Information Usage Quotes

The common wisdom is that only about 1 percent of a novelist's research ends up in his or her book. In my experience, it's even less - closer to a tenth of a percent.

Information is a beacon, a cudgel, an olive branch, a deterrent--all depending on who wields it and how.

[on education] It's knowing where to go to find out what you need to know, and it's knowing how to use the information once you get it.

Do not seek for information of which you cannot make use.

Did you ever notice that people who are good with a computer don't use it for much of anything except being good with a computer? They know all about information technology, but they don't have much interest in the information. I'm the opposite.

An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't. It's knowing where to go to find out what you need to know, and it's knowing how to use the information once you get it.

Any information is valuable to the degree that you can use it.

An actor will use every piece of information at their disposal, or a good actor will.

Of course, having information to use is one thing. Knowing what it means and how to use it is a different story.

When intelligent people read, they ask themselves a simple question: What do I plan to do with this information?

If you've got information about an opponent running against you, wouldn't you want that information - to vet it, to see if it's real information, and to use it accordingly?

We have more information now than we can use, and less knowledge and understanding than we need. Indeed, we seem to collect information because we have the ability to do so, but we are so busy collecting it that we haven't devised a means of using it. The true measure of any society is not what it knows but what it does with what it knows.

If you know a lot about something and apply that information to a vote that matches your policy preferences, your opinion quality is high.

I think that's always very valuable: to keep the mind open to receiving all sorts of information, which can then be used in my work, but also just as a human being.