Norman Cousins
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.Collection: Graduation
Hope is independent of the apparatus of logic.Collection: Hope
Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.Collection: Sympathy
Government in the U.S. today is a senior partner in every business in the country.Collection: Business
A library is the delivery room for the birth of ideas, a place where history comes to life.Collection: History
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.Collection: Men
Optimism doesn't wait on facts. It deals with prospects. Pessimism is a waste of time.Collection: Time
My reason nourishes my faith and my faith my reason.Collection: Faith
We will not have peace by afterthought.Collection: Peace
Your heaviest artillery will be your will to live. Keep that big gun going.Collection: Motivational
Hearty laughter is a good way to jog internally without having to go outdoors.Collection: Good
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.Collection: Men
He who keeps his cool best wins.Collection: Best
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.Collection: Great
People are never more insecure than when they become obsessed with their fears at the expense of their dreams.Collection: Dreams
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.Collection: Hope
It is reasonable to expect the doctor to recognize that science may not have all the answers to problems of health and healing.Collection: Medical
Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences.Collection: Wisdom
Respect for the fragility and importance of an individual life is still the mark of an educated man.Collection: Respect
History is a vast early warning system.Collection: History
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.Collection: Hope
The main failure of education is that it has not prepared people to comprehend matters concerning human destiny.Collection: Failure
Life is an adventure in forgiveness.Collection: Forgiveness
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.Collection: Famous
The eternal quest of the individual human being is to shatter his loneliness.Collection: Alone
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.
If something comes to life in others because of you, then you have made an approach to immortality.
Cynicism is intellectual treason.
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 only security for the American people today, or for any people, is to be found through the control of force rather than the use of force.
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.
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.
Laughter is inner jogging.
Man is not imprisoned by habit. Great changes in him can be wrought by crisis - once that crisis can be recognized and understood.
A book is like a piece of rope; it takes on meaning only in connection with the things it holds together.
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 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.Collection: Powerful
The control center of your life is your attitude.Collection: Life
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.Collection: Strong
You are younger today than you will ever be again. Make use of it for the sake of tomorrow.Collection: Life
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.Collection: Lying
Pain is part of the body's magic. It is the way the body transmits a sign to the brain that something is wrong.Collection: Pain
It is well known that panic, despair, depression, hate, rage, exasperation, frustration all produce negative biochemical changes in the body.Collection: Depression
Drugs are not always necessary. Belief in recovery always is.Collection: Healing
If news is not really news unless it is bad news, it may be difficult to claim we are an informed nationCollection: News
Laughter is a form of internal jogging. It moves your internal organs around. It enhances respiration. It is an igniter of great expectations.Collection: Happiness
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.Collection: Spring
The starting point for a better world is the belief that it is possible.Collection: World
Don't defy the diagnosis, try to defy the verdict.Collection: Wisdom
All things are possible, once enough human beings realize that everything is at stake.Collection: Inspiring