Norman Cousins Quotes

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

Life is an adventure in forgiveness.

History is a vast early warning system.

If news is not really news unless it is bad news, it may be difficult to claim we are an informed nation

The human body experiences a powerful gravitational pull in the direction of hope.

Assume responsibility for the quality of your own life

The main trouble with despair is that it is self-fulfilling.

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.

Laughter may or may not activate the endorphins or enhance respiration, as some medical researchers contend. What seems clear, however, is that laughter is an antidote to apprehension and panic.

The library is not a shrine for the worship of books. It is not a temple where literary incense must be burned or where one’s one devotion to the bound book is expressed in ritual. 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.

Nothing is more powerful than an individual acting out their conscience, thus helping bring the collective conscience to life.

Words have to be crafted, not sprayed. They need to be fitted together with infinite care.