Latest Oliver Sacks Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• Even when other powers have been lost and people may not even be able to understand language, they will nearly always recognize and respond to familiar tunes. And not only that. The tunes may carry them back and may give them memory of scenes and emotions otherwise unavailable for them.

  Oliver Sacks

  Memories, People, Giving

  Source: www.spiegel.de

• Although I think it is wonderful to have the whole world of music available in something that small and to have it conveyed with such fidelity almost straight into the brain, I think the technology is also a danger.

  Oliver Sacks

  Technology, Thinking, Brain

  Source: www.spiegel.de

• 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

• It seems that the brain always has to be active, and if the auditory parts of the brain are not getting sufficient input, then they may start to create hallucinatory sounds on their own. Although it is curious that they do not usually create noises or voices; they create music.

  Oliver Sacks

  Voice, Brain, Sound

  Source: www.spiegel.de

• I think there are dozens or hundreds of different forms of creativity. Pondering science and math problems for years is different from improvising jazz. Something which seems to me remarkable is how unconscious the creative process is. You encounter a problem, but can't solve it.

  Oliver Sacks

  Creativity, Math, Thinking

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

• 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

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

  Oliver Sacks

  People, Brain, Together

• My impression is that a sense of rhythm, which has no analog in language, is unique and that its correlation with movement is unique to human beings. Why else would children start to dance when they're two or three? Chimpanzees don't dance.

  Oliver Sacks

  Children, Unique, Two

  Source: www.spiegel.de

• I suspect that music has qualities both of speech and writing - partly built in, partly individually constructed - and this goes on all through one's life.

  Oliver Sacks

  Writing, Quality, Goes On

  Source: www.spiegel.de

• If a man with a dog sits quietly enjoying music and smiling, his dog might sit down beside him and smile, too. But who knows whether the dog is having a comparable experience or whether the dog is simply happy that his master is happy.

  Oliver Sacks

  Dog, Men, Simply Happy

  Source: www.spiegel.de

• I think there is no culture in which music is not very important and central. That's why I think of us as a sort of musical species.

  Oliver Sacks

  Thinking, Musical, Important

  Source: www.spiegel.de

• There is no one part of the brain which recognizes or responds emotionally to music. Instead, there are many different parts responding to different aspects of music: to pitch, to frequency, to timbre, to tonal intervals, to consonance, to dissonance, to rhythm, to melodic contour, to harmony.

  Oliver Sacks

  Brain, Different, Harmony

  Source: www.spiegel.de

• 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

• 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