118 Quotes by Daniel Levitin

Our bodies like rhythm and our brains like melody and harmony.

The mammalian brain evolved exquisite place memory because that was essential for survival. This is why squirrels have such a good memory for where they buried their nuts.

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.

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.

The amount of scientific information we’ve discovered in the last twenty years is more than all the discoveries up to that point, from the beginning of language.

You’d think people would realize they’re bad at multitasking and would quit. But a cognitive illusion sets in, fueled in part by a dopamine-adrenaline feedback loop, in which multitaskers think they are doing great.

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.

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.

The processing capacity of the conscious mind has been estimated at 120 bits per second.