Oliver Sacks Quotes

Quotes about:

• There will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever. When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate - the genetic and neural fate - of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death.

  Oliver Sacks

  Life, Death, Fate

  Oliver Sacks (2015). “Gratitude”, p.14, Pan Macmillan

  378 Copy quote

• Music can move us to the heights or depths of emotion. It can persuade us to buy something, or remind us of our first date. It can lift us out of depression when nothing else can. It can get us dancing to its beat. But the power of music goes much, much further. Indeed, music occupies more areas of our brain than language does-humans are a musical species.

  Oliver Sacks

  Moving, Dancing, Musical

  Oliver Sacks (2013). “Migraine”, p.445, Vintage

  152 Copy quote

• In examining disease, we gain wisdom about anatomy and physiology and biology. In examining the person with disease, we gain wisdom about life.

  Oliver Sacks

  Life, Anatomy And Physiology, Disease

  "Literature about medicine may be all that can save us" by Andrew Solomon, www.theguardian.com. April 22, 2016.

  225 Copy quote

• To live on a day-to-day basis is insufficient; we need to transcend, transport, escape; we need meaning, understanding, and explanation; we need to see over-all patterns in our lives. We need hope, the sense of a future; the freedom to get beyond ourselves...in states of mind that allow us to rise above our immediate surroundings and see the beauty and value of the world we live in.

  Oliver Sacks

  Understanding, Mind, Needs

  114 Copy quote

• The power of music to integrate and cure. . . is quite fundamental. It is the profoundest nonchemical medication.

  Oliver Sacks

  Music, Fundamentals, Integrating

  176 Copy quote

• We see with the eyes, but we see with the brain as well. And seeing with the brain is often called imagination.

  Oliver Sacks

  Eye, Imagination, Brain

  143 Copy quote

• Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.

  Oliver Sacks

  Beautiful, Adventure, Animal

  Oliver Sacks (2015). “Gratitude”, p.14, Pan Macmillan

  196 Copy quote

• 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. Each of us is a singular narrative, which is constructed, continually, unconsciously, by, through, and in us--through our perceptions, our feelings, our thoughts, our actions; and, not least, our discourse, our spoken narrations. Biologically, physiologically, we are not so different from each other; historically, as narratives--we are each of us unique.

  Oliver Sacks

  Real, Unique, Men

  189 Copy quote

• 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.

  Oliver Sacks

  Memories, Imagination, Perception

  Oliver Sacks (2011). “Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain”, p.127, Pan Macmillan

  160 Copy quote

• My religion is nature. That’s what arouses those feelings of wonder and mysticism and gratitude in me.

  Oliver Sacks

  Gratitude, Feelings, Wonder

  168 Copy quote

• Music can lift us out of depression or move us to tears - it is a remedy, a tonic, orange juice for the ear. But for many of my neurological patients, music is even more - it can provide access, even when no medication can, to movement, to speech, to life. For them, music is not a luxury, but a necessity.

  Oliver Sacks

  Depression, Moving, Orange Juice

  125 Copy quote

• People will make a life in their own terms, whether they are deaf or colorblind or autistic or whatever. And their world will be quite as rich and interesting and full as our world.

  Oliver Sacks

  Our World, People, Interesting

  142 Copy quote

• We speak not only to tell other people what we think, but to tell ourselves what we think. Speech is a part of thought.

  Oliver Sacks

  Communication, Thinking, People

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

  87 Copy quote

• 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 interact with dozens or hundreds of others, their total integration creating something like a vastly complicated orchestra with thousands of instruments, an orchestra that conducts itself, with an ever-changing score and repertoire.

  Oliver Sacks

  Creating, Brain, Orchestra

  84 Copy quote

• There is only one cardinal rule: One must always listen to the patient.

  Oliver Sacks

  Science, Medicine, Physicians

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

  45 Copy quote

• Much more of the brain is devoted to movement than to language. Language is only a little thing sitting on top of this huge ocean of movement.

  Oliver Sacks

  Ocean, Brain, Sitting

  86 Copy quote

• 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 a self—himself—he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it.

  Oliver Sacks

  Eye, Men, Self

  Oliver Sacks (2014). “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: Picador Classic”, p.42, Pan Macmillan

  104 Copy quote

• Music is...a fundamental way of expressing our humanity - and it is often our best medicine.

  Oliver Sacks

  Medicine, Humanity, Fundamentals

  60 Copy quote

• Music evokes emotion and emotion can bring it's memory.

  Oliver Sacks

  Memories, Emotion, Evoke

  16 Copy quote

• Music can lift us out of depression or move us to tears - it is a remedy, a tonic, orange juice for the ear.

  Oliver Sacks

  Moving, Orange Juice, Inspirational Music

  38 Copy quote

• The past which is not recoverable in any other way is embedded, as if in amber, in the music, and people can regain a sense of identity.

  Oliver Sacks

  Past, People, Identity

  17 Copy quote

• 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 a unique power to express inner states or feelings. Music can pierce the heart directly; it needs no mediation.

  Oliver Sacks

  Art, Unique, Emotional

  Oliver Sacks (2008). “Musicophilia”, p.232, Vintage

  79 Copy quote

• I regard music therapy as a tool of great power in many neurological disorders -- Parkinson's and Alzheimer's -- because of its unique capacity to organize or reorganize cerebral function when it has been damaged.

  Oliver Sacks

  Unique, Alzheimer's, Tools

  14 Copy quote

• Music has a bonding power, it's primal social cement

  Oliver Sacks

  Social, Bonding, Cement

  22 Copy quote

• 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, of ourselves. A man needs such a narrative, a continuous inner narrative, to maintain his identity, his self.

  Oliver Sacks

  Drama, Men, Self

  Oliver Sacks (2014). “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: Picador Classic”, p.101, Pan Macmillan

  31 Copy quote

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