Top 100 Norman Cousins Quotes

#1. A casual attitude toward human hurt and pain is the surest sign of educational failure.

Norman Cousins

Norman Cousins Quotes #7697
#2. It is reasonable to expect the doctor to recognize that science may not have all the answers to problems of health and healing.

Norman Cousins

Norman Cousins Quotes #22889
#3. 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

Norman Cousins Quotes #29969
#4. We will not have peace by afterthought.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #60911
#5. Education tends to be diagrammatic and categorical, opening up no sluices in the human imagination on the wonder of the beauty of our unique estate in the cosmos. Little wonder that it becomes so easy for our young to regard human hurt casually or to be uninspired by the magic of sensitivity.

Norman Cousins

Norman Cousins Quotes #73347
#6. Hope, purpose and determination are not merely mental states. They have electrochemical connections that affect the immune system.

Norman Cousins

Norman Cousins Quotes #99015
#7. 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?

Norman Cousins

Norman Cousins Quotes #107202
#8. 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.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #139658
#9. 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

Norman Cousins Quotes #148322
#10. War is an invention of the human mind. The human mind can invent peace with justice.

Norman Cousins

Norman Cousins Quotes #200780
#11. Unobstructed access to facts can produce unlimited good only if it is matched by the desire and ability to find out what they mean and where they lead.

Norman Cousins

Norman Cousins Quotes #242272
#12. All men - whether they go by the name of Americans or Russians or Chinese or British or Malayans or Indians or Africans - have obligations to one another that transcend their obligations to their sovereign societies.

Norman Cousins

Norman Cousins Quotes #256608
#13. 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.

Norman Cousins

Norman Cousins Quotes #268110
#14. All things are possible, once enough human beings realize that everything is at stake.

Norman Cousins

Norman Cousins Quotes #276973
#15. 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.

Norman Cousins

Norman Cousins Quotes #293819
#16. My reason nourishes my faith and my faith my reason.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #294595
#17. 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

Norman Cousins Quotes #306499
#18. The starting point for a better world is the belief that it is possible.

Norman Cousins

Norman Cousins Quotes #315528
#19. Optimism doesn't wait on facts. It deals with prospects. Pessimism is a waste of time.

Norman Cousins

Norman Cousins Quotes #326815
#20. Some people don't really know enough to make a pronouncement of doom on a human being.

Norman Cousins

Norman Cousins Quotes #356330
#21. The main failure of education is that it has not prepared people to comprehend matters concerning human destiny.

Norman Cousins

Norman Cousins Quotes #383784
#22. Respect for the fragility and importance of an individual life is still the mark of an educated man.

Norman Cousins

Norman Cousins Quotes #392627
#23. He who keeps his cool best wins.

Norman Cousins

Norman Cousins Quotes #418019
#24. I have learned never to underestimate the capacity of the human mind and body to regenerate
even when prospects seem most wretched. The life force may be the least understood force on earth. Norman Cousins (in his; Anatomy of an Illness)

Norman Cousins

Norman Cousins Quotes #445946
#25. Infinity converts the possible into the inevitable.

Norman Cousins

Norman Cousins Quotes #465180
#26. The doctor knows that it is the prescription slip itself, even more than what is written on it, that is often the vital ingredient for enabling a patient to get rid of whatever is ailing him.

Norman Cousins

Norman Cousins Quotes #468998
#27. The old emphasis upon superficial differences that separate peoples must give way to education for citizenship in the human community.

Norman Cousins

Norman Cousins Quotes #476883
#28. 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.

Norman Cousins

Norman Cousins Quotes #501564
#29. But we have yet to make peace basic to our education. The most important subject in the world is hardly taught at all. In the spirit of this passage, the editor has taken the liberty of editing Mr. Cousins' language to make it more gender inclusive.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #504125
#30. The poet reminds men of their uniqueness and it is not necessary to possess the ultimate definition of this uniqueness. Even to speculate is a gain.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #508748
#31. It is no longer correct to regard higher education solely as a privilege. It is a basic right in today's world.

Norman Cousins

Norman Cousins Quotes #522987
#32. The great challenge of the '90s ... is to salvage and improve the UN and to develop it into an agency capable of meeting the wide range of serious problems that are inherent in a world that has become a single geographic unit.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #526797
#33. In a democracy, the individual enjoys not only the ultimate power but carries the ultimate responsibility.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #540586
#34. The need is to recognize that The patient is the healer, Not the doctor.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #547877
#35. Pain is part of the body's magic. It is the way the body transmits a sign to the brain that something is wrong.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #559613
#36. 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.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #565378
#37. If something comes to life in others because of you, then you have made an approach to immortality.

Norman Cousins

Norman Cousins Quotes #577911
#38. I cannot affirm God if I fail to affirm man. Therefore, I affirm both. Without a belief in human unity I am hungry and incomplete. Human unity is the fulfillment of diversity. It is the harmony of opposites. It is a many-stranded texture, with color and depth.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #578421
#39. The most costly disease is boredom costly for both individual and society.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #591583
#40. Laughter is a powerful way to tap positive emotions

