Norman Cousins Quotes

Not every illness can be overcome. But many people allow illness to disfigure their lives more than it should. They cave in needlessly. They ignore and weaken whatever powers they have for standing erect. There is always a margin within which life can be lived with meaning and even with a certain measure of joy, despite illness.

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.

Suppose I stopped taking aspirin and phenylbutazone? What about the pain? The bones in my spine and practically every joint in my body felt as though I had been run over by a truck. I knew that pain could be affected by attitudes. Most people become panicky about almost any pain. On all sides they have been so bombarded with advertisements about pain that they take this or that analgesic at the slightest sign of an ache. We are largely illiterate about pain and so are seldom able to deal with it rationally. Pain is part of the body's magic. It is the way the body transmits a sign to the body that something is wrong.

Death is not the enemy living in constant fear of it is.

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

Time is the one thing that patients need most from their doctors--time to be heard, time to have things explained, time to reassured, time to be introduced by the doctor personally to specialists or other attendants whose very existence seems to reflect something new and threatening. yet the one thing that too many doctors find most difficult to command or manage is time.

Illness is always an interaction between [mind and body]. It can begin in the mind and affect the body, or it can begin in the body and affect the mind, both of which are served by the same bloodstream. Attempts to treat most mental diseases as though they were completely free of physical causes and attempts to treat most bodily diseases as though the mind were in no way involved must be considered archaic in the light of new evidence about the way the human body functions.

The possibility of war increases in direct proportion to the effectiveness of the instruments of war.

Life is an adventure in forgiveness.

The essence of man is imperfection.

Don't defy the diagnosis try to defy the verdict.

Life is an adventure in forgiveness

Capitalism in the United States has undergone profound modification not just under the New Deal but through a consensus that continued to grow after the New Deal. Government in the U.S. today is a senior partner in every business in the country.

Since the human body tends to move in the direction of its expectations-plus or minus-it is important to know that attitudes of confidence and determination are no less a part of the treatment program than medical science and technology.

History is a vast early warning system.

A human being fashions his consequences as surely as he fashions his goods or his dwelling. Nothing that he says thinks or does is without consequences.

It has always seemed to me that hearty laughter is a good way to jog internally without having to go outdoors.

Nothing is more essential in the treatment of serious disease than the liberation of the patient from panic and forboding.

The most costly disease is not cancer or coronaries. The most costly disease is boredom - costly for both individual and society.

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.

It is nonsense to say there is not enough time to be fully informed. ... Time given to thought is the greatest timesaver of all.

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

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.

If ignorance about the nature of pain is widespread, ignorance about the way pain-killing drugs is even more so. What is not generally understood is that many of the vaunted pain-killing drugs conceal the pain without correcting the underlying condition. They deaden the mechanism in the body that alerts the brain to the fact that something may be wrong. The body can pay a high price for suppression of pain without regard to its basic cause.

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

People who develop the habit of thinking of themselves as world citizens are fulfilling the first requirement of sanity in our time.

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

To talk about the need for perfection in man is to talk about the need for another species.

The library is not a shrine for the worship of books. It is not a temple where literary incense must be burned or where one's devotion to the bound book is expressed in ritual. 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.— Cited in ALA Bulletin, Oct. 1954, p.475

Each patient carries his own doctor inside him.

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

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