"Of course, our failures are a consequence of many factors, but possibly one of the most important is the fact that society operates on the theory that specialization is the key to success, not realizing that specialization precludes comprehensive thinking."
- Richard Buckminster Fuller

Source: Fuller, R. Buckminister. 1963. Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. Quoted in The Quotations Page. Available from URL http://quotationspage.com/quote/34114.html [Downloaded 2009-09-28].

Men cling passionately to old traditions and display intense reluctance to modify customary modes of behavior, as innovators at all times have found to their cost. The dead-weight of conservatism, largely a lazy and cowardly distaste for the strenuous and painful activity of real thinking, has undoubtedly retarded human progress..
- V. Gordon Childe, Man Makes Himself, p. 31