Quote

Governments are not built to perceive large truths. Only people can perceive great truths. Governments specialize in small and intermediate truths. They have to be instructed by their people in great truths.

Norman Cousins

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Norman Cousins
Age: 75 †
Born: 1915
Born: June 24
Died: 1990
Died: November 30
Journalist
Literary Critic
Peace Activist
Professor
Writer
Union City
New Jersey
Perceive
Large
Built
Small
Specialize
Government
Intermediate
Great
Instructed
People
Governments
Truths

More quotes by Norman Cousins

Image
Why are people more appalled at what they term an unnatural form of dying than by an unnatural form of living?
Norman Cousins
Image
Nothing is more essential in the treatment of serious disease than the liberation of the patient from panic and foreboding.
Norman Cousins
Image
Cynicism is intellectual treason.
Norman Cousins
Image
We are becoming a nation of sissies and hypochondriacs, a self medicating society easily intimidated by pain and prone to panic. We understand almost nothing about the essential robustness of the human body or its ability to meet the challenge of illness.
Norman Cousins
Image
The essence of man is imperfection. Failure is simply a price we pay to achieve success. If we learn to embrace that new definition of failure, then we are free to start moving ahead - and failing forward.
Norman Cousins
Image
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 one 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.
Norman Cousins
Image
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?
Norman Cousins
Image
Assume responsibility for the quality of your own life
Norman Cousins
Image
We are wide-eyed in contemplating the possibility that life may exist elsewhere in the universe, but we wear blinders when contemplating the possibilities of life on earth.
Norman Cousins
Image
For every low there is an equal but opposite high.
Norman Cousins
Image
Your heaviest artillery will be your will to live. Keep that big gun going.
Norman Cousins
Image
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
Norman Cousins
Image
Death is not the greatest tragedy in life. The greatest tragedy is what dies inside us while we live. We need not fear death. We need fear only that we may exist without having sensed something of the possibilities that lie within human existence.
Norman Cousins
Image
Optimism doesn't wait on facts. It deals with prospects. Pessimism is a waste of time.
Norman Cousins
Image
It is no longer correct to regard higher education solely as a privilege. It is a basic right in today's world.
Norman Cousins
Image
The poet reminds men of their uniqueness and it is not necessary to possess the ultimate definition of this uniqueness. Even to speculate is a gain.
Norman Cousins
Image
People are never more insecure than when they become obsessed with their fears at the expense of their dreams.
Norman Cousins
Image
The conquest of war and the pursuit of social justice... must become our grand preoccupation and magnificent obsession.
Norman Cousins
Image
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.
Norman Cousins
Image
The most costly disease is boredom costly for both individual and society.
Norman Cousins