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Norman Cousins Quotes #635839
#41. 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.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #644693
#42. What people most need now is to apply their conversion skills to those things that are essential for their survival. They need to convert facts into logic, free will into purpose, conscience into decision. They need to convert historical experience into a design for a sane world.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #654831
#43. What a man really says when he says that someone else can be persuaded by force, is that he himself is incapable of more rational means of communication.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #659064
#44. Second only to freedom, learning is the most precious option on earth.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #684409
#45. The one thing I have learned about editing over the years is that you have to edit and publish out of your own tastes, enthusiasms, and concerns, and not out of notions or guesswork about what other people might like to read.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #688167
#46. The physician knows that his little black bag can carry him only so far and that the body's own healing system is the main resource.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #712529
#47. 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.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #766476
#48. Your heaviest artillery will be your will to live. Keep that big gun going.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #782647
#49. Cynicism is intellectual treason.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #810133
#50. History is an accumulation of error.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #853614
#51. A book is like a piece of rope; it takes on meaning only in connection with the things it holds together.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #880041
#52. Of all the gifts bestowed by nature on human beings, hearty laughter must be close to the top.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #893511
#53. The essence of man is imperfection. Failure is simply a price we pay to achieve success. If we learn to embrace that new definition of failure, then we are free to start moving ahead - and failing forward.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #942228
#54. Laughter is inner jogging.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #952550
#55. Reverence for life is more than solicitude or sensitivity for life. It is a sense of the whole, a capacity for inspired response, a respect for the intricate universe of individual life. It is the supreme awareness of awareness itself.

Norman Cousins

Norman Cousins Quotes #960816
#56. 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.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #994444
#57. Words have to be crafted, not sprayed. They need to be fitted together with infinite care.

Norman Cousins

Norman Cousins Quotes #997368
#58. 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.

Norman Cousins

Norman Cousins Quotes #1028780
#59. Man is not imprisoned by habit. Great changes in him can be wrought by crisis - once that crisis can be recognized and understood.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1073352
#60. The physician's ability to reassure the patient is a major factor in activating the body's own healing system.

Norman Cousins

Norman Cousins Quotes #1089457
#61. I've learned that next to the atomic bomb, the greatest danger is defeatism, despair, and inadequate awareness of what human beings possess. I feel that any problem that can be defined is capable of being resolved. Out of this has come my conviction that no person knows enough to be a pessimist.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1122296
#62. Nothing is more powerful than an individual acting out their conscience, thus helping bring the collective conscience to life.

Norman Cousins

Norman Cousins Quotes #1123689
#63. Governments are not built to perceive large truths. Only people can perceive great truths. Governments specialize in small and intermediate truths. They have to be instructed by their people in great truths.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1161047
#64. 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

Norman Cousins Quotes #1166003
#65. People who develop the habit of thinking of themselves as world citizens are fulfilling the first requirement of sanity in our time.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1170821
#66. Why are people more appalled at what they term an unnatural form of dying than by an unnatural form of living?

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1196618
#67. Intelligence and the spirit of adventure can be combined to create new energies, and out of these energies may come exciting and rewarding new prospects.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1218605
#68. Pessimism is a waste of time.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1277369
#69. Don't defy the diagnosis, try to defy the verdict.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1282736
#70. The more serious the illness, the more important it is for you to fight back, mobilizing all your resources-spiritual, emotional, intellectual, physical.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1323325
#71. At a Dodger baseball game in Los Angeles, I asked Will Durant if he was ninety-four or ninety-five. "Ninety-four," he said. "You don't think I'd be doing anything as foolish as this if I were ninety-five, do you?"

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1346164
#72. The growth of the human mind is still high adventure, in many ways the highest adventure on earth.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1355831
#73. Hearty laughter is a good way to jog internally without having to go outdoors.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1359436
#74. You are younger today than you will ever be again. Make use of it for the sake of tomorrow.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1360905
#75. Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1378530
#76. All this sensory input, which begins in the brain, has its effect throughout the body.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1432255
#77. Each patient carries his own doctor inside him.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1442261
#78. Laughter is a form of internal jogging.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1444214
#79. The eternal quest of the individual human being is to shatter his loneliness.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1447033
#80. Government in the U.S. today is a senior partner in every business in the country.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1463182
#81. The American people are beginning to think in new ways about health and illness ... Bernie Siegel is helping to define and open up these new frontiers. In this sense he is in the best medical tradition.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1498327
#82. Assume responsibility for the quality of your own life

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1514321
#83. Time given to thought is the greatest time saver of all.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1526250
#84. 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.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1535786
#85. If there is a conflict between the easy drift of prosperity and the ordeal of peace, the ordeal of peace comes first.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1567295
#86. History is a vast early warning system.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1602786
#87. 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.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1609629
#88. 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.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1644123
#89. Death is not the enemy; living in constant fear of it is.

Norman Cousins

Norman Cousins Quotes #1652787
#90. People are never more insecure than when they become obsessed with their fears at the expense of their dreams.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1704976
#91. 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.

Norman Cousins

Norman Cousins Quotes #1709864
#92. Freedom of religion, as the Founding Fathers saw it, was not just the right to associate oneself with a certain denomination but the right to disassociate without penalty. Belief or nonbelief was a matter of individual choice - a right underwritten in the basic charter of the nation's liberties.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1732462
#93. Nature has not been lavish in her endowments, but each person has his or her own potential in terms of achievement and service. The awareness of that potential is the discovery of purpose; the fulfillment of that potential is the discovery of strength.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1741547
#94. Nothing is more essential in the treatment of serious disease than the liberation of the patient from panic and foreboding.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1763264
#95. The purpose of education is to enable us to develop to the fullest that which is inside us

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1787433
#96. Life is an adventure in forgiveness

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1787436
#97. Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1791246
#98. Laughter may or may not activate the endorphins or enhance respiration, as some medical researchers contend. What seems clear, however, is that laughter is an antidote to apprehension and panic.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1812683
#99. We in America have everything we need except the most important thing of all-time to think and the habit of thought.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1821146
#100. Ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep.

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Norman Cousins Quotes #1830970

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