Norman Cousins Quotes - Page 2

Laughter is inner jogging.

The essence of man is imperfection. Failure is simply a price we pay to achieve success. If we learn to embrace that new definition of failure, then we are free to start moving ahead - and failing forward.

Education fails unless the Three R's at one end of the school spectrum lead ultimately to the Four P's at the other-Preparati on for Earning, Preparation for Living, Preparation for Understanding, Preparation for Participation in the problems involved in the making of a better world.

What was significant about the laughter . . . was not just the fact that it provides internal exercise for a person . . . form of jogging for the innards, but that it creates a mood in which the other positive emotions can be put to work, too.

Each patient carries his own doctor inside him.

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.

He who keeps his cool best wins.

Don't defy the diagnosis, try to defy the verdict.

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

All things are possible, once enough human beings realize that everything is at stake.

The starting point for a better world is the belief that it is possible.

Second only to freedom, learning is the most precious option on earth.

War is an invention of the human mind. The human mind can invent peace with justice.

Hope, purpose and determination are not merely mental states. They have electrochemical connections that affect the immune system.

The purpose of education is to enable us to develop to the fullest that which is inside us

Assume responsibility for the quality of your own life

Time given to thought is the greatest time saver of all.

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.

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 more serious the illness, the more important it is for you to fight back, mobilizing all your resources-spiritual, emotional, intellectual, physical.

To be able to rise from the earth; to be able, from a station in outer space, to see the relationship of the planet earth to other planets; to be able to contemplate the billions of factors in precise and beautiful combination that make human existence possible; to be able to dwell on an encounter of the human brain and spirit with the universe

Respect for the fragility and importance of an individual life is still the mark of an educated man.

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.

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.

The need is to recognize that The patient is the healer, Not the doctor.