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.

— Norman Cousins

Norman Cousins Quotes

Nixon’s motto was, if two wrongs don’t make a right, try three.

— Norman Cousins

The capacity for hope is the most significant fact of life.

— Norman Cousins

The poet reminds men of their uniqueness and it is not necessary to possess the ultimate definition of this uniqueness. Even to speculate is a gain.

— Norman Cousins

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

— 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

Nothing is more essential in the treatment of serious disease than the liberation of the patient from panic and foreboding.

— Norman Cousins

More and more, the choice for the world’s people is between world warriors and world citizens.

— 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

To talk about the need for perfection in man is to talk about the need for another species.

— Norman Cousins

The sense of paralysis proceeds not so much out of the mammoth size of the problem but out of the puniness of the purpose.

— Norman Cousins

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

— Norman Cousins

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.

— Norman Cousins

Governments are not built to perceive large truths. Only people can perceive great truths. Governments specialize in small and intermediate truths. They have to be instructed by their people in great truths.

— Norman Cousins

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

— Norman Cousins

The old emphasis upon superficial differences that separate peoples must give way to education for citizenship in the human community.

— Norman Cousins

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.

— 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

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

Assume responsibility for the quality of your own life.

— Norman Cousins

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.

— Norman Cousins
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