Norman Cousins

Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences.

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

We will not have peace by afterthought.

Hope is independent of the apparatus of logic.

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.

The capacity for hope is the most significant fact of life. It provides human beings with a sense of destination and the energy to get started.

A library is the delivery room for the birth of ideas, a place where history comes to life.

History is a vast early warning system.

It is reasonable to expect the doctor to recognize that science may not have all the answers to problems of health and healing.

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

Life is an adventure in forgiveness.

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.

My reason nourishes my faith and my faith my reason.

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

It makes little difference how many university courses or degrees a person may own. If he cannot use words to move an idea from one point to another, his education is incomplete.

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

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.

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

Government in the U.S. today is a senior partner in every business in the country.

He who keeps his cool best wins.