Norman Cousins

“Never deny a diagnosis, but do deny the negative verdict that may go with it.”

“Capitalism in the United States has undergone profound modification, not just under the New Deal but through a consensus that continued to grow after the New Deal. Government in the U.S. tod...”

“Life is an adventure in forgiveness.”

“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 p...”

“War is an invention of the human mind. The human mind can invent peace.”

“Since the human body tends to move in the direction of its expectations-plus or minus-it is important to know that attitudes of confidence and determination are no less a part of the treatme...”

“A human being fashions his consequences as surely as he fashions his goods or his dwelling. Nothing that he says, thinks or does is without consequences.”

“The possibility of war increases in direct proportion to the effectiveness of the instruments of war.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“We will not have peace by afterthought.”

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

“Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences.”

“Hope is independent of the apparatus of logic.”

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

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

“The way a book is read, which is to say, the qualities a reader brings to a book can have as much to do with its worth as anything the author puts into it.”

“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 g...”

“The capacity for hope is the most significant fact of life. It provides human beings with a sense of destination and the energy to get started.”