It won't work,' Mr. Bentley continued, sipping his tea. 'No matter how hard you try to be what you once were, you can only be what you are here and now. Time hypnotizes. When you're nine, you think you've always been nine years old and will always be. When you're thirty, it seems you've always been balanced there on that bright rim of middle life. And then when you turn seventy, you are always and forever seventy. You're in the present, you're trapped in a young now or an old now, but there is no other now to be seen.
Ray BradburyCram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then theyโll feel theyโre thinking, theyโll get a sense of motion without moving. And theyโll be happy, because facts of that sort donโt change. Donโt give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.
Ray Bradbury