Source: 1960s, Beyond Economics: Essays on Society, 1968, p. 142
“The importance of information is directly proportional to its improbability.”
Lucifer's Hammer (1985)
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Jerry Pournelle 10
American science fiction writer and journalist 1933–2017Related quotes

“Your ability to generate power is directly proportional to your ability to relax.”
Source: Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

Source: Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844/The Communist Manifesto

Source: The Social Function of Science (1939), p. 249

Source: Computerworld 25th Anniversary edition, June 22, 1992, p 43, https://books.google.com/books?id=eiRpHBklEHQC&pg=RA1-PA42&lpg=RA1-PA42&dq=computerworld+%2B+a+person+matures+embarrassment&source=bl&ots=bMx50Sem4y&sig=hzsMesVv-vntfgEfrroBc0YrorQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi93rKcucDJAhVL22MKHTBvCDAQ6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q=computerworld%20%2B%20a%20person%20matures%20embarrassment&f=false

“Passion was inversely proportional to the amount of real information available.”
Source: Timescape (1980), Chapter 14 (p. 182, known as Benford's law of controversy)
Context: It was an example of what he thought of as the Law of Controversy: Passion was inversely proportional to the amount of real information available.
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985)
Context: In the Middle Ages, there was a scarcity of information but its very scarcity made it both important and usable. This began to change, as everyone knows, in the late 15th century when a goldsmith named Gutenberg, from Mainz, converted an old wine press into a printing machine, and in so doing, created what we now call an information explosion.... Nothing could be more misleading than the idea that computer technology introduced the age of information. The printing press began that age, and we have not been free of it since.
Source: 1960s, Beyond Economics: Essays on Society, 1968, p. 142

“A man is rational in proportion as his intelligence informs and controls his desires.”
Source: Sceptical Essays