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Oliver Sacks Biography

Oliver Wolf Sacks, CBE, FRCP (9 July 1933 – 30 August 2015) was a British neurologist, naturalist, historian of science, and author. Born in Britain, and mostly educated there, he spent his career in the United States. He believed that the brain is the "most incredible thing in the universe." He became widely known for writing best-selling case histories about both his patients' and his own disorders and unusual experiences, with some of his books adapted for plays by major playwrights, feature films, animated short films, opera, dance, fine art, and musical works in the classical genre.

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Oliver Sacks Quotes

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.

Active, Brain, Sound, Start, Sufficient, Voice

Music can lift us out of depression or move us to tears - it is a remedy, a tonic, orange juice for the ear.

Inspirational Music, Lift, Move, Moving, Orange Juice, Tears

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.

Ascribed, Poets, Thinking, Vision, Voice, Voices

Waking consciousness is dreaming – but dreaming constrained by external reality

Constrained, Dream, External, Reality, Waking

Psychotic 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.

Addresses, Brain, Hallucinations, Jeer, Visual, Vocal

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.

Disease, Identity, Loss, Mean, Strange

People will make a life in their own terms, whether they are deaf or colorblind or autistic or whatever. And their world will be quite as rich and interesting and full as our world.

Full, Interesting, Our World, People, Terms

If we wish to know about a man, we ask 'what is his story--his real, inmost story?'--for each of us is a biography, a story. 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.

Biography, Men, Narrations, Narrative, Real, Unique

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.

Frozen, Jars, Larder, Memories, Reassembled, Recategorized

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.

Depression, Ear, Move, Moving, Orange Juice, Tonic

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.

Art, Completely, Emotional, States, Unique

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.

Delight, Demented, Health, Patient, Respond, Responsive

Music has a bonding power, it's primal social cement

Bonding, Cement, Power, Primal, Social

Hydrogen selenide, I decided, was perhaps the worst smell in the world. But hydrogen telluride came close, was also a smell from hell. An up-to-date hell, I decided, would have not just rivers of fiery brimstone, but lakes of boiling selenium and tellurium, too.

Lakes, Rivers, Smell, Boiling, Worst

Fascinating, Doidge's book is a remarkable and hopeful portrait of the endless adaptability of the human brain.

Book, Brain, Fascinating, Hopeful, Remarkable

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.

Adversity, Generous, Heart, Kindness, Things

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

Anatomy, Anatomy And Physiology, Biology, Disease, Gain, Life

I am now face to face with dying. But I am not finished with living.

Dying, Face, Faces, Finished, Living

Astounded—and indifferent—for he was a man who, in effect, had no ‘day before’.

Day, Effect, Effects, Indifferent, Man, Men

Music, uniquely among the arts, is both completely abstract and profoundly emotional.

Abstract, Art, Arts, Emotional, Music

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