Norman Cousins (June 24, 1915 – November 30, 1990) was an American political journalist, author, professor, and world peace advocate.
Pessimism is a waste of time.
Man is not imprisoned by habit. Great changes in him can be wrought by crisis - once that crisis can be recognized and understood.
The capacity for hope is the most significant fact of life.
The doctor knows that it is the prescription slip itself, even more than what is written on it, that is often the vital ingredient for enabling a patient to get rid of whatever is ailing him.
The eternal quest of the individual human being is to shatter his loneliness.
I've learned that next to the atomic bomb, the greatest danger is defeatism, despair, and inadequate awareness of what human beings possess. I feel that any problem that can be defined is capable of being resolved. Out of this has come my conviction that no person knows enough to be a pessimist.
The starting point for a better world is the belief that it is possible.
Why are people more appalled at what they term an unnatural form of dying than by an unnatural form of living?
The present mode of life on earth is madness, which is nontheless lethal for being legal. Rational existence is possible, but it calls for a world consciousness and a world design. People who develop the habit of thinking of themselves as world citizens are fulfilling the first requirement of sanity in our time.
Laughter serves as a blocking agent. Like a bullet-proof vest, it may help protect you against the ravages of negative emotions that can assault you in disease.
A book is like a piece of rope; it takes on meaning only in connection with the things it holds together.
Optimism doesn't wait on facts. It deals with prospects. Pessimism is a waste of time.
Intelligence and the spirit of adventure can be combined to create new energies, and out of these energies may come exciting and rewarding new prospects.
No one has been able to define or synthesize that precarious, splendid, and perhaps untidy instant when the creative process begins. This is what the uniqueness of the artist is all about. The transcendent right of the artist is the right to create even though he may not always know what he is doing.
Pain is part of the body's magic. It is the way the body transmits a sign to the brain that something is wrong.
The justification for those actions was that we were living in a very hard, predatory, cloak-and-dagger world and that the only way to deal with a totalitarian enemy was to intimidate him. The trouble with this theory was that while we live in a world of plot and counterplot, we also live in a world of cause and effect. Whatever the cause for the decision to legitimize and regularize deceit abroad, the inevitable effect was the practice of deceit at home.
The life-force may be the least understood force on earth.
It is reasonable to expect the doctor to recognize that science may not have all the answers to problems of health and healing.
He who keeps his cool best wins.
People are never more insecure than when they become obsessed with their fears at the expense of their dreams.