Norman Cousins Quotes

Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.

People are never more insecure than when they become obsessed with their fears at the expense of their dreams.

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

Laughter is a form of internal jogging. It moves your internal organs around. It enhances respiration. It is an igniter of great expectations.

Laughter is inner jogging.

If something comes to life in others because of you, then you have made an approach to immortality.

The greatest force in the human body is the natural drive of the body to heal itself - but that force in not independent of the belief system. Everything begins with belief. What we believe is the most powerful option of all.

A library is the delivery room for the birth of ideas, a place where history comes to life.

Drugs are not always necessary. Belief in recovery always is.

On the quality of life: #1. Realize that each human being has a built-in capacity for recuperation and repair. #2. Recognize that the quality of life is all-important. #3. Assume responsibility for the quality of your own life. #4. Nurture the regenerative and restorative forces within you. #5. Utilize laughter to create a mood in which the other positive emotions can be put to work for yourself and those around you. #6. Develop confidence and ability to feel love, hope and faith, and acquire a strong will to live.

Life is an adventure in forgiveness.

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?

The control center of your life is your attitude.

Each patient carries his own doctor inside him.

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.

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

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

You are younger today than you will ever be again. Make use of it for the sake of tomorrow.

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.

The main trouble with despair is that it is self-fulfilling. People who fear the worst tend to invite it. Heads that are down can't scan the horizon for new openings. Bursts of energy do not spring from a spirit of defeat. Ultimately, helplessness leads to hopelessness.

Optimism doesn't wait on facts. It deals with prospects. Pessimism is a waste of time.

Wisdom consists of the anticipation of 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.

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

The eternal quest of the individual human being is to shatter his loneliness.

Death is not the greatest tragedy in life. The greatest tragedy is what dies inside us while we live. We need not fear death. We need fear only that we may exist without having sensed something of the possibilities that lie within human existence.

Your heaviest artillery will be your will to live. Keep that big gun going.

To be able to rise from the earth; to be able, from a station in outer space, to see the relationship of the planet earth to other planets; to be able to contemplate the billions of factors in precise and beautiful combination that make human existence possible; to be able to dwell on an encounter of the human brain and spirit with the universe

Pain is part of the body's magic. It is the way the body transmits a sign to the brain that something is wrong.

A human being fashions his consequences as surely as he fashions his goods or his dwelling. Nothing that he says, thinks or does is without consequences.

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.

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

Laughter is a powerful way to tap positive emotions

It is reasonable to expect the doctor to recognize that science may not have all the answers to problems of health and healing.

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.

The marvelous pharmacy that was designed by nature and placed into our being by the universal architect produces most of the medicines we need.

We are becoming a nation of sissies and hypochondriacs, a self medicating society easily intimidated by pain and prone to panic. We understand almost nothing about the essential robustness of the human body or its ability to meet the challenge of illness.

All things are possible, once enough human beings realize that everything is at stake.

Time given to thought is the greatest time saver of all.

Laughter serves as a blocking agent. Like a bullet-proof vest, it may help protect you against the ravages of negative emotions that can assault you in disease.

The heart of the matter is that some people like to cause injury or death to living things. And many of those who do not are indifferent to those who do.

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.

Integration is a basic law of life; when we resist it, disintegration is the natural result, both inside and outside of us. Thus we come to the concept of harmony through integration.

A book is like a piece of rope; it takes on meaning only in connection with the things it holds together.

History is a vast early warning system.

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

The purpose of education is to enable us to develop to the fullest that which is inside us

Hope, purpose and determination are not merely mental states. They have electrochemical connections that affect the immune system.

Silence must be comprehended as not solely the absence of sound. It is the natural environment for serenity and contemplation. Life without silence is life without privacy. The difference between sanity and madness is the quality of our thoughts. Silence is on the side of sanity.