sometimes I still long for a job that involves less pressure and grappling with people but, as you say, I am one of the lucky ones so I try to just focus on feeling lucky and carry on!

  Ani DiFranco

  Jobs, Creativity, Exercise

  Interview with Mary Ann Rossoni, get-ri.com. September 1, 2015.

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• The welfare state destroys the market mechanisms - lessens free choice and willing exchange. Simultaneously creating unnatural specializations, it must, granted statism's premise, resort to welfarism; that is, it must assume the responsibility for the people's welfare: their employment, their old age, their income, and the like. As this is done, man loses his wholeness; he is dispossessed of responsibility for self, the very essence of his manhood. The more dependent he becomes, the less dependable!

  Leonard Read

  Responsibility, Men, Essence

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• Technological society leads to increasing numbers of people who cannot adapt to the inhuman rhythm of modern life with its emphasis on specialization. A class of people is growing up who are unexploitable because they are not worth employing even for the minimum wage. Technological progress makes whole categories of people useless without making it possible to support them with the wealth produced by the progress.

  Jacques Ellul

  Growing Up, Class, Numbers

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• Reengineering posits a radical new principle: that the design of work must be based not on hierarchical management and the specialization of labor but on end-to-end processes and the creation of value for the customer.

  Michael Martin Hammer

  Design, Principles, Management

  "Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution" by Michael Hammer, James A. Champy, HarperCollins, (p. 11), 1993.

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• Extrapolated, technology wants what life wants:
  Increasing efficiency
  Increasing opportunity
  Increasing emergence
  Increasing complexity
  Increasing diversity
  Increasing specialization
  Increasing ubiquity
  Increasing freedom
  Increasing mutualism
  Increasing beauty
  Increasing sentience
  Increasing structure
  Increasing evolvability

  Kevin Kelly

  Technology, Opportunity, Ubiquity

  Kevin Kelly (2010). “What Technology Wants”, p.244, Penguin

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• How could any entrepreneur, confronted by such amazing opportunities to help transform the world and to do so with such extraordinary colleagues, be tempted to lose focus? Especially since the work involves such breadth that the boredom of routine or specialization does not exist.

  Bill Drayton

  Leadership, Opportunity, Amazing Opportunities

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• The modern spirit is a hesitant one. Spontaneity has given way to cautious legalisms, and the age of heroes has been superseded by a cult of specialization. We have no more giants; only obedient ants.

  Roger Lowenstein

  Hero, Age, Giants

  Roger Lowenstein (2013). “Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist”, p.177, Random House

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