"Stop. You've defined an area of knowledge greater than
an individual can cover in a lifetime."
"Not true!" Donald was gathering confidence by the moment.
"Of course you can't if you've been thaught the way I
have, on the basis of memorising facts, but what one ought
to learn is how to extract patterns! You don't bother to
mesmorise the literature—you learn to read and keep a shelf
of books. You don't mesmorise log and sine tables; you buy a
slide-rule or learn to punch a public computer!" A helpless
gesture. "You don't have to know everything. You simply
need to know where to find it when necessary."
©John Brunner — Stand On Zanzibar