Norman Cousins (1915–90) was an American political journalist, author, professor, and world peace advocate.
Source: Wikipedia (via CC-BY-SA license) • READ: Works by Norman Cousins
Hearty laughter is a good way to jog internally without having to go outdoors.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Laughter
The more serious the illness, the more important it is for you to fight back, mobilizing all your resources-spiritual, emotional, intellectual, physical.
—Norman Cousins
The growth of the human mind is still high adventure, in many ways the highest adventure on earth.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Goals, Earth
War is an invention of the human mind. The human mind can invent peace with justice.
—Norman Cousins
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
Topics: Libraries
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
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
Topics: Inaction
The sense of paralysis proceeds not so much out of the mammoth size of the problem but out of the puniness of the purpose.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Purpose
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.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Medicine
People are never more insecure than when they become obsessed with their fears at the expense of their dreams.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Difficulty
Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Living, Dying, Death
Life is an adventure in forgiveness.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Adventure, Forgiveness
Laughter is a powerful way to tap positive emotions.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Laughter
Respect for the fragility and importance of an individual life is still the mark of an educated man.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Respect
Why are people more appalled at what they term an unnatural form of dying than by an unnatural form of living?
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Death
To talk about the need for perfection in man is to talk about the need for another species.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Perfection
It is nonsense to say there is not enough time to be fully informed … Time given to thought is the greatest timesaver of all.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Value of Time, Time Management
In a democracy, the individual enjoys not only the ultimate power but carries the ultimate responsibility.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Democracy
Never deny a diagnosis, but do deny the negative verdict that may go with it.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Acceptance
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.
—Norman Cousins
History is a vast early warning system.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: History
Laughter is a form of internal jogging. It moves your internal organs around. It enhances respiration. It is an igniter of great expectations.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Laughter
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
Topics: Progress, Self-improvement
Government in the U.S. today is a senior partner in every business in the country.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Business
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
Topics: Habits
All this sensory input, which begins in the brain, has its effect throughout the body.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: The Mind, Mind
In sickness your heaviest artillery will be your will to live. Keep that big gun going.
—Norman Cousins
The essence of man is imperfection.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Perfection
Death is not the enemy; living in constant fear of it is.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Anxiety, Fear
Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences.
—Norman Cousins
The eternal quest of the individual human being is to shatter his loneliness.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Loneliness
Since the human body tends to move in the direction of its expectations—plus or minus—it is important to know that attitudes of confidence and determination are no less a part of the treatment program than medical science and technology.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Choice, Health, Optimism, Positive Attitudes
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
Topics: Perspective, Earth
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
Topics: Consequences, Health, Optimism, Positive Attitudes
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 death of the awareness that makes it possible to feel the pain or the glory of other men in yourself.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Emotions
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
Topics: Kindness, Compassion
Optimism doesn’t wait on facts. It deals with prospects. Pessimism is a waste of time.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Optimism, Pessimism
Hope is independent of the apparatus of logic.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Hope
Nothing is more powerful than an individual acting out of his conscience, thus helping to bring the collective conscience to life.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Conscience, Helping
We in America have everything we need except the most important thing of all-time to think and the habit of thought.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Thought, Thinking, Thoughts
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