Norman Cousins Quotes

59 Sourced Quotes

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

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

Norman Cousins
Hearty laughter is a good way to jog internally without having to go outdoors.... It moves your internal organs around. It enhances respiration. It is an igniter of great expectations.

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
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
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
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.

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
I have learned that life is an adventure in forgiveness. Nothing clutters the soul more than remorse, resentment, recrimination.

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

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

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

Norman Cousins
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.

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

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

Norman Cousins
Laughter is a form of internal jogging. It moves your internal organs around. It enhances respiration. It is an igniter of great expectations.

Norman Cousins
The justification for exploring the cosmos rests not on tangible benefits, but on philosophical grounds and on our instinctive need to evolve.

Norman Cousins
Most men think they are immortal—until they get a cold, when they think they are going to die within the hour.

Norman Cousins
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.

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

Norman Cousins
Although a man may have no jurisdiction over the fact of his existence, he can hold supreme command over the meaning of existence for him.

Norman Cousins
A human being fashions his consequences as surely as he fastens his goods or his dwelling. Nothing that he says, thinks or does is without consequences.

Norman Cousins
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.

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

Norman Cousins