Daniel Levitin Quotes

• I don't think I'm always right, but I would like to empower people to come to sound conclusions using a systematic way of looking at things.

  Daniel Levitin

  Thinking   People   Empowering  

  Source: www.pbs.org

  3420

• A bowl of pudding only has taste when I put it in my mouth - when it is in contact with my tongue. It doesn't have taste or flavor sitting in my fridge, only the potential.

  Daniel Levitin

  Flavor   Mouths   Taste  

  Daniel J. Levitin (2006). “This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession”, p.36, Penguin

  3677

• Most of what we know we don't really know first hand. I've never seen a cancer cell. But I trust this community of experts who have, so I believe that cancer exists. But we trust these experts, and we trust that the experts have a system of checks and balances and self-correction. And we have to insist that experts have certain certifications. They're not perfect. Every once in awhile there's an engine falls off the wing of a plane, or a tax audit happens and you find out your expert made a mistake. But it's a pretty good system. It's the best system we've got.

  Daniel Levitin

  Mistake   Cancer   Believe  

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

  3073

• I think, though, that we need to be armed with the critical thinking skills that lawyers and scientists and journalists such as yourself have. We all need to have those as we make our way through the day. And they're not that hard to acquire.

  Daniel Levitin

  Thinking   Lawyer   Scientist  

  Source: www.pbs.org

  2337

• The constant nagging in your mind of undone things pulls you out of the present--tethers you to a mind-set of the future so that you're never fully in the moment and enjoying what's now.

  Daniel Levitin

  Mind   Nagging   Moments  

  Daniel Levitin (2015). “The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload”, p.90, Penguin UK

  3136

• Similarly, dance is not just a raging sea of unrelated bodily movements; the relationship of those movements to one another is what creates integrity and integrality, a coherence and cohesion that the higher levels of our brain process.

  Daniel Levitin

  Integrity   Sea   Brain  

  Daniel J. Levitin (2011). “This Is Your Brain On Music: Understanding a Human Obsession”, p.18, Atlantic Books Ltd

  4242

• We can be skeptical, suitably skeptical, and we can trust news outlets, some more than others.

  Daniel Levitin

  Skeptical  

  Source: www.pbs.org

  2808

• The first forms of writing emerged not for art, literature, or love, not for spiritual or liturgical purposes, but for business--all literature could be said to originate from sales receipts (sorry).

  Daniel Levitin

  Spiritual   Art   Sorry  

  Daniel Levitin (2015). “The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload”, p.33, Penguin UK

  4551

• What makes a set of lines and colors into art is the relationship between this line and that one; the way one color or form echoes another in a different part of the canvas.

  Daniel Levitin

  Art   Color   Echoes  

  Daniel J. Levitin (2011). “This Is Your Brain On Music: Understanding a Human Obsession”, p.18, Atlantic Books Ltd

  3569

• Ten thousand hours is equivalent to roughly three hours a day, or 20 hours a week, of practice over 10 years... No one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.

  Daniel Levitin

  Years   Practice   Class  

  "Malcolm Gladwell on Joy, Gates and the Beatles and on stage" by Jack Schofield, www.theguardian.com. November 16, 2008.

  4407

• In order to be a world-class expert in anything, be it audiology, drama, music, art, gymnastics, whatever, one needs to have a minimum of 10,000 hours of practice. Unfortunately, it doesn't mean that if you put in 10,000 hours that you will become an expert, but there aren't any cases where someone has achieved world-class mastery without it! So the time spent at the activity is indeed the most important and influential factor.

  Daniel Levitin

  Art   Drama   Mean  

  2715

• We're making more and more decisions every day. I think a lot of us feel overloaded by the process.

  Daniel Levitin

  Thinking   Decision  

  Source: www.pbs.org

  217

• For the artist, the goal of the painting or musical composition is not to convey literal truth, but an aspect of a universal truth that if successful, will continue to move and to touch people even as contexts, societies and cultures change. For the scientist, the goal of a theory is to convey "truth for now"--to replace an old truth, while accepting that someday this theory, too, will be replaced by a new "truth," because that is the way science advances.

  Daniel Levitin

  Moving   Successful   Artist  

  1469

• The kind of people who become graphic artists may not be mathematically inclined. They're artists, artistically inclined.

  Daniel Levitin

  Artist   People   Kind  

  Source: www.pbs.org

  1975

• The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert - in anything. In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again…no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.

  Daniel Levitin

  Basketball   Player   Numbers  

  "Outliers: The Story of Success". Book by Malcolm Gladwell, November 18, 2008.

