"In all our academies we attempt far..." - Quote by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

In all our academies we attempt far too much. ... In earlier times lectures were delivered upon chemistry and botany as branches of medicine, and the medical student learned enough of them. Now, however, chemistry and botany are become sciences of themselves, incapable of comprehension by a hasty survey, and each demanding the study of a whole life, yet we expect the medical student to understand them. He who is prudent, accordingly declines all distracting claims upon his time, and limits himself to a single branch and becomes expert in one thing.
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More by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

“Oh how sweet it is to hear one's own convictions from another's lips.”
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— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

More on Education

“Human beings are more alike than unalike, and what is true anywhere is true everywhere, yet I encourage travel to as many destinations as possible for the sake of education as well as pleasure.”
— Maya Angelou
“We want the education by which character is formed, strength of mind is increased, the intellect is expanded, and by which one can stand on one's own feet.”
— Swami Vivekananda
“There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

More on Specialization

“The knowledge we now consider knowledge proves itself in action. What we now mean by knowledge is information effective in action, information focused on results. Results are outside the person, in society and economy, or in the advancement of knowledge itself. To accomplish anything this knowledge has to be highly specialized.”
— Peter Drucker
“We must infer that all things are produced more plentifully and easily and of a better quality when one man does one thing which is natural to him and does it at the right time, and leaves other things.”
— Plato
“Hardly any human being is capable of pursuing two professions or two arts rightly.”
— Plato