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
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
Optimism doesn’t wait on facts. It deals with prospects. Pessimism is a waste of time.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Optimism, Pessimism
Laughter is a powerful way to tap positive emotions.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Laughter
The growth of the human mind is still high adventure, in many ways the highest adventure on earth.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Earth, Goals
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
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: Time Management, Value of Time
History is a vast early warning system.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: History
Hearty laughter is a good way to jog internally without having to go outdoors.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Laughter
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
In a democracy, the individual enjoys not only the ultimate power but carries the ultimate responsibility.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Democracy
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 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
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
People are never more insecure than when they become obsessed with their fears at the expense of their dreams.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Difficulty
War is an invention of the human mind. The human mind can invent peace with justice.
—Norman Cousins
Drugs are not always necessary, but belief in recovery always is.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Drugs, Belief
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: Thoughts, Thought, Thinking
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
Death is not the enemy; living in constant fear of it is.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Anxiety, Fear
The essence of man is imperfection.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Perfection
The justification for those actions was that we were living in a very hard, predatory, cloak-and-dagger world and that the only way to deal with a totalitarian enemy was to intimidate him. The trouble with this theory was that while we live in a world of plot and counterplot, we also live in a world of cause and effect. Whatever the cause for the decision to legitimize and regularize deceit abroad, the inevitable effect was the practice of deceit at home.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Deception/Lying
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
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
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, Optimism, Health, 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 eternal quest of the individual human being is to shatter his loneliness.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Loneliness
Never deny a diagnosis, but do deny the negative verdict that may go with it.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Acceptance
Respect for the fragility and importance of an individual life is still the mark of an educated man.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Respect
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, Positive Attitudes, Health, Optimism
Life is an adventure in forgiveness.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Forgiveness, Adventure
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