Nate Silver Quotes

I think it's true we look forward to enormous amounts of information, but I think we would be better off if we thought about the kinds of wisdom and thoughtfulness that we need in order to handle the amount of information ahead.

Information is a source of learning. But unless it is organized, processed, and available to the right people in a format for decision making, it is a burden, not a benefit.

We must develop knowledge optimization initiatives to leverage our key learnings.

Here's the thing: If you're monitoring every single thing that goes on in a given culture, if you have all the information that is there to be had, then that is the equivalent of having none of it. How are you going to process that amount of information?

Distinguishing the signal from the noise requires both scientific knowledge and self-knowledge.

We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.

In politics, information is superabundant—what is needed is judgement and selectivity in dealing with that information.

It is my job to know the difference between information and intelligence.

I'm kind of fascinated by this idea that we can surround ourselves with information: we can just pile up data after data after data and arm ourselves with facts and yet still not be able to answer the questions that we have.

I don't think we should have less information in the world. The information age has yielded great advances in medicine, agriculture, transportation and many other fields. But the problem is twofold. One, we are assaulted with more information than any one of us can handle. Two, beyond the overload, too much information often leads to bad decisions.

When everybody has access to an avalanche of information, becoming a master thinker is very important in your life-long security.

Education helps you to be a well-rounded person, period. It teaches you how to take in information and data, process it, and use it for life building. Education was key in my family. You were going to college.

The level of ignorance is declining, and the ability to accumulate data and manipulate it for various ends is increasing.

I'm not a big believer in doing too much research - I think you can get lost in it. You can get constrained by it, which I think is a mistake. But if you've done your homework, the audience feels it.

Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

Knowledge is power only if man knows what facts not to bother with.

Henry Kissinger once told me he was very concerned about the Internet's impact on people's ability to absorb information in a concentrated way, because we've become accustomed to looking up something, getting a snippet and being satisfied with that - as opposed to reading through and considering a weighty tome that goes into great depth.

Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.

I retain what's interesting to me, but I don't have a lot of strategic depth.

Many people make the mistake of confusing information with knowledge. They are not the same thing. Knowledge involves the interpretation of information. Knowledge involves listening.

I am a writer and editor with a passion for true storytelling. To me, science matters, research matters and knowledge matters, whatever the field.

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

The Internet is the single biggest creator of ignorance mankind has ever created, as well as the single biggest eliminator of that ignorance. It’s our ability to filter that eliminates the former and empowers the latter.

We mistake being able to get lots of information from everywhere very quickly with actually getting knowledge.

Skills acquisition is really at the heart of what it means to learn.