# Daniel Levitin

- Quotes: 63
- Author page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-levitin

## Books

- [The Organized Mind](https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-levitin/the-organized-mind.md) — 15 quotes
- [The World in Six Songs](https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-levitin/the-world-in-six-songs.md) — 11 quotes
- [This Is Your Brain on Music](https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-levitin/this-is-your-brain-on-music.md) — 37 quotes

## Recently added quotes

> Recent research in social psychology has shown that happy people are not people who have more; rather, they are people who are happy with what they already have. Happy people engage in satisficing all of the time, even if they don’t know it.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-levitin/the-organized-mind/recent-research-in-social.md)

> The point of art is to emphasize some elements at the expense of others.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-levitin/the-world-in-six-songs/the-point-of-art.md)

> 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.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-levitin/the-organized-mind/youd-think-people.md)

> In 1976, the average supermarket stocked 9,000 unique products; today that number has ballooned to 40,000 of them, yet the average person gets 80%–85% of their needs in only 150 different supermarket items. That means that we need to ignore 39,850 items in the store.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-levitin/the-organized-mind/in-1976-the.md)

> Former secretary of state George Shultz, reflecting on forty years of United States foreign policy from 1970 to the present, said, “When I think about all the money we spent on bombs and munitions, and our failures in Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan and other places around the world . . . Instead of advancing our agenda using force, we should have instead built schools and hospitals in these countries, improving the lives of their children. By now, those children would have grown into positions of influence, and they would be grateful to us instead of hating us.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-levitin/the-organized-mind/former-secretary-of-state.md)

> Memory is fallible... not because of storage limitations so much as retrieval limitations.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-levitin/the-organized-mind/memory-is-fallible.md)

> The six types of song that have shaped human nature—friendship, joy, comfort, knowledge, religion, and love songs—I've come to think are obvious...

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-levitin/the-world-in-six-songs/the-six-types.md)

> 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.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-levitin/the-organized-mind/out-of-30-000.md)

> We may have had music before we had a word for it.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-levitin/the-world-in-six-songs/we-may-have.md)

> Evolution doesn't design things... The brain is... like a big, old house with piecemeal renovations done on every floor, and less like new construction.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-levitin/the-organized-mind/evolution-doesnt-design.md)

> Creative brains became more attractive during centuries of sexual selection because they could solve a wider range of unanticipatable problems. ...Humans who just happened to find creativity attractive may have hitched their reproductive wagons to musicians and artists, and... conferred a survival advantage on their offspring.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-levitin/the-world-in-six-songs/creative-brains-became.md)

> Both poetry and lyrics and all visual arts draw their power from their ability to express abstractions of reality. ...that is a feature of the musical brain.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-levitin/the-world-in-six-songs/both-poetry-and.md)