Famous quotes by »

Oliver Sacks

Oliver Wolf Sacks, CBE (9 July 1933 – 30 August 2015) was a British-American neurologist, writer, and amateur chemist who was Professor of Neurology at New York University School of Medicine.

Update this biography »
Complete biography of Oliver Sacks »

0 fans

Sort by:PopularityA - Z

At 11, I could say ‘I am sodium’ (Element 11), and now at 79, I am gold.

– Oliver Sacks

Rate it:

Every act of perception, is to some degree an act of creation, and every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination.

– Oliver Sacks

Rate it:

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. 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

Rate it:

In examining disease, we gain wisdom about anatomy and physiology and biology. In examining the person with disease, we gain wisdom about life.

– Oliver Sacks

Rate it:

In forty years of medical practice, I have found only two types of non-pharmaceutical ‘therapy’ to be vitally important for patients with chronic neurological diseases: music and gardens.

– Oliver Sacks

Rate it:

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

Rate it:

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

Rate it:

Music is part of being human.

– Oliver Sacks

Rate it:

My religion is nature. That’s what arouses those feelings of wonder and mysticism and gratitude in me.

– Oliver Sacks

Rate it:

The brain is more than an assemblage of autonomous modules, each crucial for a specific mental function. Every one of these functionally specialized areas must interact with dozens or hundreds of others, their total integration creating something like a vastly complicated orchestra with thousands of instruments, an orchestra that conducts itself, with an ever-changing score and repertoire.

– Oliver Sacks

Rate it:

There 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, for it is the fate—the genetic and neural fate—of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death. 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. 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

Rate it:

To 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 man needs such a narrative, a continuous inner narrative, to maintain his identity, his self.

– Oliver Sacks

Rate it:

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

Rate it:

Quotes from the news wire:

The brain is the most intricate mechanism in the universe, i couldn't imagine spending my life with kidneys.

– Oliver Sacks

Found on Reuters 8 years ago

Each of us is a singular narrative, which is constructed, continually, unconsciously, by, through, and in us -- through our perceptions, our feelings, our thoughts, our actions; and, not least, our discourse, our spoken narrations, biologically, physiologically, we are not so different from each other; historically, as narratives -- we are each of us unique.

– Oliver Sacks

Found on CNN 9 years ago

Share your thoughts on Oliver Sacks's quotes with the community:

0 Comments

Notify me of new comments via email.

Quote of the Day Today's Quote | Archive

Would you like us to send you a FREE inspiring quote delivered to your inbox daily?

Citation

Use the citation below to add this author page to your bibliography:

Style:MLAChicagoAPA

"Oliver Sacks Quotes." Quotes.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 23 Apr. 2024. <https://www.quotes.net/authors/Oliver+Sacks+Quotes>.

Missing a quote of Oliver Sacks?

Know another good quote of Oliver Sacks? Don't keep it to yourself!

The Web's Largest Resource for

Famous Quotes & Sayings

A Member Of The STANDS4 Network

Our favorite collection of

Famous Authors

Sigmund Freud
1856 - 1939
Helen Keller
1880 - 1968
Martin Luther King, Jr.
1929 - 1968
Mahatma Gandhi
1869 - 1948
Confucius
551 BC - 479 BC
Emily Dickinson
1830 - 1886
Mother Teresa
1910 - 1997

Browse Quotes.net

#A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Quiz

Are you a quotes master?

Who said: "Just as courage imperils life; fear protects it"?

A Leonardo da Vinci

B George Washington

C Ernest Hemingway

D Mahatma Gandhi