Norman Cousins quotes

Norman Cousins was an American political journalist, author, and advocate for world peace and healing. His writings emphasized the power of hope, positive emotions, and the mind-body connection in overcoming illness. He inspired many as a humanitarian committed to peace, understanding, and the potential of human resilience. Here are 128 of his quotes:

Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences.

Norman Cousins

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

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

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

Norman Cousins

History is a vast early warning system.

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

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

Norman Cousins

Laughter is inner jogging.

Norman Cousins

Cynicism is intellectual treason.

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

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

Norman Cousins

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

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

Norman Cousins

We will not have peace by afterthought.

Norman Cousins

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.

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

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

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

Norman Cousins

He who keeps his cool best wins.

Norman Cousins

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

Norman Cousins