We speak not only to tell other people what we think, but to tell ourselves what we think. Speech is a part of thought.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes that communication helps us clarify our own thoughts as much as it informs others.
Oliver Sacks highlights the dual purpose of speech, suggesting that when we express our ideas verbally, we not only convey information to others but also engage in self-reflection and understanding. The act of speaking allows us to externalize our thoughts, making them more tangible and comprehensible, thus revealing to ourselves our innermost beliefs and understandings.
In practice
In a public speaking workshop to illustrate the importance of articulating thoughts.
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.
If error is corrected whenever it is recognized as such, the path of error is the path of truth.
Seeking out causes is a pastime of the mind. There is no duality of cause and effect. Everything is its own cause.
As a footballer I can't imagine life without the use of one of my legs... Sadly this is exactly what happens to thousands of children every year when they accidentally step on a landmine.
The worldly comforts are not for me. I am like a traveler, who takes rest under a tree in the shade and then goes on his way.
Jonathan sighed. The price of being misunderstood, he thought. They call you devil or they call you god.
This is another lie. We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is. We are searching for an ideal image of our own world: we go in quest of a planet, a civilization superior to our own but developed on the basis of a prototype of our primeval past.
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