the man with the memory who couldn't think

Jorge Luis Borges [1899-1986]

"Without effort, he had learned English, French, Portuguese, Latin. I suspect, nevertheless, that he was not very capable of thought. To think is to forget a difference, to generalize, to abstract. In the overly replete world of Funes there were nothing but details, almost contiguous details."
- Jorge Luis Borges, Funes, the Memorious, 1942

An earlier reference to memory here.