Quotes About Information

but you've been duped by a fake-news site.' The look of surprise on Maggie's face touched him. 'But how are people supposed to know that?' she asked, bewildered. That, thought Bryant, is what we're all wondering.

I became a journalist because I did not want to rely on newspapers for information.

he despised the alternative flow of information and insight, which was gossip and rumor. Like Winston Smith, he was first and foremost activated by a raging thirst to know: a thirst that could only be slaked by a personal quest for the least varnished version of the truth.

The most educated person in the world now has to admit—I shall not say confess—that he or she knows less and less but at least knows less and less about more and more.

The most arresting thing about Palin, indeed, is the absolutely unbreachable serenity of her ignorance. She already has all the information she requires.

The illusion of feeling well-informed....a public that feels informed in proportion as it is to befuddled. In one of his characteristic pronouncements, at a press conference in May 1962, John F. Kennedy proclaimed the end of ideology in words that appealed to both these public needs-the need to believe that political decisions are in the hands of dispassionate, bipartisan experts and the need to believe that the problems experts deal with are unintelligible to laymen.

That was supposed to be the whole purpose of the Internet, you know. To share scientific information. Not a Viagra- and porn-delivery system?

It is not my habit to hand out secrets like candied nuts on winter solstice. Especially not when they belong to others." He was silent for a few paces. Then: "When someone refuses to tell me a certain piece of information, it only makes me that much more determined to find out the truth. I hate being ignorant. For me, a question unanswered is like a thorn in my side that pains me

Shucks, this is one of the bad things about talking to librarians, I asked one question and already she has us digging through three different books.

The secrecy that surrounds any CIA operation makes complete documentation impossible, but the fragmentary information that is now available permits identification of several important examples.

If two smart and logical people disagree it's because they are acting on different information

It is not a large exaggeration to say that everything else in a computer exists in order to bring information swiftly to the ALU for manipulation; and for the ALU, adding is the mechanical equivalent of breathing. But

You need a good memory to use the library. How else do you find a book again after you've read it?" - Tayend

There's something Lorlen said I had to tell you.

Yes, take it all around, there is quite a good deal of information in the book. I regret this very much; but really it could not be helped. -from the Prefatory

Doesn't every other field do that, when you have to make decisions with imperfect information in a probabilistic world? I don't think baseball's immune to that. So that's it: we're not trying to script it, we don't think they're robots. We've noticed that they're human beings and they have emotions.

If you want to use television to teach somebody, you must first teach them how to use television.

When a spy sells something entirely new, all he needs to do is recount something you could find in any second-hand book stall.

Culture isn't knowing when Napoleon died. Culture means knowing how I can find out in two minutes.

The Internet gives us everything and forces us to filter it not by the workings of culture, but with our own brains. This risks creating six billion separate encyclopedias, which would prevent any common understanding whatsoever.

A daily newspaper is destined to become like a weekly magazine. We'll be talking about what might happen tomorrow, with feature articles, investigative supplements, unexpected predictions...

The point is that newspapers are not there for spreading news but for covering it up. X happens, you have to report it, but it causes embarrassment for too many people, so in the same edition you add some shock headlines - mother kills four children, savings at risk of going up in smoke, letter from Garibaldi insulting his lieutenant Nino Bixio discovered, etc. - so news drowns in a great sea of information.

There's a difference between the 'moderate' overwhelm of a great bookshop and the infinite overwhelm of the Internet.

the environment is now transmitting less and less useful information, and more and more that is entirely useless. 2009