Respect for the fragility and importance of an individual life is still the mark of an educated man.
Norman CousinsRead
People are never more insecure than when they become obsessed with their fears at the expense of their dreams.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes that insecurity arises from letting fears overshadow aspirations.
Norman Cousins suggests that individuals often experience heightened insecurity when they allow their fears to dominate their thoughts and actions, ultimately hindering their pursuit of dreams and goals. By prioritizing fears over aspirations, people can become trapped in a cycle of doubt and self-limitation, preventing them from realizing their full potential.
Themes
InsecurityFearsDreamsAspirationsSelf-Limitation
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech encouraging students to pursue their dreams despite their fears.
More from Norman Cousins
All quotes βNever deny a diagnosis, but do deny the negative verdict that may go with it.
Norman CousinsRead
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.
Norman CousinsRead
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.
Norman CousinsRead
Drugs are not always necessary. Belief in recovery always is.
Norman CousinsRead
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.
Norman CousinsRead
Similar quotes
If I be waspish, best beware my sting.
William ShakespeareRead
The scepticism which men affect towards their higher inspirations is often not an honest doubt, but a guilty negligence, and is a sign of narrow mind and defective wisdom.
James MartineauRead
No one is wise or safe, but they that are honest.
Walter RaleighRead
The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it.
Peter MedawarRead
Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any.
Orson Scott CardRead
The end of suffering happens in this very moment, whether you're watching a terrorist attack or doing the dishes. And compassion begins at home. Because I don't believe my thoughts, sadness can't exist. That's how I can go to the depths of anyone's suffering, if they invite me, and take them by the hand and walk them out of it into the sunlight of reality. I've taken that walk myself.
Byron KatieRead