Norman Cousins Quotes
"Optimism doesn't wait on facts. It deals with prospects. Pessimism is a waste of time."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: Time, Optimism, Pessimism, Deals, Facts, Waste)
"People are never more insecure than when they become obsessed with their fears at the expense of their dreams."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: Dreams, People)
"My reason nourishes my faith and my faith my reason."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: Faith, Reason)
"Respect for the fragility and importance of an individual life is still the mark of an educated man."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: Life, Importance, Man, Respect)
"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."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: Life, Hope, Energy, Fact, Sense)
"Man is not imprisoned by habit. Great changes in him can be wrought by crisis - once that crisis can be recognized and understood."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: Habit, Crisis, Man)
"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."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: Hope, Body, Direction)
"The main failure of education is that it has not prepared people to comprehend matters concerning human destiny."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: Education, People, Failure, Destiny)
"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."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: Worth)
"We will not have peace by afterthought."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: Peace, Will)
"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."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: Men, Earth, Eye, Moon)
"Where is the indignation about the fact that the US and USSR have thirty thousand pounds of destructive force for every human being in the world?"
- Norman Cousins
(Related: Being, Fact, Force, World)
"Your heaviest artillery will be your will to live. Keep that big gun going."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: Will)
"The only security for the American people today, or for any people, is to be found through the control of force rather than the use of force."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: People, Control, American, Force, Security, Today)
"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."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: Death, Life, Men, Awareness, Feeling, Glory, Man, Pain, Tragedy)
"Life is an adventure in forgiveness."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: Forgiveness, Life, Adventure)
"Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: Wisdom, Anticipation, Consequences)
"He who keeps his cool best wins."
- Norman Cousins
"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."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: Compassion, Indifference)
"Laughter is inner jogging."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: Laughter)
"A book is like a piece of rope; it takes on meaning only in connection with the things it holds together."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: Connection, Meaning)
"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."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: Being, Consequences, Nothing)
"A library is the delivery room for the birth of ideas, a place where history comes to life."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: History, Life, Ideas)
"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."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: History, Life, Ideas, Famous, Metaphor)
"Cynicism is intellectual treason."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: Cynicism, Treason)
"Government in the U.S. today is a senior partner in every business in the country."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: Business, Government, Country, Today)
"Hearty laughter is a good way to jog internally without having to go outdoors."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: Laughter)
"History is a vast early warning system."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: History)
"Hope is independent of the apparatus of logic."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: Hope, Logic)
"If something comes to life in others because of you, then you have made an approach to immortality."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: Life, Immortality)
"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."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: Fight, Nations, United)
"It is reasonable to expect the doctor to recognize that science may not have all the answers to problems of health and healing."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: Health, Science, Answers, Healing, May, Problems)
"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."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: Education, Idea, Difference, May, University, Words)
"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."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: Thought, Action, Energy, Loss, Present, Universe)
"Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: Death, Life, Loss)