Oliver Sacks
Oliver Sacks
Oliver Wolf Sacks, CBE, FRCPwas a British neurologist, naturalist and author who spent his professional life in the United States. He believed that the brain is the "most incredible thing in the universe" and therefore important to study. He became widely known for writing best-selling case histories about his patients' disorders, with some of his books adapted for stage and film...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNon-Fiction Author
Date of Birth9 July 1933
fate unique people
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.
music fundamentals integrating
The power of music to integrate and cure. . . is quite fundamental. It is the profoundest nonchemical medication.
our-world interesting perspective
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.
medicine humanity way
Music is...a fundamental way of expressing our humanity - and it is often our best medicine.
dream memories confused
And I often dream of chemistry at night, dreams that conflate the past and the present, the grid of the periodic table transformed to the grid of Manhattan. [...] Sometimes, too, I dream of the indecipherable language of tin (a confused memory, perhaps, of its plaintive "cry"). But my favorite dream is of going to the opera (I am Hafnium), sharing a box at the Met with the other heavy transition metals my old and valued friends Tantalum, Rhenium, Osmium, Iridium, Platinum, Gold, and Tungsten.
months
It is up to me now to choose how to live out the months that remain to me.
communication thinking people
We speak not only to tell other people what we think, but to tell ourselves what we think. Speech is a part of thought.
numbers elements boyhood
Elements and birthdays have been intertwined for me since boyhood, when I learned about atomic numbers.
dying faces face-to-face
I am now face to face with dying. But I am not finished with living.
musical being-human music-is
Music is part of being human.
social bonding cement
Music has a bonding power, it's primal social cement
almost-over life-is realizing
I often feel that life is about to begin, only to realize it is almost over.
way i-can productive
I have to live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can
dream reality waking
Waking consciousness is dreaming – but dreaming constrained by external reality