Quote

The Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger (tutor to Nero) complained that his peers were wasting time and money accumulating too many books, admonishing that the abundance of books is a distraction. Instead, Seneca recommended focusing on a limited number of good books, to be read thoroughly and repeatedly.

Daniel Levitin

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Daniel Levitin
Age: 54
Composer
Journalist
Music Journalist
Neurologist
Neuroscientist
Psychologist
Record Producer
San Francisco County
California
Daniel J. Levitin
Daniel Joseph Levitin
Many
Philosopher
Roman
Seneca
Good
Number
Focusing
Nero
Time
Instead
Thoroughly
Accumulating
Numbers
Peers
Complained
Books
Distraction
Tutor
Read
Abundance
Recommended
Money
Limited
Repeatedly
Book
Younger
Wasting

More quotes by Daniel Levitin

Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The most fundamental principle of the organized mind, the one most critical to keeping us from forgetting or losing things, is to shift the burden of organizing from our brains to the external world.
Daniel Levitin
Image
Although I don't know Paul McCartney, a mutual friend told me that Paul was reading my book, This Is Your Brain on Music, and stopped after chapter two. McCartney said he was concerned that if he learned more about how he does what he does (as far as composing music), he may not be able to do it anymore!
Daniel Levitin
Image
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
Image
Our bodies like rhythm and our brains like melody and harmony.
Daniel Levitin
Image
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.
Daniel Levitin
Image
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
Image
No other species lives with regret over past events, or makes deliberate plans for future ones.
Daniel Levitin
Image
When a language advances and adds a third term to its lexicon for color, the third term is always red.
Daniel Levitin
Image
Another possibility is that evolution selected creativity in general as a marker of sexual fitness.
Daniel Levitin
Image
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
Image
It's getting harder and harder to know, when you find things on the Internet, what you can believe and what you can't.
Daniel Levitin
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The processing capacity of the conscious mind has been estimated at 120 bits per second.
Daniel Levitin
Image
When we have learned something, there's this thing called belief perseverance. Having learned something, we tend to cling to that belief, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Daniel Levitin