Norman Cousins

“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.”

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

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

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

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

“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 main failure of education is that it has not prepared people to comprehend matters concerning human destiny.”

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

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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

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

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

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

“He who keeps his cool best wins.”

“Hope is independent of the apparatus of logic.”

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

“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.”

“My reason nourishes my faith and my faith my reason.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Hope, faith, love and a strong will to live offer no promise of immortality, only proof of our uniqueness ans human beings and the opportunity to experience full growth even under the grimmest circumstances. Far more real than the ticking of time is the way we open up the minutes and invest them with meaning. Death is not the ultimate tragedy in life. The ultimate tragedy is to die without discovering the possibilities of full growth.”

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

“We will not have peace by afterthought.”

“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 present mode of life on earth is madness, which is nontheless lethal for being legal. Rational existence is possible, but it calls for a world consciousness and a world design. People who develop the habit of thinking of themselves as world citizens are fulfilling the first requirement of sanity in our time.”

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

“Life is an adventure in forgiveness.”

“Life is an adventure in forgiveness.”

“History is a vast early warning system.”

“Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences.”

“The main failure of education is that it has not prepared people to comprehend matters concerning human destiny.”

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

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

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

“Cynicism is intellectual treason.”

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

“Inevitably, an individual is measured by his or her largest concerns.”

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

“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.”