Oliver Sacks Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• The same areas which are active in listening to music are also active when you imagine music, and this includes the motor areas, too. That explains why earlier, even though I was only thinking of the mazurka, I was thinking in terms of movement.

  Oliver Sacks

  Thinking, Listening, Movement

  Source: www.spiegel.de

  12 Copy quote

• The power of music, whether joyous or cathartic must steal on one unawares, come spontaneously as a blessing or a grace--

  Oliver Sacks

  Blessing, Grace, Stealing

  Oliver Sacks (2011). “Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain”, p.239, Pan Macmillan

  6 Copy quote

• It is easy to recollect the good things of life, the times when one's heart rejoices and expands, when everything is enfolded in kindness and love; it is easy to recollect the fineness of life-how noble one was, how generous one felt, what courage one showed in the face of adversity.

  Oliver Sacks

  Kindness, Heart, Adversity

  Oliver Sacks (2011). “A Leg to Stand On”, p.99, Pan Macmillan

  9 Copy quote

• Fascinating, Doidge's book is a remarkable and hopeful portrait of the endless adaptability of the human brain.

  Oliver Sacks

  Book, Hopeful, Brain

  13 Copy quote

• 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,' whereas Dr P. was not fighting, did not know what was lost. But who was more tragic, or who was more damned -- the man who knew it, or the man who did not?

  Oliver Sacks

  Fighting, Men, Differences

  Oliver Sacks (2014). “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: Picador Classic”, p.28, Pan Macmillan

  10 Copy quote

• I was fascinated that one could have such perceptual changes, and also that they went with a certain feeling of significance, an almost numinous feeling. I'm strongly atheist by disposition, but nonetheless when this happened, I couldn't help thinking, 'That must be what the hand of God is like.'

  Oliver Sacks

  Weed, Atheist, Marijuana

  "Oliver Sacks, Exploring How Hallucinations Happen". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. November 6, 2012.

  16 Copy quote

• If migraine patients have a common and legitimate second complaint besides their migraines, it is that they have not been listened to by physicians. Looked at, investigated, drugged, charged, but not listened to.

  Oliver Sacks

  Science, Medicine, Physicians

  Oliver Sacks (2013). “Migraine”, p.309, Vintage

  17 Copy quote

• If we have youth, beauty, blessed gifts, strength, if we find fame, fortune, favor, fulfillment, it is easy to be nice, to turn a warm heart to the world.

  Oliver Sacks

  Nice, Blessed, Heart

  13 Copy quote

• Studies by Andrew Newberg and others have shown that long-term practice of meditation produces significant alterations in cerebral blood flow in parts of the brain related to attention, emotion, and some autonomic functions.

  Oliver Sacks

  Blood, Practice, Long

  Oliver Sacks (2012). “Hallucinations”, p.145, Pan Macmillan

  11 Copy quote

• I feel I should be trying to complete my life, whatever completing a life means.

  Oliver Sacks

  Mean, Trying, Should

  Oliver Sacks (2015). “Gratitude”, p.9, Pan Macmillan

  14 Copy quote

• Music originally had a social function. You were in church, in a concert hall, a marching band; you were dancing. I'm concerned that music could be too separated from its roots and just become a pleasure-giving experience, like a drug.

  Oliver Sacks

  Roots, Giving, Dancing

  13 Copy quote

• The rhythm of music is very, very important for people with Parkinson's. But it's also very important with other sorts of patients, such as patients with Tourette's syndrome. Music helps them bring their impulses and tics under control. There is even a whole percussion orchestra made up exclusively of Tourette's patients.

  Oliver Sacks

  People, Important, Orchestra

  Source: www.spiegel.de

  9 Copy quote

• In general, people are afraid to acknowledge hallucinations because they immediately see them as a sign of something awful happening to the brain, whereas in most cases theyre not.

  Oliver Sacks

  People, Brain, Awful

  7 Copy quote

• The power of music and the plasticity of the brain go together very strikingly, especially in young people.

  Oliver Sacks

  People, Brain, Together

  10 Copy quote

• I was always the youngest boy in my class at high school. I have retained this feeling of being the youngest, even though now I am almost the oldest person I know.

  Oliver Sacks

  School, Boys, Class

  Oliver Sacks (2015). “Gratitude”, p.9, Pan Macmillan

  13 Copy quote

• I think the brain is a dynamic system in which some parts control or suppress other parts. And if perhaps one has damage in one of the controlling or suppressing areas, then you may have the emergence or eruption of something, whether it is a seizure, a criminal trait - - or even a sudden musical passion.

  Oliver Sacks

  Passion, Thinking, Musical

  Source: www.spiegel.de

  12 Copy quote

• Dangerously well’— what an irony is this: it expresses precisely the doubleness, the paradox, of feeling ‘too well

  Oliver Sacks

  Feelings, Irony, Paradox

  Oliver Sacks (2014). “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: Picador Classic”, p.84, Pan Macmillan

  9 Copy quote

• Sign language is the equal of speech, lending itself equally to the rigorous and the poetic, to philosophical analysis or to making love.

  Oliver Sacks

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Science

  Oliver Sacks (2013). “Seeing Voices”, Vintage

  12 Copy quote

• When I was five, I am told, and asked what my favorite things in the world were, I answered, smoked salmon and Bach.

  Oliver Sacks

  Salmon, World, Favorites Things

  Oliver Sacks (2011). “Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood”, p.121, Pan Macmillan

  9 Copy quote

• Muscular dystrophy ... was never seen until Duchenne described it in the 1850s. By 1860, after his original description, many hundreds of cases had been recognised and described, so much so that Charcot said: 'How is it that a disease so common, so widespread, and so recognisable at a glance - a disease which has doubtless always existed - how is it that it is recognised only now? Why did we need M. Duchenne to open our eyes?'

  Oliver Sacks

  Eye, Needs, Disease

  10 Copy quote

• Some people with Tourette's have flinging tics- sudden, seemingly motiveless urges or compulsions to throw objects..... (I see somewhat similar flinging behaviors- though not tics- in my two year old godson, now in a stage of primal antinomianism and anarchy)

  Oliver Sacks

  Years, Two Year Olds, People

  Oliver Sacks (2007). “Vintage Sacks”, p.116, Vintage

  9 Copy quote

• With any hallucinations, if you can do functional brain imagery while theyre going on, you will find that the parts of the brain usually involved in seeing or hearing - in perception - have become super active by themselves. And this is an autonomous activity; this does not happen with imagination.

  Oliver Sacks

  Imagination, Perception, Brain

  8 Copy quote

• he wanted to do, to be, to feel- and could not; he wanted sense, he wanted purpose- in Freud's words, 'Work and Love'.

  Oliver Sacks

  And Love, Purpose, Feels

  Oliver Sacks (2014). “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: Picador Classic”, p.43, Pan Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

• Enhancement not only allows the possibilities of a healthy fullness and exuberance, but of a rather ominous extravagance, aberration, monstrosity ... This danger is built into the very nature of growth and life. Growth can become over-growth, life 'hyper-life' ... The paradox of an illness which can present as wellness - as a wonderful feeling of health and well-being, and only later reveal its malignant potentials - is one of the chimaeras, tricks and ironies of nature.

  Oliver Sacks

  Health, Feelings, Growth

  8 Copy quote

• I have often seen quite demented patients recognize and respond vividly to paintings and delight in the act of painting at a time when they are scarcely responsive, disoriented, and out of it.

  Oliver Sacks

  Health, Delight, Patient

  6 Copy quote

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