Norman Cousins Quotes

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.

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

He who keeps his cool best wins.

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

Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences.

Never deny a diagnosis, but do deny the negative verdict that may go with it.

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

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.

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.

Laughter is inner jogging.

Hearty laughter is a good way to jog internally without having to go outdoors.

History is a vast early warning system.

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.

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 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.

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.

Laughter is a powerful way to tap positive emotions

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

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

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

War is an invention of the human mind. The human mind can invent peace with justice.

The more serious the illness, the more important it is for you to fight back, mobilizing all your resources-spiritual, emotional, intellectual, physical.

We in America have everything we need except the most important thing of all-time to think and the habit of thought.

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

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

Cynicism is intellectual treason.

We will not have peace by afterthought.

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