Quote

Pessimism is a waste of time.

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
Waste
Time
Pessimism

More quotes by Norman Cousins

Image
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.
Norman Cousins
Image
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.
Norman Cousins
Image
Optimism doesn't wait on facts. It deals with prospects. Pessimism is a waste of time.
Norman Cousins
Image
More and more, the choice for the world's people is between becoming world warriors or world citizens.
Norman Cousins
Image
Drugs are not always necessary. Belief in recovery always is.
Norman Cousins
Image
Assume responsibility for the quality of your own life
Norman Cousins
Image
We will not have peace by afterthought.
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
I have learned never to underestimate the capacity of the human mind and body to regenerate - even when prospects seem most wretched. The life force may be the least understood force on earth.
Norman Cousins
Image
Silence must be comprehended as not solely the absence of sound. It is the natural environment for serenity and contemplation. Life without silence is life without privacy. The difference between sanity and madness is the quality of our thoughts. Silence is on the side of sanity.
Norman Cousins
Image
Cynicism is intellectual treason.
Norman Cousins
Image
The physician's ability to reassure the patient is a major factor in activating the body's own healing system.
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
Don't defy the diagnosis, try to defy the verdict.
Norman Cousins
Image
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.
Norman Cousins
Image
It is well known that panic, despair, depression, hate, rage, exasperation, frustration all produce negative biochemical changes in the body.
Norman Cousins
Image
You are younger today than you will ever be again. Make use of it for the sake of tomorrow.
Norman Cousins
Image
What was significant about the laughter . . . was not just the fact that it provides internal exercise for a person . . . form of jogging for the innards, but that it creates a mood in which the other positive emotions can be put to work, too.
Norman Cousins
Image
My reason nourishes my faith and my faith my reason.
Norman Cousins
Image
He who keeps his cool best wins.
Norman Cousins