Information Quotes

There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.

For years, we've been bludgeoned with the cliche "information is power." But information isn't power. After all, who's got the most information in your neighborhood? Librarians. And they're famous for having no power at all. And who has the most power in your community? Politicians. And they're notorious for being ill-informed.

Banking is a branch of the information business.

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.

Neither the rich nor the poor have great interest in government. The rich can afford their own security … in their gated communities and their own information networks. The poor are usually so pushed against the wall that they do not have time for the mechanics of the government. If you lose the middle class, you lose democratic government.

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.

Nothing is pleasanter to me than exploring in a library.

[…] a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it

Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie.

A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or perhaps both ... And a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power that knowledge gives.

Knowledge is power. Information is power. The secreting or hoarding of knowledge or information may be an act of tyranny camouflaged as humility.

He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.

To give truth to him who loves it not is but to give him more plentiful material for misinterpretation.

Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is THE BEST.

The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them. It is said that leaders are readers. However if they read trashy magazines for the majority of their time and they never run with the information that they glean from resourceful books, then they may as well have not taken any time to read at all. It is easier to stay out than get out.

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

Today, no country can ever truly cut itself off from the global media or from external sources of information. Trends that start in one corner of the world are rapidly replicated thousands of miles away.

It's all storytelling, you know. That's what journalism is all about.

My greatest concern was what to call it. I thought of calling it 'information,' but the word was overly used, so I decided to call it 'uncertainty.' When I discussed it with John von Neumann, he had a better idea. Von Neumann told me, 'You should call it entropy, for two reasons. In the first place your uncertainty function has been used in statistical mechanics under that name, so it already has a name. In the second place, and more important, no one really knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage.'

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.

Atoms for Peace

Whatever the cost of our libraries is, it is cheap compared to the cost of an ignorant nation.

The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust.

In terms of preparation, if there's some historical context that's needed, I do like to read a lot. Working on Joe Kennedy for 'Boardwalk,' I read a couple of biographies on him. It's nice to have a broader context of the man outside of where the show is coming from.