“ Where perception of objects is concerned, Edelman likes to say, the world is not labeled; it does not come already parsed into objects. We must make our perceptions through our own categorizations. Ev… Oliver Sacks
“ We think of science as discovery, art as invention, but is there a third world of mathematics, which is somehow, mysteriously, both? Oliver Sacks
“ We soon discovered one strong interest that we shared; we were both fascinated by the sixth sense, proprioception: unconscious, invisible, but arguably more vital than any or all of the other five sen… Oliver Sacks
“ This state is thus one of an excruciating overall sensitivity, patients being assaulted by sensory stimuli from their environment, or Oliver Sacks
“ Think! cried the Professor. This prodigious bowl was filled with ice to a depth of three hundred feet. And when we and our children are dead, seeds will have sprouted in the silt, and a young forest w… Oliver Sacks
“ They saw it as a food of the gods, and believed that the cacao tree originally grew only in Paradise, but was stolen and brought to mankind by their god Quetzalcoatl, who descended from heaven on a be… Oliver Sacks
“ There is, among Orthodox Jews, a blessing to be said on witnessing the strange: one blesses God for the diversity of his creation, and one gives thanks for the wonder of the strange. Oliver Sacks
“ There is no need, he said, suddenly getting serious, to get dead drunk, pass out, and lie in the gutter. This is a very sad—even dangerous—thing to do. I hope you will never do it again. Oliver Sacks
“ There are similar irrefutable beliefs in patients who lose the perception of their left side and the left side of space but maintain that there is nothing missing, even though we can demonstrate convi… Oliver Sacks
“ The users of a language, above all, will tend to a naive realism, to see their language as a reflection of reality, not as a construct. Oliver Sacks
“ The terrors of suffering, sickness and death, of losing ourselves and losing the world, are the most elemental and intense we know; and so too are our dreams of recovery and rebirth, of being wonderfu… Oliver Sacks
“ The old man suddenly became intent, his brows knitted, his lips pursed. He stood motionless, in deep thought, presenting the picture that I love to see: a patient in the actual moment of discovery — h… Oliver Sacks
“ The leg incident taught me in a way which I could not, perhaps, have learned otherwise about how one’s body and the space around one are mapped in the brain and how this central mapping can be profoun… Oliver Sacks
“ The last scene of Michael’s life was played out in a hospital emergency room, waiting for the operation which this time, he thought, would probably take his leg. He was lying on a stretcher when he su… Oliver Sacks
“ The lack of social support and sympathy is an additional trial: disabled, but with the nature of her disability not clear—she is not, after all, manifestly blind or paralysed, manifestly anything—she… Oliver Sacks
“ The feelings are similar, in some ways, to those one has in Rome or Athens, but quite different in other ways, because this culture is so different: so completely sun-oriented, sky-oriented, wind- and… Oliver Sacks
“ The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds. Oliver Sacks
“ The amorality of nature is accepted, whether it takes the form of a monsoon, an elephant in musth, or a disease; but being subjected helplessy to the will of of others is not, for human behavior alway… Oliver Sacks
“ The Allegory of the Wolf Boy (At tennis and at tea/Upon the gentle lawn, he is not ours,/But plays us in a sad duplicity). Oliver Sacks
“ That those who entered such nursing homes needed meaning—a life, an identity, dignity, self-respect, a degree of autonomy—was ignored or bypassed; care was purely mechanical and medical. Oliver Sacks
