199 Quotes by Norman Cousins

I have learned never to underestimate the capacity of the human mind and body to regenerate – even when prospects seem most wretched. The life force may be the least understood force on earth.

The tragedy of life is not death but what we let die inside of us while we live.

The main trouble with despair is that it is self-fulfilling. People who fear the worst tend to invite it. Heads that are down can’t scan the horizon for new openings. Bursts of energy do not spring from a spirit of defeat. Ultimately, helplessness leads to hopelessness.

The physician knows that his little black bag can carry him only so far and that the body’s own healing system is the main resource.

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 glory of other men in yourself.

The greatest force in the human body is the natural drive of the body to heal itself – but that force in not independent of the belief system. Everything begins with belief. What we believe is the most powerful option of all.

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

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

Death is not the ultimate tragedy of life. The ultimate tragedy is depersonalization – dying in an alien and sterile area, separated from the spiritual nourishment that comes from being able to reach out to a loving hand, separated from the desire to experience the things that make life worth living, separated from hope.