"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