Oliver Sacks Quotes

Hearing voices no one else can hear isn't a good sign, even in the wizarding world.

When a man says that he is Jesus or Napoleon, or that the Martians are after him, or claims something else that seems outrageous to common sense, he is labeled psychotic and locked up in a madhouse. Freedom of speech is only for normal people.

I have auditory hallucinations, I hear voices saying derogatory things, like I'm terrible and I'm going to die, and they're usually worse in the afternoon.

My experience is that when one is in psychosis, you're on a mission and nothing is going to stop you. At some level your brain is telling you you probably shouldn't be doing this, but you're on a mission.

When you are insane, you are busy being insane - all the time.

I'm sure I'm a schizophrenic. The problem is I can't tell the difference between which one's which, which one is the real me.

Never get into an argument with a schizophrenic person and say, 'Who do you think you are?'

I think hallucinations need to be discussed. There are all sorts of hallucinations, and then many sorts which are okay, like the ones I think which most of us have in bed at night before we fall asleep, when we can see all sorts of patterns or faces and scenes.

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.

... a paranoid person with delusions.

Now, I'm no doctor, but I am on TV. And in my professional opinion, George W. Bush is a paranoid schizophrenic. ...

I hear voices in my mind and you're worried that you're the freak,” he laughed.

He wrote on a piece of paper with his pencil. Psychosis: out of touch with reality. Since then, I have been trying to find out what reality is, so that I can touch it.

I like to assume that since I drive a car and maintain a respectable credit rating and rarely murder anyone and bury them in the back garden unless they really deserve it, that the fact that I hear voices wont unduly disturb anyone.

I only hear my own voice. When you start hearing other voices, then it's time to worry.

The schizophrenic mind is not so much split as shattered. I like to say schizophrenia is like a waking nightmare.

That Sid Vicious was obviously a schizophrenic, kind of a mean one too.

Once you've been talked to by voices, it's not possible to go back to a world where talking voices is not possible.

I must have been heavily schizophrenic all my life. The me who hears what the other me can't play is the dominant one.

If I had known being insane was so much fun, I'd have gone crazy long ago.

I went to a doctor and told him I felt normal on acid, that I was a light bulb in a world of moths. That is what the manic state is like.

I don't think you ever know in yourself whether you have gone mad.

Crazy people don't sit around wondering if they're nuts.

Schizoaffective disorder is a big mental mash-up of a disease. It combines just about every disorder, from depression, delusions, and paranoia to mania, schizophrenia and hallucinations. My mother bounced between all of these regularly while raising me alone in our Hollywood home.

If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.