Daniel Levitin

“One of the most important tools in critical thinking about numbers is to grant yourself permission to generate wrong answers to mathematical problems you encounter. Deliberately wrong answer...”

“Critical thinking is not something you do once with an issue and then drop it. It requires that we update our knowledge as new information comes in. Time spent evaluating claims is not just...”

“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 eve...”

“That daydreaming mode turns out to be restorative. It's like hitting the reset button in your brain. And you don't get in that daydreaming mode typically by texting and Facebooking. You get...”

“The history of science and culture is filled with stories of how many of the greatest scientific and artistic discoveries occurred while the creator was not thinking about what he was workin...”

“People who organize their time in a way that allows them to focus are not only going to get more done, but they'll be less tired and less neurochemically depleted after doing it.”

“I'm a simple country neuroscientist, not an expert on democracy, but I do know something about how the brain works and how opinion-reinforcing bubbles can distort the picture of reality we b...”

“In a country that was still racially segregated and prejudiced, music was among the first domains in which African-Americans thrived alongside whites.”

“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.”

“Yes, there were piano bands and great rock pianists, from Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard to Keith Emerson, Rick Wakeman, and Elton John. But something about the electric guitar speaks of...”

“You're entitled your own opinions, but you're not entitled to your own facts.”

“The phrase 'fake news' sounds too playful, too much like a schoolchild faking illness to get out of a test.”

“Our brains are very, very good at self-delusion. What happens is, it releases the stress hormone cortisol in the brain, which leads to foggy thinking, so you're not even able to judge well w...”

“Across a range of inferences involving not just language but mathematics, logic problems, and spatial reasoning, sleep has been shown to enhance the formation and understanding of abstract r...”

“When you're at work, be fully at work. And let your leisure time be what it's meant to be - restorative and fun.”

“Healthy breaks can hit the reset button in your brain, restoring some of the glucose and other metabolic nutrients used up with deep thought. A healthy break is one in which you allow your b...”

“Through studies of music and the brain, we've learned to map out specific areas involved in emotion, timing, and perception - and production of sequences. They've told us how the brain deals...”

“As soon as you hear a proposition, the creative brain in humans assumes for the moment that it's true, and starts trying to find evidence. It's what computer scientists in the old days used...”

“Our to-do lists are so full that we can't hope to complete every item on them. So what do we do? We multitask, juggling several things at once, trying to keep up by keeping busy.”

“Even though we think we're getting a lot done, ironically, multitasking makes us demonstrably less efficient.”