  3598

• I agree with the sentiment that it's probably more dangerous to believe some things that aren't so than to not believe something - you know, to believe in a lie.

  Daniel Levitin

  Lying   Believe   Dangerous  

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4559

• People are trying to build a society where they can talk across the aisle so to speak, and have civil discourse. At the same time we're trying to inform ourselves about what's really true so that we can make evidence based decisions that is better than superstition or rumor. But the fact is that people who use evidence based decision making have much better life outcomes, greater life satisfaction, they live longer, they make better personal and medical decisions, better financial decisions. But parallel to that is you can't reason somebody out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.

  Daniel Levitin

  People   Decision   Rumor  

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

  1555

• Out of 30,000 edible plants thought to exist on earth, just eleven account for 93% of all that humans eat: oats, corn, rice, wheat, potatoes, yucca (also called tapioca or cassava), sorghum, millet, beans, barley, and rye.

  Daniel Levitin

  Oats   Earth   Corn  

  Daniel J. Levitin (2014). “The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload”, p.42, Penguin

  3163

• Music may be the activity that prepared our pre-human ancestors for speech communication and for the very cognitive, representational flexibility necessary to become humans.

  Daniel Levitin

  Music   Communication   Speech  

  Daniel J. Levitin (2011). “This Is Your Brain On Music: Understanding a Human Obsession”, p.260, Atlantic Books Ltd

  2065

• I have never seen a proton or electron spinning around it. I have never actually seen a chromosome. I trust that they exist because people who I trust tell me they do.

  Daniel Levitin

  People  

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4114

• We really are living in an age of information overload. Google estimates that there are 300 exabytes (300 followed by 18 zeros) of human-made information in the world today. Only four years ago there were just 30 exabytes. We've created more information in the past few years than in all of human history before us.

  Daniel Levitin

  Past   Years   Google  

  "Daniel J. Levitin Q&A: 'We've created more information in the past few years than in all of human history before us'". Interview with Lisa O'Kelly, www.theguardian.com. January 18, 2015.

  1288

• No one alive today has a single ancestor in his or her past who died in infancy. We are the champions, my friend!

  Daniel Levitin

  Past   Winning   Champion  

  649

• The power of art is that it can connect us to one another, and to larger truths about what it means to be alive and what it means to be human.

  Daniel Levitin

  Art   Mean   Alive  

  Daniel J. Levitin (2011). “This Is Your Brain On Music: Understanding a Human Obsession”, p.244, Atlantic Books Ltd

  2334

• In order to understand one person speaking to us, we need to process 60 bits of information per second.

  Daniel Levitin

  Order   Needs   Information  

  Daniel J. Levitin (2014). “The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload”, p.25, Penguin

  1311

• Librarians are more important than ever before ... are uniquely qualified to help all of us separate the digital wheat from the chaff, to help us understand the reliability of the data we encounter.

  Daniel Levitin

  Data   Important   Encounters  

  3422

• Those dabs of paint and lines become art when form and flow are created out of lower-level perceptual elements. When they combine harmoniously they give rise to perspective, foreground and background, and ultimately to emotion and other aesthetic attributes.

  Daniel Levitin

  Art   Giving   Perspective  

  Daniel J. Levitin (2011). “This Is Your Brain On Music: Understanding a Human Obsession”, p.18, Atlantic Books Ltd

  1790

• When a language advances and adds a third term to its lexicon for color, the third term is always red.

  Daniel Levitin

  Color   Add   Lexicon  

  Daniel J. Levitin (2014). “The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload”, p.41, Penguin

  1024

• We need to take a step back, and realize that not everything we encounter is true. You don't want to be gullibly accepting everything as true, but you don't want to be cynically rejecting everything as false. You want to take your time to evaluate the information.

  Daniel Levitin

  Realizing   Accepting   Take Your Time  

  Source: www.pbs.org

  1832

• Whenever humans come together for any reason, music is there: weddings, funerals, graduation from college, men marching off to war, stadium sporting events, a night on the town, prayer, a romantic dinner, mothers rocking their infants to sleep ... music is a part of the fabric of everyday life.

  Daniel Levitin

  Mother   Prayer   War  

  Daniel J. Levitin (2011). “This Is Your Brain On Music: Understanding a Human Obsession”, p.6, Atlantic Books Ltd

  4256

• Another possibility is that evolution selected creativity in general as a marker of sexual fitness.

  Daniel Levitin

  Creativity   Evolution   Possibility  

  Daniel J. Levitin (2006). “This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession”, p.258, Penguin

  4484

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