All Oliver Sacks Quotes
- Music is part of being human. Human
- In examining disease, we gain wisdom about anatomy and physiology and biology. In examining the person with disease, we gain wisdom about life. Anatomy
- Every act of perception, is to some degree an act of creation, and every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination. Act
- The miracle is that, in most cases, he succeeds - for the powers of survival, of the will to survive, and to survive as a… Absolutely
- The brain is more than an assemblage of autonomous modules, each crucial for a specific mental function. Every one of these functionally specialized areas must… Areas
- Language, that most human invention, can enable what, in principle, should not be possible. It can allow all of us, even the congenitally blind, to… All
- If we wish to know about a man, we ask 'what is his story--his real, inmost story?'--for each of us is a biography, a story.… Action
- he wanted to do, to be, to feel- and could not; he wanted sense, he wanted purpose- in Freud's words, 'Work and Love'. Feel
- There are, of course, inherent tendencies to repetition in music itself. Our poetry, our ballads, our songs are full of repetition; nursery rhymes and the… Adults
- Given her deafness, the auditory part of the brain, deprived of its usual input, had started to generate a spontaneous activity of its own, and… Active
- The power of music, whether joyous or cathartic must steal on one unawares, come spontaneously as a blessing or a grace-- Blessing
- There is certainly a universal and unconscious propensity to impose a rhythm even when one hears a series of identical sounds at constant intervals... We… Clock
- We speak not only to tell other people what we think, but to tell ourselves what we think. Speech is a part of thought. Community
- If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost… Cannot Know
- Astounded—and indifferent—for he was a man who, in effect, had no ‘day before’. Astounded
- And so was Luria, whose words now came back to me: ‘A man does not consist of memory alone. He has feeling, will, sensibility, moral… Action
- But the saddest difference between them was that Zazetsky, as Luria said, 'fought to regain his lost faculties with the indomitable tenacity of the damned,'… Damned
- Music evokes emotion and emotion can bring it's memory. Bring
- Dangerously well’— what an irony is this: it expresses precisely the doubleness, the paradox, of feeling ‘too well Dangerously
- To be ourselves we must have ourselves – possess, if need be re-possess, our life-stories. We must “recollect” ourselves, recollect the inner drama, the narrative,… Continuous
- Music, uniquely among the arts, is both completely abstract and profoundly emotional. It has no power to represent anything particular or external, but it has… Abstract
- At 11, I could say ‘I am sodium’ (Element 11), and now at 79, I am gold. Element
- We have five senses in which we glory and which we recognize and celebrate, senses that constitute the sensible world for us. But there are… Automatic
- Nature gropes and blunders and performs the crudest acts. There is no steady advance upward. There is no design. Acts
- Elements and birthdays have been intertwined for me since boyhood, when I learned about atomic numbers. Atomic