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Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index S > Oliver Sacks Quotes

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Oliver Sacks
(9 Jul 1933 - 30 Aug 2015)

English neurologist and writer.


Science Quotes by Oliver Sacks (5 quotes)

If migraine patients have a common and legitimate second complaint besides their migraines, it is that they have not been listened to by physicians. Looked at, investigated, drugged, charged, but not listened to.
— Oliver Sacks
Quoted by Walter Clemons, 'Listening to the Lost', Newsweek (20 Aug 1984).
Science quotes on:  |  Common (447)  |  Diagnosis (65)  |  Investigate (106)  |  Legitimate (26)  |  Listen (81)  |  Look (584)  |  Medicine (392)  |  Patient (209)  |  Physician (284)

Nature gropes and blunders and performs the crudest acts. There is no steady advance upward. There is no design.
— Oliver Sacks
As quoted in Bob Fenster, Duh!: The Stupid History of the Human Race (2000) , 208. [No other source was found by Webmaster. If you have information on a primary source, please contact Webmaster.]
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  Advance (298)  |  Blunder (21)  |  Design (203)  |  Error (339)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Perform (123)  |  Steady (45)  |  Upward (44)

Scheele, 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 Sacks
Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood (2001), 44.
Science quotes on:  |  Absorption (13)  |  Being (1276)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Chemical Reaction (17)  |  Chemical Reactions (13)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Dedicated (19)  |  Dedication (12)  |  Do (1905)  |  Everything (489)  |  Feel (371)  |  Look (584)  |  Most (1728)  |  Never (1089)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Passion (121)  |  Passionate (22)  |  Pure (299)  |  Reaction (106)  |  Read (308)  |  Single (365)  |  Smell (29)  |  Special (188)  |  Strength (139)  |  Substance (253)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Transform (74)  |  Way (1214)  |  Wholly (88)

Sign language is the equal of speech, lending itself equally to the rigorous and the poetic, to philosophical analysis or to making love.
— Oliver Sacks
In The Times (16 Jun 1994).
Science quotes on:  |  Analysis (244)  |  Equal (88)  |  Equally (129)  |  Language (308)  |  Love (328)  |  Making (300)  |  Philosophical (24)  |  Poetic (7)  |  Rigorous (50)  |  Speech (66)

There is only one cardinal rule: One must always listen to the patient.
— Oliver Sacks
Quoted by Walter Clemons, 'Listening to the Lost', Newsweek (20 Aug 1984).
Science quotes on:  |  Cardinal (9)  |  Diagnosis (65)  |  Listen (81)  |  Medicine (392)  |  Must (1525)  |  Patient (209)  |  Physician (284)  |  Rule (307)


See also:
  • 9 Jul - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Sacks's birth.

Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
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Sophie Germain
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Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
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Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
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Bible
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- 70 -
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Paul Dirac
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- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
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Henry Adams
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John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
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Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
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Archimedes
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- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
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- 20 -
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- 10 -
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