To live on a day-to-day basis is insufficient; we need to transcend, transport, escape; we need meaning, understanding, and explanation; we need to see over-all patterns in our lives. We need hope, the sense of a future; the freedom to get beyond ourselves...in states of mind that allow us to rise above our immediate surroundings and see the beauty and value of the world we live in.
Oliver SacksAnd so was Luria, whose words now came back to me: โA man does not consist of memory alone. He has feeling, will, sensibility, moral being ... It is here ... you may touch him, and see a profound change.โ Memory, mental activity, mind alone, could not hold him; but moral attention and action could hold him completely.
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 reactions, never forgot anything he read, or was told, about the phenomena of chemistry. He seemed indifferent, or inattentive, to most things else, being wholly dedicated to his single passion, chemistry. It was this pure and passionate absorption in phenomena-noticing everything, forgetting nothing-that constituted Scheele's special strength.
Oliver SacksMuch more of the brain is devoted to movement than to language. Language is only a little thing sitting on top of this huge ocean of movement.
Oliver Sacks