Quote

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 see with another person’s eyes.

Oliver Sacks

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Oliver Sacks
Age: 82 †
Born: 1933
Born: July 9
Died: 2015
Died: August 30
Chemist
Neurologist
Physician Writer
Science Communicator
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Oliver Wolf Sacks
Even
Possible
Congenitally
Eye
Enable
Language
Invention
Another
Principle
Persons
Allow
Person
Blind
Human
Principles
Humans
Eyes

More quotes by Oliver Sacks

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Very young children love and demand stories, and can understand complex matters presented as stories, when their powers of comprehending general concepts, paradigms, are almost nonexistent.
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Music has a bonding power, it's primal social cement
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One might say that science itself, and civilization and art, are all about different orderings of the world - to contain it, and to make it in some sense intelligible, communicable. And bearable.
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A disease is never a mere loss or excess. There is always a reaction on the part of the organism or individual to restore, replace or compensate for and to preserve its identity, however strange the means may be.
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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.
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Astounded—and indifferent—for he was a man who, in effect, had no ‘day before’.
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he wanted to do, to be, to feel- and could not he wanted sense, he wanted purpose- in Freud's words, 'Work and Love'.
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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.
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At 11, I could say ‘I am sodium’ (Element 11), and now at 79, I am gold.
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Dangerously well’— what an irony is this: it expresses precisely the doubleness, the paradox, of feeling ‘too well
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Darwin speculated that “music tones and rhythms were used by our half-human ancestors, during the season of courtship, when animals of all kinds are excited not only by love, but by strong passions of jealousy, rivalry, and triumph” and that speech arose, secondarily, from this primal music.
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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
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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
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I think there's probably always been visions and voices, and these were variously ascribed to the divine or demonic or the muses. I think many poets still feel they depend on an inner voice, or a voice which tells them what to do.
Oliver Sacks
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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
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I feel a sudden clear focus and perspective. There is no time for anything inessential.
Oliver Sacks
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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
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Music is part of being human.
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I am now face to face with dying. But I am not finished with living.
Oliver Sacks
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It really is a very odd business that all of us, to varying degrees, have music in our heads.
Oliver Sacks