Quotes About Information

When I think about unique insight, what I think about is here's your opportunity to tell me something that I don't know.

The need we have for information is great, and we get it from many admirable sources. The need we have for understanding and acceptance is much greater. The arts are uniquely able to help us meet the greater needs.

In my view, while the single neuron is the basic anatomical and information processing-signaling unit of the brain, it is not capable of generating behaviors and, ultimately, thinking. Instead, the true functional unit of the central nervous system is a population of neurons, or neural ensembles or cell assemblies.

A bit, the smallest unit of information, the fundamental particle of information theory, is a choice, yes or no, on or off. It's a choice that you can embody in electrical circuits, and it is thanks to that that we have all this ubiquitous computing.

The BBC is part of the glue which binds the United Kingdom together. At those times of national moment - of joy or sadness, in the UK or around the world, at times when the nation wants to celebrate, mourn or just enjoy itself people turn to the BBC.

We keep the terrorist threat to the United Kingdom under very careful scrutiny. We think it's right to keep the public informed about the general threat level.

But in the first Gulf war the United Kingdom was not under any threat from Iraq, and is still less so in the second one. Then there is no justification for obstructing freedom of information, particularly as nations have a right to know what their soldiers are being used for.

When you're told to go brief a United States senator on a covert operation, you go do it. And you trust the information isn't going to leak.

No one has looked at news from new atomic units of content, like a tweet on Twitter.

It is important for people to be able to read all sides of every question; for a feeling of national unity does not come from one-sided or inadequate information, but from a sense of freedom impartially secured and of opportunity equalized by a just government.

We live in a world of communication - everyone gets information about everyone else. There is universal comparison and you don't just compare yourself with the people next door, you compare yourself to people all over the world and with what is being presented as the decent, proper and dignified life. It's the crime of humiliation.

Scholars have long dreamed of a universal library containing everything that has ever been written.

History is rife with examples of governments taking actions to 'protect' their citizens from harm by controlling access to information and inhibiting freedom of expression and other freedoms outlined in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We must make sure, collectively, that the Internet avoids a similar fate.

If we can put a man on the moon and sequence the human genome, we should be able to devise something close to a universal digital public library.

All the information in the world has been pretty dispersed, but Google's mission has been to organize it and make it universally accessible.

Smart phones and social media expand our universe. We can connect with others or collect information easier and faster than ever.

No one planet can tell us everything about the universe, but Neptune seems to hold more than its share of information about the formation of our own solar system - as well as the solar systems beyond.

If you bang two electrons together with enough energy, you produce protons. If there are no independent laws, then all the properties of protons must somehow be 'known' by the electrons. By extension, every elementary particle must carry around enough information to produce the entire universe. I find that difficult to believe.

The universe is information and we are stationary in it, not three dimensional and not in space or time.

The brain's calculations do not require our conscious effort, only our attention and our openness to let the information through. Although the brain absorbs universes of information, little is admitted into normal consciousness.

It's increasingly clear that governments, major corporations, banks, universities and other such bodies view the defense of their secrets as a desperate matter of institutional survival, so much so that the state has gone to extraordinary lengths to punish and/or threaten to punish anyone who so much as tiptoes across the informational line.

Books in a large university library system: 2,000,000. Books in an average large city library: 10,000. Average number of books in a chain bookstore: 30,000. Books in an average neighborhood branch library: 20,000.

I tell people, 'I have a Ph.D. from Google University.'

When you're bringing in a fairly unknown candidate challenging a sitting president, the population needs a lot more information than reduced coverage provides.