Oliver SacksI often feel that life is about to begin, only to realize it is almost over. ✨ Oliver Sacks (2015). Gratitude, p.9, Pan Macmillan373Life
Oliver Sackshe 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 (2014). The Man Who Mistook His Wife fo… ▶341Love
Oliver SacksI regard music therapy as a tool of great power in many neurological disorders -- Parkinson's and Alzheimer's -- because of its unique capacity to organize or reorganize cerebral … ▶353Politics
Oliver SacksIt really is a very odd business that all of us, to varying degrees, have music in our heads. ✨ Oliver Sacks (2011). Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, p.53, Pan Ma… ▶342Thought
Oliver SacksAnd so was Luria, whose words now came back to me: ‘A man does not consist of memory alone. He has feeling, will, sensibility, moral being ... It is here ... you may touch him, an… ▶332Thought
Oliver SacksWe see with the eyes, but we see with the brain as well. And seeing with the brain is often called imagination.354Thought
Oliver SacksI have to live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can ✨ Oliver Sacks (2015). Gratitude, p.13, Pan Macmillan311Politics
Oliver SacksI feel a sudden clear focus and perspective. There is no time for anything inessential. ✨ Oliver Sacks (2015). Gratitude, p.14, Pan Macmillan312Time
Oliver SacksDangerously well’— what an irony is this: it expresses precisely the doubleness, the paradox, of feeling ‘too well ✨ Oliver Sacks (2014). The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a … ▶345Sadness
Oliver SacksTo be ourselves we must have ourselves – possess, if need be re-possess, our life-stories. We must “recollect” ourselves, recollect the inner drama, the narrative, of ourselves. A… ▶313Life
Oliver SacksWe have five senses in which we glory and which we recognize and celebrate, senses that constitute the sensible world for us. But there are other senses - secret senses, sixth sen… ▶291Reading
Oliver SacksThere 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 … ▶291Time
Oliver SacksAstounded—and indifferent—for he was a man who, in effect, had no ‘day before’. ✨ Oliver Sacks (2014). The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: Picador Classic, p.42, Pan Mac… ▶337Life
Oliver SacksThere 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… ▶315Politics
Oliver SacksIf migraine patients have a common and legitimate second complaint besides their migraines, it is that they have not been listened to by physicians. Looked at, investigated, drugg… ▶337Love
Oliver SacksThe power of music to integrate and cure. . . is quite fundamental. It is the profoundest nonchemical medication.293Politics
Oliver SacksNature gropes and blunders and performs the crudest acts. There is no steady advance upward. There is no design.338Truth
Oliver SacksMusic 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 … ▶316Life
Oliver SacksWe 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 (2013). Seeing Voices, Vintage327HumanityThought
Oliver SacksI 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 hav… ▶262LoveReadingThought
Oliver SacksScheele, 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… ▶251LoveReading
Oliver SacksThere is only one cardinal rule: One must always listen to the patient. ✨ Oliver Sacks (2013). Migraine, p.309, Vintage284Hope
Oliver SacksMusic, 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 ex… ▶273LovePoliticsTime
Oliver SacksThere will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever. When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled, f… ▶307DeathHumanityLife
Oliver SacksIf 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. ✨ Oli… ▶318Reading
Oliver SacksGiven her deafness, the auditory part of the brain, deprived of its usual input, had started to generate a spontaneous activity of its own, and this took the form of musical hallu… ▶252LifeThought
Oliver SacksPsychotic hallucinations, whether they are visual or vocal, they address you. They accuse you. They seduce you. They humiliate you. They jeer at you. You interact with them.319Love
Oliver SacksMy religion is nature. That’s what arouses those feelings of wonder and mysticism and gratitude in me.297Love
Oliver SacksLanguage, 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.… ▶253HumanityThought
Oliver SacksMusic evokes emotion and emotion can bring it's memory.254Politics
