Norman Cousins Quotes

Laughter is a powerful way to tap positive emotions

The message from the moon which we have flashed to the far corners of this planet is that no problem need any longer be considered insoluble.

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.

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

The real wealth, not only of America, but of the world, is in the resources of the ground we stand on, and in the resources of the humankind.

For every low there is an equal but opposite high.

The essence of man is imperfection.

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.

The justification for those actions was that we were living in a very hard, predatory, cloak-and-dagger world and that the only way to deal with a totalitarian enemy was to intimidate him. The trouble with this theory was that while we live in a world of plot and counterplot, we also live in a world of cause and effect. Whatever the cause for the decision to legitimize and regularize deceit abroad, the inevitable effect was the practice of deceit at home.

No one has been able to define or synthesize that precarious, splendid, and perhaps untidy instant when the creative process begins. This is what the uniqueness of the artist is all about. The transcendent right of the artist is the right to create even though he may not always know what he is doing.

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

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.

The control center of your life is your attitude.

Assume responsibility for the quality of your own life

What was significant about the laughter . . . was not just the fact that it provides internal exercise for a person . . . form of jogging for the innards, but that it creates a mood in which the other positive emotions can be put to work, too.

If there is a conflict between the easy drift of prosperity and the ordeal of peace, the ordeal of peace comes first.

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.

Death is not the enemy; living in constant fear of it is.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

The life-force may be the least understood force on earth.

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

Of all the gifts bestowed by nature on human beings, hearty laughter must be close to the top.

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.

Laughter is inner jogging.

Words have to be crafted, not sprayed. They need to be fitted together with infinite care.

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

The most costly disease is boredom costly for both individual and society.

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

History is a vast early warning system.

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

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

It is well known that panic, despair, depression, hate, rage, exasperation, frustration all produce negative biochemical changes in the body.

Don't defy the diagnosis, try to defy the verdict.

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.

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.

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.

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

Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences.

The need is not to amputate the ego ... but to transcend it.

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

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?