Norman Cousins (1912–90) was an American political journalist and academic. This editor-in-chief of the Saturday Review for over 35 years was a tireless advocate for world peace.
Born in Union City, New Jersey, Cousins attended Teachers College, Columbia University, and began his editorial career in 1934. His selection as executive editor of Saturday Review in 1940 introduced essays that drew a link between literature and current events, helping the magazine’s circulation increase by 50 percent.
Courageous enough to criticize, Cousins was candid and blunt, and his writings were occasionally bitter. At times, he rebuked the U.S. government but felt strongly that a unique potential for greatness existed in America; he wrote The Good Inheritance: The Democratic Chance (1942) to examine this concept. In 1972, Cousins left the Saturday Review but returned in 1972, becoming editor emeritus in 1980. He also served as adjunct psychiatry and biobehavioral science professor at the University of California-Los Angeles.
Cousins wrote on diverse subjects, including the biography Albert Schweitzer’s Mission: Healing and Peace (1985) and a book of reflections on humanity in the atomic age, Modern Man Is Obsolete (1945.) Anatomy of an Illness (1979,) based on Cousins’ experience with a life-threatening illness, explores the healing ability of the human mind.
A tireless champion for world peace, Cousins dedicated much writing and study to the issues of illness and healing. Later works include Human Options (1981,) The Physician in Literature (1982,) and The Pathology of Power (1987.) Cousins’ autobiography is Present Tense: An American Editor’s Odyssey (1968.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Norman Cousins
Respect for the fragility and importance of an individual life is still the mark of an educated man.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Respect
The growth of the human mind is still high adventure, in many ways the highest adventure on earth.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Goals, Earth
All this sensory input, which begins in the brain, has its effect throughout the body.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Mind, The Mind
The eternal quest of the individual human being is to shatter his loneliness.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Loneliness
Hope is independent of the apparatus of logic.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Hope
People are never more insecure than when they become obsessed with their fears at the expense of their dreams.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Difficulty
Drugs are not always necessary, but belief in recovery always is.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Belief, Drugs
Government in the U.S. today is a senior partner in every business in the country.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Business
Hearty laughter is a good way to jog internally without having to go outdoors.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Laughter
War is an invention of the human mind. The human mind can invent peace with justice.
—Norman Cousins
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
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: Optimism, Health, Positive Attitudes, Consequences
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
Topics: Hope, Purpose
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: Health, Choice, Positive Attitudes, Optimism
Life is an adventure in forgiveness.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Forgiveness, Adventure
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 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: Compassion, Kindness
Laughter is a powerful way to tap positive emotions.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Laughter
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: Earth, Perspective
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, Thoughts, Thinking
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
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
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
In a democracy, the individual enjoys not only the ultimate power but carries the ultimate responsibility.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Democracy
The essence of man is imperfection.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Perfection
Never deny a diagnosis, but do deny the negative verdict that may go with it.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Acceptance
Death is not the enemy; living in constant fear of it is.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Fear, Anxiety
Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences.
—Norman Cousins
Optimism doesn’t wait on facts. It deals with prospects. Pessimism is a waste of time.
—Norman Cousins
Topics: Optimism, Pessimism
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
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