"Michelangelo was best known as a sculptor, not a painter. Yes, he had done some painting, but primarily small pieces - little in the way of frescoes and nothing on this scale [painting for the Sistine Chapel]. Yet Pope Julius II chose Michelangelo for the job. The Pope was adhering to the Medici philosophy of patronage: choose someone who is clearly talented, then assign him an impossible task - do so even if he seems like a bad fit, especially if he seems like a bad fit. Think of how different that approach is from ours today. We only hire applicants for jobs once we've determined they are a perfect fit. We only assign tasks to those who have already demonstrated they can perform that same exact task. We treat risk not as a noble venture, a dance with the universe, but as something to be avoided at all costs, or at least reduced to a decimal point. And we wonder why we're not living in another Renaissance?"

— Eric Weiner, The Geography of Genius