Norman Cousins Quotes

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

Inevitably, an individual is measured by his or her largest concerns.

We will not have peace by afterthought.

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.

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

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.

Optimism doesn’t wait on facts. It deals with prospects. Pessimism is a waste of time.

What was most significant about the lunar voyage was not that men set foot on the moon but that they set eye on the earth.

Cynicism is intellectual treason.

Most men think they are immortal--until they get a cold, when they think they are going to die within the hour..

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

Hope, faith, love and a strong will to live offer no promise of immortality, only proof of our uniqueness ans human beings and the opportunity to experience full growth even under the grimmest circumstances. Far more real than the ticking of time is the way we open up the minutes and invest them with meaning. Death is not the ultimate tragedy in life. The ultimate tragedy is to die without discovering the possibilities of full growth.

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

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.

The main failure of education is that it has not prepared people to comprehend matters concerning human destiny.