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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Love
Freud
Purpose
Words
Sense
Wanted
Feel
Feels
Work

More quotes by Oliver Sacks

Image
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
Image
I feel a sudden clear focus and perspective. There is no time for anything inessential.
Oliver Sacks
Image
Music is...a fundamental way of expressing our humanity - and it is often our best medicine.
Oliver Sacks
Image
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.
Oliver Sacks
Image
I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved I have been given much and I have given something in return I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.
Oliver Sacks
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
We now know that memories are not fixed or frozen, like Proust's jars of preserves in a larder, but are transformed, disassembled, reassembled, and recategorized with every act of recollection.
Oliver Sacks
Image
I am now face to face with dying. But I am not finished with living.
Oliver Sacks
Image
The miracle is that, in most cases, he succeeds - for the powers of survival, of the will to survive, and to survive as a unique inalienable individual, are absolutely, the strongest in our being: stronger than any impulses, stronger than disease.
Oliver Sacks
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Creativity involves the depth of a mind, and many, many depths of unconsciousness.
Oliver Sacks
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
At 11, I could say ‘I am sodium’ (Element 11), and now at 79, I am gold.
Oliver Sacks