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

Fortunately or otherwise we live at a time when the average individual has to know several times as much in order to keep informed as he did only thirty or forty years ago. Being "educated" today requires not only more than a superficial knowledge of the arts and sciences, but a sense of inter-relationship such as is taught in few schools. Finally, being "educated" today, in terms of the larger needs, means preparation for world citizenship; in short, education for survival.

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.

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.

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

The capacity for hope is the most significant fact of life.

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.