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.
Interpretation
Everyone creates their own unique life experience, regardless of disabilities or differences.
This quote by Oliver Sacks emphasizes the richness of individual lives and experiences, pointing out that people with disabilities, such as being deaf, colorblind, or autistic, can lead fulfilling and interesting lives on their own terms. It challenges the notion that one's value or the quality of life depends on conforming to societal norms or perceptions of 'normalcy'.
In practice
In a motivational talk about embracing diversity, this quote can highlight the value of unique experiences.
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.
In general, people are afraid to acknowledge hallucinations because they immediately see them as a sign of something awful happening to the brain, whereas in most cases they're not.
Dr. Kertesz mentioned to me a case known to him of a farmer who had developed prosopagnosia and in consequence could no longer distinguish (the faces of) his cows, and of another such patient, an attendant in a Natural History Museum, who mistook his own reflection for the diorama of an ape
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.
We see with the eyes, but we see with the brain as well. And seeing with the brain is often called imagination.
I rejoice when I meet gifted young people... I feel the future is in good hands.
I felt like a kid standing in the world's greatest video arcade without any quarters, unable to do anything but walk around and watch the other kids play.
In order to write about life first you must live it.
Each thing I do, I rush through so I can do something else. In such a way do the days pass - -a blend of stock car racing and the never ending building of a gothic cathedral. Through the windows of my speeding car I see all that I love falling away: books unread, jokes untold, landscapes unvisited.
Survivorship comes with unspoken pressures, responsibilities and challenges. After all, what is the point of saving a life if the life isn't a meaningful one?
As there begins to be less time ahead of you, you want to be exactly who you are, without making it easier for everyone else.
The worst thing in the world is to try to sleep and not to.
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