199 Quotes by Norman Cousins

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 prescription.

A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas – a place where history comes to life.

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.

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.

At a Dodger baseball game in Los Angeles, I asked Will Durant if he was ninety-four or ninety-five. “Ninety-four,” he said. “You don’t think I’d be doing anything as foolish as this if I were ninety-five, do you?”

If news is not really news unless it is bad news, it may be difficult to claim we are an informed nation.

Laughter is a powerful way to tap positive emotions.

The human body experiences a powerful gravitational pull in the direction of hope.

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