Quote

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

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
Humanity
Often
Best
Music
Way
Expressing
Fundamental
Fundamentals
Medicine

More quotes by Oliver Sacks

Image
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
Image
At 11, I could say ‘I am sodium’ (Element 11), and now at 79, I am gold.
Oliver Sacks
Image
It is easy to recollect the good things of life, the times when one's heart rejoices and expands, when everything is enfolded in kindness and love it is easy to recollect the fineness of life-how noble one was, how generous one felt, what courage one showed in the face of adversity.
Oliver Sacks
Image
The power of music, narrative and drama is of the greatest practical and theoretical importance. ... We see how the retarded, unable to perform fairly simple tasks involving perhaps four or five movements or procedures in sequence, can do these perfectly if they work to music.
Oliver Sacks
Image
Eccentricity is like having an accent. It's what other people have.
Oliver Sacks
Image
In general, people are afraid to acknowledge hallucinations because they immediately see them as a sign of something awful happening to the brain, whereas in most cases theyre not.
Oliver Sacks
Image
Astounded—and indifferent—for he was a man who, in effect, had no ‘day before’.
Oliver Sacks
Image
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
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
In terms of brain development, musical performance is every bit as important educationally as reading or writing.
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
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
I have to live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can
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
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
Image
Sign language is the equal of speech, lending itself equally to the rigorous and the poetic, to philosophical analysis or to making love.
Oliver Sacks
Image
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
Image
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
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
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