Information Burden Quotes

Bees are sometimes drowned in the honey which they collectso some writers are lost in their collected learning.

The Pentagon suffers from too much Intelligence. They can't use what they get because there is too much collected. It would almost be better if they didn't have it because it's difficult to find out what's important.

How could anyone stay sane with entire lifetimes stored in one human mind?

There, in the tin factory, in the first moment of the atomic age, a human being was crushed by books.

I know of nothing more terrible than the poor creatures who have learned too much. Instead of the sound powerful judgement which would probably have grown up if they had learned nothing, their thoughts creep timidly and hypnotically after words, principles and formulae, constantly by the same paths. What they have acquired is a spider's web of thoughts too weak to furnish sure supports, but complicated enough to provide confusion.

The challenge of email is that people send you stuff for free, and it becomes items on your to-do list.

Pedantry crams our heads with learned lumber and takes out our brains to make room for it.

We find that the manager, particularly at senior levels, is overburdened with work. With the increasing complexity of modern organizations and their problems, he is destined to become more so. He is driven to brevity, fragmentation, and superficiality in his tasks, yet he cannot easily delegate them because of the nature of his information.