Norman Cousins Quotes (62 Quotes)

Pessimism operates in a narrowed field of vision that fails to take into account the possibilities at the outer edges of experience.

Nothing is more powerful than an individual acting out of his conscience, thus helping to bring the collective conscience to life.

Death is not the enemy living in constant fear of it is.

If there is a conflict between the security of the sovereign state and the security of the human commonwealth, the human commonwealth comes first. If there is a conflict between the well-being of the nation and the well-being of humanity, the well-being of humanity comes first. If there is a conflict between the needs of this generation and the needs of all later generations, the needs of the later generations come first. If there is a conflict between public edict and private conscience, private conscience comes first. If there is a conflict between the easy drift of prosperity and the ordeal of peace, the ordeal of peace comes first.

The eternal quest of the individual human being is to shatter his loneliness.

All this sensory input, which begins in the brain, has its effect throughout the body.

Life is an adventure in forgiveness.

He who keeps his cool best wins.

The capacity for hope is the most significant fact of life. It provides human beings with a sense of destination and the energy to get started.

Humanity today is not safe in the presence of humanity. The old cannibalism has given way to anonymous action in which the killer and the killed do not know each other, and in which,indeed, the very fact of mass death has the effect of making mass killing.

We have learned to live in a world of mistakes and defective products as if they were necessary to life. It is time to adopt a new philosophy in America.

People are never more insecure than when they become obsessed with their fears at the expense of their dreams.

Fortunately or otherwise we live at a time when the average individual has to know several times as much in order to keep informed as he did only thirty or forty years ago. Being 'educated' today requires not only more than a superficial knowledge of the arts and sciences, but a sense of inter-relationship such as is taught in few schools. Finally, being 'educated' today, in terms of the larger needs, means preparation for world citizenship in short, education for survival.

Laughter is inner jogging.

A human being fashions his consequences as surely as he fashions his goods or his dwelling his goods or his dwelling. Nothing that he says, thinks or does is without consequences.

Optimism doesn't wait on facts. It deals with prospects. Pessimism is a waste of time.

I do not object to people looking at their watches when I am speaking. But I strongly object when they start shaking them to make sure they are still going.

The individual is capable of both great compassion and great indifference. He has it within his means to nourish the former and outgrow the latter.

Respect for the fragility and importance of an individual life is still the mark of an educated man.

The way a book is read, which is to say, the qualities a reader brings to a book can have as much to do with its worth as anything the author puts into it.

The growth of the human mind is still high adventure, in many ways the highest adventure on earth.

Ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep

Free will and determinism are like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you is determinism. The way you play your hand is free will.

Cynicism is intellectual treason.

What was most significant about the lunar voyage was not that men set foot on the moon but that they set eye on the earth.

In a democracy, the individual enjoys not only the ultimate power but carries the ultimate responsibility

The eternal quest of the human being is to shatter his loneliness.

The heart of the matter is that some people like to cause injury or death to living things. And many of those who do not are indifferent to those who do.

Like a celestial chaperon, the placebo leads us through the uncharted passageways of mind and gives us a greater sense of infinity than if we were to spend all our days with our eyes hypnotically glued to the giant telescope at Mt. Palomar. What we see ultimately is that the placebo isn't really necessary and that the mind can carry out its difficult and wondrous missions unprompted by little pills. The placebo is only a tangible object made essential in an age that feels uncomfortable with intangibles, an age that prefers to think that every inner effect must have an outer cause. Since it has size and shape and can be hand-held, the placebo satisfies the contemporary craving for visible mechanisms and visible answers . The placebo, then, is an emissary between the will to live and the body.

The sense of paralysis proceeds not so much out of the mammoth size of the problem but out of the puniness of the purpose.

Life is an adventure in forgiving.

The main failure of education is that it has not prepared people to comprehend matters concerning human destiny.

The tragedy of life is in what dies inside a man while he lives - the death of genuine feeling, the death of inspired response, the awareness that makes it possible to feel the pain or the glory of other men in yourself.

Drugs are not always necessary, but belief in recovery always is.

Government in the U.S. today is a senior partner in every business in the country.

The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.

Your heaviest artillery will be your will to live. Keep that big gun going.

A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas - a place where history comes to life.

Don't deny the diagnosis. Try to defy the verdict.

If the United Nations is to survive, those who represent it must bolster it; those who advocate it must submit to it; and those who believe in it must fight for it.

My reason nourishes my faith and my faith my reason.

A book is like a piece of rope; it takes on meaning only in connection with the things it holds together.

Just as there is no loss of basic energy in the universe, so no thought or action is without its effects, present or ultimate, seen or unseen, felt or unfelt.

It is reasonable to expect the doctor to recognize that science may not have all the answers to problems of health and healing.

We will not have peace by afterthought.

The human body experiences a powerful gravitational pull in the direction of hope. That is why the patient's hopes are the physician's secret weapon. They are the hidden ingredients in any prescription.

It makes little difference how many university courses or degrees a person may own. If he cannot use words to move an idea from one point to another, his education is incomplete.

Man is not imprisoned by habit. Great changes in him can be wrought by crisis - once that crisis can be recognized and understood.

No one really knows enough to be a pessimist.

For every low there is an equal but opposite high.