Norman Cousins quotes

Born
June 24, 1915.

Died
November 30, 1990.

Occupation
Political journalist, author.

Norman Cousins was an American political journalist and author.

Hearty laughter is a good way to jog internally without having to go outdoors.
– Norman Cousins

Laughter is inner jogging.
– Norman Cousins

Life is an adventure in forgiveness.
– Norman Cousins

We will not have peace by afterthought.
– Norman Cousins

Hope is independent of the apparatus of logic.
– Norman Cousins

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

Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.
– Norman Cousins

History is a vast early warning system.
– Norman Cousins

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

My reason nourishes my faith and my faith my reason.
– Norman Cousins

Your heaviest artillery will be your will to live. Keep that big gun going.
– Norman Cousins

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.
– Norman Cousins

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

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

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.
– Norman Cousins

Man is not imprisoned by habit. Great changes in him can be wrought by crisis – once that crisis can be recognized and understood.
– Norman Cousins

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.
– Norman Cousins

He who keeps his cool best wins.
– 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.
– Norman Cousins

Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences.
– Norman Cousins

The eternal quest of the individual human being is to shatter his loneliness.
– Norman Cousins

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

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

Optimism doesn’t wait on facts. It deals with prospects. Pessimism is a waste of time.
– Norman Cousins

Respect for the fragility and importance of an individual life is still the mark of an educated man.
– Norman Cousins