Robert A. Heinlein

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, pitch manure, solve equations, analyze a new problem, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

(Notebooks of Lazarus Long)

Brigham Young

Shall I sit down and read the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and the Book of Covenants all the time?” says one. Yes, if you please, and when you have done, you may be nothing but a sectarian after all. It is your duty to study to know everything upon the face of the earth, in addition to reading those books. We should not only study good, and its effects upon our race, but also evil, and its consequences….

And inasmuch as the Lord Almighty has designed us to know all that is in the earth, both the good and the evil, and to learn not only what is in heaven, but what is in hell, you need not expect ever to get through learning. Though I mean to learn all that is in heaven, earth, and hell, do I need to commit iniquity to do it? No. If I were to go into the bowels of hell to find out what is there, that does not make it necessary that I should commit one evil, or blaspheme in any way the name of my Maker.

6 February 1853

Journal of Discourses, 2:93-94

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Insects. People who will not go out fishing for ideas. People who are content with what they grew up with, and don’t want to find out about anything else. People who sit on recliner chairs with greasy armrests, whose greatest technical achievement is mastery of the TV remote control and the game box thingies. Who listen to the nightly news for 24 minutes—unless you count the commercials as news, then it’s 30—and that’s all they want to know about the world. “Tiger kills man…chewed off arm last year.” That’s all they need to know about the world. And they believe the global warming hoax, and think Algore deserved the Nobel. (Good lord, these people run the risk of getting up one day and going down to the precinct to vote! Nahh. Not to worry. They never registered.)

Insects. People who are geniuses at math or some quantitative area, techies, gonna be rich someday off of computer programs or new materials invented in a lab, but have not a clue who Charles Dickens is, or Baudelaire, or Goethe, or Pushkin. People who are great at sales or playing the stock market, sons of daytraders, who are going to be rich but ignorant. And so many already are. Rich. And ignorant. Who go see a movie that is meant to propagandize them into a new socialist world, where these poor ignoramuses will be the drones—until the system collapses, as all socialist systems collapse.

Insects.