Oliver Sacks Quotes - Page 5

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• 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

• 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 little chants and songs we use to teach young children have choruses and refrains. We are attracted to repetition, even as adults; we want the stimulus and the reward again and again, and in music we get it. Perhaps, therefore, we should not be surprised, should not complain if the balance sometimes shifts too far and our musical sensitivity becomes a vulnerability.

  Oliver Sacks

  Song, Children, Musical

  8 Copy quote

• Scheele, it was said, never forgot anything if it had to do with chemistry. He never forgot the look, the feel, the smell of a substance, or the way it was transformed in chemical reactions, never forgot anything he read, or was told, about the phenomena of chemistry. He seemed indifferent, or inattentive, to most things else, being wholly dedicated to his single passion, chemistry. It was this pure and passionate absorption in phenomena-noticing everything, forgetting nothing-that constituted Scheele's special strength.

  Oliver Sacks

  Passion, Dedication, Smell

  Oliver Sacks (2011). “Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood”, p.33, Pan Macmillan

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• Dr. Kertesz mentioned to me a case known to him of a farmer who had developed prosopagnosia and in consequence could no longer distinguish (the faces of) his cows, and of another such patient, an attendant in a Natural History Museum, who mistook his own reflection for the diorama of an ape

  Oliver Sacks

  Reflection, Museums, Drs

  Oliver Sacks (1998). “The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales”, p.21, Simon and Schuster

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• 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

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• There is among doctors, in acute hospitals at least, a presumption of stupidity in their patients.

  Oliver Sacks

  Doctors, Stupidity, Patient

  Oliver Sacks (2011). “A Leg to Stand On”, p.96, Pan Macmillan

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• For 'wellness', naturally, is no cause for complaint - people relish it, they enjoy it, they are at the furthest pole from complaint. People complain of feeling ill - not well ... Thus, though a patient will scarcely complain of being 'very well', they may become suspicious if they feel 'too well'.

  Oliver Sacks

  Health, People, Feelings

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

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• I think hallucinations need to be discussed. There are all sorts of hallucinations, and then many sorts which are okay, like the ones I think which most of us have in bed at night before we fall asleep, when we can see all sorts of patterns or faces and scenes.

  Oliver Sacks

  Fall, Night, Thinking

  "Oliver Sacks: A Neurologist At The 'Intersection Of Fact And Fable'". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. August 31, 2015.

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• First thing about being a patient-you have to learn patience.

  Oliver Sacks

  Firsts, Patient, Sickness

  Oliver Sacks (2011). “A Leg to Stand On”, p.23, Pan Macmillan

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• 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 tend to hear the sound of a digital clock, for example, as "tick-tock, tick-tock" - even though it is actually "tick tick, tick tick.

  Oliver Sacks

  Sound, Example, Digital

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• I had never thought about what it might mean to be deaf, to be deprived of language, or to have a remarkable language (and community and culture) of one’s own. Up to this point, I had mostly thought and written about the problems of individuals–here I was to encounter an entire community.

  Oliver Sacks

  Mean, Community, Encounters

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• Astounded—and indifferent—for he was a man who, in effect, had no ‘day before’.

  Oliver Sacks

  Men, Indifferent, Effects

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

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• Hydrogen selenide, I decided, was perhaps the worst smell in the world. But hydrogen telluride came close, was also a smell from hell. An up-to-date hell, I decided, would have not just rivers of fiery brimstone, but lakes of boiling selenium and tellurium, too.

  Oliver Sacks

  Rivers, Smell, Lakes

  Oliver Sacks (2011). “Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood”, p.63, Pan Macmillan

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