Norman Cousins quotes - page 3

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:

We have everything we need, in fact, except the most important thing of all - time to think and the habit of thought.

Norman Cousins

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.

Norman Cousins

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.

Norman Cousins

For every low there is an equal but opposite high.

Norman Cousins

The heart of the matter is that some people like to cause injury or death to living things. And many of those who do not are indifferent to those who do.

Norman Cousins

In a democracy, the individual enjoys not only the ultimate power but carries the ultimate responsibility.

Norman Cousins

Why are people more appalled at what they term an unnatural form of dying than by an unnatural form of living?

Norman Cousins

Reverence for life is more than solicitude or sensitivity for life. It is a sense of the whole, a capacity for inspired response, a respect for the intricate universe of individual life. It is the supreme awareness of awareness itself.

Norman Cousins

All this sensory input, which begins in the brain, has its effect throughout the body.

Norman Cousins

We have learned to live in a world of mistakes and defective products as if they were necessary to life. It is time to adopt a new philosophy in America.

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

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

Norman Cousins

Drugs are not always necessary, but belief in recovery always is.

Norman Cousins

[The recovery] began, I said, when I decided that some experts don't really know enough to make a pronouncement of doom on a human being. And I said I hoped they would be careful about what they said to others; they might be believed and that could be the beginning of the end.

Norman Cousins

The tragedy of life is not death but what we let die inside of us while we live.

Norman Cousins

Inevitably, an individual is measured by his or her largest concerns.

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 greatest force in the human body is the natural drive of the body to heal itself - but that force in not independent of the belief system. Everything begins with belief. What we believe is the most powerful option of all.

Norman Cousins

You are younger today than you will ever be again. Make use of it for the sake of tomorrow.

Norman Cousins

Death is not the greatest tragedy in life. The greatest tragedy is what dies inside us while we live. We need not fear death. We need fear only that we may exist without having sensed something of the possibilities that lie within human existence.

Norman Cousins

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

Norman Cousins

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.

Norman Cousins