Norman Cousins

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

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

Although a man may have no jurisdiction over the fact of his existence, he can hold supreme command over the meaning of existence for him.

People are never more insecure than when they become obsessed with their fears at the expense of their dreams.

Reverence for life is more than solicitude or sensitivity for life. It is a sense of the whole, a capacity for inspired response, a respect for the intricate universe of individual life. It is the supreme awareness of awareness itself.

Drugs are not always necessary. Belief in recovery always is.

The individual is capable of both great compassion and great indifference. He has it within his means to nourish the former and outgrow the latter.

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.

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

I cannot affirm God if I fail to affirm man. Therefore, I affirm both. Without a belief in human unity I am hungry and incomplete. Human unity is the fulfillment of diversity. It is the harmony of opposites. It is a many-stranded texture, with color and depth.

What people most need now is to apply their conversion skills to those things that are essential for their survival. They need to convert facts into logic, free will into purpose, conscience into decision. They need to convert historical experience into a design for a sane world.

Of all the gifts bestowed by nature on human beings, hearty laughter must be close to the top.

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.

Fortunately or otherwise we live at a time when the average individual has to know several times as much in order to keep informed as he did only thirty or forty years ago. Being "educated" today requires not only more than a superficial knowledge of the arts and sciences, but a sense of inter-relationship such as is taught in few schools. Finally, being "educated" today, in terms of the larger needs, means preparation for world citizenship; in short, education for survival.

Where is the indignation about the fact that the US and USSR have thirty thousand pounds of destructive force for every human being in the world?

The need is not to amputate the ego ... but to transcend it.

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.

Man is not imprisoned by habit. Great changes in him can be wrought by crisis - once that crisis can be recognized and understood.

Hearty laughter is a good way to jog internally without having to go outdoors.

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