Is it better for the seeker of knowledge to stay with only one shaykh?

Praise be to
Allaah.

Shaykh Muhammad ibn Saalih al-‘Uthaymeen (may Allaah
have mercy on him) was asked this question, and he replied: 

It is good if a person focuses on one shaykh and makes
him his main source, especially if he is a young beginner, for if the
young beginner seeks knowledge from a number of people he will be confused.
For people are not all of one opinion, especially nowadays. In the past,
here in the Kingdom (Saudi Arabia) people never deviated from [the books]
al-Iqnaa’ and al-Muntahaa, so their fatwaas were all
the same and the bases of their fatwaas were all the same; no one differed
from another, except in his delivery and style. But now, everyone who
has memorized a hadeeth or two says, “I am the imaam to be followed.
Imaam Ahmad was a man and we are men.” So now there is chaos. Everyone
is issuing fatwaas and sometimes you hear fatwaas from these people
which may you weep and laugh at the same time. I was thinking of recording
these fatwas, but I was afraid that this might make me one of those
who seek out their faults of their brothers, so I did not do it lest
we transmit things that are as far from the truth as the earth is from
the Pleiades.  

I say: adhering to one scholar is very important when
the seeker of knowledge is just starting out, so that he will not be
confused. Hence our shaykhs forbade us to read al-Mughni and
Sharh al-Muhadhdhab and other books which contain numerous opinions
when we were starting out. One of our shaykhs told us that Shaykh ‘Abd-Allaah
ibn ‘Abd al-Rahmaan Baabiteen (may Allaah have mercy on him), who was
one of the great shaykhs of Najd, only read al-Rawd al-Murabba’ and
never read anything else. He read it repeatedly but he discussed it
in great detail and in great depth. 

If a person has gained a great deal of knowledge, then
he should look at the views of the scholars so as to benefit from them
in both academic and practical terms. But when one is just starting
out, my advice is to focus on one particular scholar and not go to anyone
else.