Top 80 Barbara Oakley Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “What, after all, is mathematics but the poetry of the mind, and what is poetry but the mathematics of the heart?” – David Eugene Smith, American mathematician and educator.”

— Barbara Oakley

52. “Internalizing problem-solving techniques enhances the neural activity that allows you to more easily hear the whispers of your growing intuition. When you know – really know – how to solve a problem just by looking at it, you’ve created a commanding chunk that sweeps like a song through your mind.”

— Barbara Oakley

53. “The patient ability to keep working away, a little bit at a time, is important. This is why, if procrastination is an issue for you, it will be critical to learn some of the upcoming neural tricks to effectively address it.”

— Barbara Oakley

54. “You may want your learning to progress more quickly – to somehow command your diffuse mode to assimilate new ideas faster. But compare it to exercise. Constantly lifting weights won’t make your muscles any bigger – your muscles need time to rest and grow before you use them again.”

— Barbara Oakley

55. “Incidentally, the little book Calculus Made Easy, by Silvanus Thompson, has helped generations of students master the subject.”

— Barbara Oakley

56. “Multitasking is like constantly pulling up a plant. This kind of constant shifting of your attention means that new ideas and concepts have no chance to take root and flourish. When you multitask while doing schoolwork, you get tired more quickly. Each tiny shift back and forth of attention siphons off energy. Although each attention switch itself seems tiny, the cumulative result is that you accomplish far less for your effort.”

— Barbara Oakley

57. “There is a deep connection between technical, scientific, and artistic creativity.”

— Barbara Oakley

58. “What we value so much, the altruistic “good” side of human nature, can also have a dark side. Altruism can be the back door to hell.”

— Barbara Oakley

59. “One important key to learning swiftly in math and science is to realize that virtually every concept you learn has an analogy – a comparison – with something you already know.”

— Barbara Oakley

60. “Learning is often paradoxical. The very thing we need in order to learn impedes our ability to learn.”

— Barbara Oakley

61. “Read it over, then look away and see what you can recall – working toward understanding what you are recalling at the same time. Then glance back, reread the concept, and try it again.”

— Barbara Oakley

62. “Enlisting the focused mode, which is often what you need to do to first get a problem into your brain, requires your full attention. Studies have shown that we have only so much mental energy – willpower – for this type of thinking.”

— Barbara Oakley

63. “One of the first steps toward gaining expertise in math and science is to create conceptual chunks – mental leaps that unite separate bits of information through meaning. Once you chunk an idea or concept, you don’t need to remember all the little underlying details; you’ve got the main idea – the chunk – and that’s enough.”

— Barbara Oakley

64. “Rising frustration is usually a good time-out signal for you, signaling that you need to shift to diffuse mode.”

— Barbara Oakley

65. “There is much creativity underlying math and science problem solving. Many people think that there’s only one way to do a problem, but there are often a number of different solutions, if you have the creativity to see them. For example, there are more than three hundred different known proofs of the Pythagorean theorem.”

— Barbara Oakley

66. “The harder you push your brain to come up with something creative, the less creative your ideas will be. So far, I have not found a single situation where this does not apply. Ultimately, this means that relaxation is an important part of hard work – and good work, for that matter.”

— Barbara Oakley

67. “It’s easy to feel distaste for something you’re not good at, but the better you get at something, the more you’ll find you enjoy it.”

— Barbara Oakley

68. “Let Your Mind Work in the Background The next time you are tackling a tough problem, work on it for a few minutes. When you get stuck, move on to another problem. Your diffuse mode can continue working on the tougher problem in the background. When you later return to the tougher problem, you will often be pleasantly surprised by the progress you’ve made.”

— Barbara Oakley

69. “Habit is an energy saver for us. It allows us to free our mind for other types of activities.”

— Barbara Oakley

70. “When you take breaks, your diffuse mode is still working away in the background.”

— Barbara Oakley

71. “We don’t engage in passive rereading because we are dumb or lazy. We do it because we fall prey to a cognitive illusion. When we read material over and over, the material becomes familiar and fluent, meaning it is easy for our minds to process. We then think that this easy processing is a sign that we have learned something well, even though we have not.”

— Barbara Oakley

72. “We learn a great deal from our failures in math and science.”

— Barbara Oakley

73. “Try doing a few situps, pushups, or jumping jacks. A little physical exertion can have a surprisingly positive effect on your ability to understand and recall.”

— Barbara Oakley

74. “There are hidden meanings in equations, just as there are in poetry. If you are a novice looking at an equation in physics, and you’re not taught how to see the life underlying the symbols, the lines will look dead to you. It is when you begin to learn and supply the hidden text that the meaning slips, slides, then finally leaps to life.”

— Barbara Oakley

75. “Once you understand why you do something in math and science, you shouldn’t keep reexplaining the how. Such overthinking can lead to choking.”

— Barbara Oakley

76. “As you can see from the following “top-down, bottom-up” illustration, learning takes place in two ways. There is a bottom-up chunking process where practice and repetition can help you both build and strengthen each chunk, so you can easily gain access to it when needed. And there is a top-down “big picture” process that allows you to see where what you are learning fits in. Both processes are vital in gaining mastery over the material.”

— Barbara Oakley

77. “It seems people can enhance the development of their neuronal circuits by practicing thoughts that use those neurons.9 We’re still in the infancy of understanding neural development, but one thing is becoming clear – we can make significant changes in our brain by changing how we think.”

— Barbara Oakley

78. “The Diffuse Mode – A Spread-Out Pinball Machine.”

— Barbara Oakley

79. “The key is to do something else until your brain is consciously free of any thought of the problem.”

— Barbara Oakley

80. “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool.”8 – Physicist Richard Feynman, advising how to avoid pseudo-science that masquerades as science.”

— Barbara Oakley

81. “Buddha in Blue Jeans.”

— Barbara Oakley

82. “Articulating your question is 80 percent of the battle.”

— Barbara Oakley

83. “A Mind for Numbers is.”

— Barbara Oakley

84. “Enlisting the diffuse mode helps you learn at a deep and creative level.”

— Barbara Oakley

85. “The complex neural activity that ties together our simplifying, abstract chunks of thought – whether those thoughts pertain to acronyms, ideas, or concepts – are the basis of much of science, literature, and art.”

— Barbara Oakley

86. “Figuring out a difficult problem or learning a new concept almost always requires one or more periods when you aren’t consciously working on the problem. Each interlude in which you are not directly focused on the problem allows your diffuse mode to look at it in a fresh way. When you turn your focused attention back to the problem, you consolidate new ideas and patterns that the diffuse mode has delivered.”

— Barbara Oakley