information quotes

Her mind was less difficult to develop. She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper.

-Jane Austen
  Of Mrs Bennet. Pride and Prejudice, ch.1.

Information is any difference that makes a difference.

- Gregory Bateson
  Quoted in Scientific  American, no.41, Sep.

I onlyask for information.

- CharlesJohn Huffam Dickens
^50  Rosa Dartle. David Copperfield, ch.20.

Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

-T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
  The Rock, pt.1.

I am the very model of a modern Major-General, I've information vegetable, animal and mineral, I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical, From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical.

- Sir W(illiam) S(chwenck) Gilbert
   The Major-General's song, The Pirates of Penzance, act1.

Science must be understood as a social phenomenon, a gutsy, human enterprise, not the work of robots programmed to collect pure information.

- StephenJay Gould
The Mismeasure of Man.

We are only beginning to understand on how subtle a communication system the functioning of an advanced industrial society is baseda communications system which we call the market and which turns out to be a more efficient mechanism for digesting dispersed information than any that man has deliberately designed.

- Friedrich August von Hayek
  New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas,'The Pretence of Knowledge'.

   Knowledge is oftwo kinds.We knowa subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.

- Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
  Remark,18  Apr. Quoted in  James Boswell  The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.2.

Withholding information from someone is an act of intellectual imperialism. Not bothering to seek accurate information is an act of intellectual recklessness.

- Nancy Kline
  Time to Think.

Teachersa bunch of men all armed with the same information.

-Yukio pseudonym of  Hiraoka Kimitake Mishima
Acts ofWorship,'Cigarette' (translated byJohn Bester,1989).

Information, freefrominterestorprejudice, freefromthe vanity of the writer or the influence of a Government, is as necessary to the human mind as pure air and water to the human body.

-William Rees-Mogg, Baron Rees-Mogg
  Christian Science Monitor, 22 Sep.

  He read partly for information, partly for comparison, partly for insight, partly for the sheer joy of felicitous statement.He delighted particularly inquotationswhich distilled the essence of an argument.

- Arthur M(eier),Jr Schlesinger
  Of John F Kennedy. AThousand Days.

Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.

- Gertrude Stein
  'Reflection on theAtomic Bomb', collected in Robert A Goodwin (ed) Readings inWorld Politics (1959).

   What is called science today consists of a haphazard heap of information, united by nothing, often utterly unnecessary, and not only failing to present one unquestionable truth, but as often as not containing the grossest errors today put forward as truths, and tomorrow overthrown.

- Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy
  What is Art? (translated byV Tchertkoff).

To a considerable degree science consists in originating the maximum amount of information with the minimum expenditure of energy.

- Edward O(sborne) Wilson
  Biophilia.

Die Probleme werden gel o« st, nicht durch Beibringen neuer Erfahrung, sondern durch Zusammenstellung des l a« ngst Bekannten. Die Philosophie ist ein Kampf gegen dieVerhexung unseresVerstandes durch die Mittel unserer Sprache. The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have always known. Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.

- LudwigJosef Johann Wittgenstein
  Philosophische Untersuchungen (Philosophical Investigations), section109 (translated by G E M Anscombe).

Banking is a branch of the information business.

-Walter Bigelow Wriston
  Risk and Other Four-LettersWords.

Rising prices or wages do not cause inflation; they only report it. They represent an essential form of economic speech, sincemoney isjust another form of information.

-Walter Bigelow Wriston
  Risk and Other Four-LetterWords.