Anything that just adds information you can't use is plain dangerous. Anyway, there's too much of everything of this kind, that's come home to me, too much history and culture to keep track of, too many details, too much news, too much example, too much influence, too many guys who tell you to be as they are, and all this hugeness, abundance, turbulence, Niagara Falls torrent. Which who is supposed to interpret? Me? I haven't got that much head to master it all. I get carried away. It doesn't give my feelings enough of a chance if I have to store up and become like an encyclopedia. Why, just as a question of time spent in getting prepared for life, look! a man could spent forty, fifty, sixty years like that inside the walls of his own being. And all high conversation would take place within those walls. And all achievement would stay within those walls. And all glamour too. And even hate, monstrousness, enviousness, murder, would be inside them. This would be only a terrible, hideous dream about existing. It's better to dig ditches and hit other guys with your shovel than die in the walls. Saul Bellow
About This Quote

A man who has a lot of information to consider is at a disadvantage in a fight. A man who can't think under pressure is going to be rendered helpless by an opponent. And, often, a man who can't think under pressure is going to get his just desserts for being impulsive and foolish. That's the cruel reality of violent confrontations between men.

Many people have been killed or seriously injured because they were too busy thinking about themselves to be able to deal with the situation at hand. In short, anything that just adds information you can't use is plain dangerous.

Source: The Adventures Of Augie March

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