Information Digestion Quotes

Just as one spoils the stomach by overfeeding and thereby impairs the whole body, so can one overload and choke the mind by giving it too much nourishment. For the more one reads the fewer are the traces left of what one has read; the mind is like a tablet that has been written over and over. Hence it is impossible to reflect; and it is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one has read. If one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later, what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost.

If one has not read the newspapers for some months and then reads them all together, one sees, as one never saw before, how much time is wasted with this kind of literature.

I try when I'm writing to fill my head and my ears with all sorts of stuff and then let it settle and filter through. At a certain point it seems like fruitless activity because you're taking a lot of time and not seeming to get anything. And then, slowly, you realize you've actually digested elements and that your thinking is being freed up and the way you build up compositions is changed as a result of what you've been listening to.

I think people who read Internet blogs are usually trying to fit it in during a busy part of their day, and there's only so much information that you digest. Whereas an experience with a book is a little more comfortable, and I think people are a little more willing to really delve into information.

I'm doing a lot of cognitive processing. I'm gathering research. I'm processing it. I'm arranging the data. I'm sorting out the narrative. I'm designing. It's almost as if I do all the cognitive work that you then don't have to do. I digest it, process it, and then offer something that's very easy for you to digest.

Food for the mind is like food for the body: the inputs are never the same as the outputs.

It is remarkable, all that men can swallow. For a good ten minutes I read a newspaper. I allowed the spirit of an irresponsible man who chews and munches another's words in his mouth, and gives them out again undigested, to enter into me through my eyes.

The middle sort of historians (of which the most part are) spoil all; they will chew our meat for us.

Managers are to information as alcoholics are to booze. They consume enormous amounts, constantly crave more, but have great difficulty in digesting their existing intake.