01UndatedDeath is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.Norman Cousins / quote ↗
03UndatedThe 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.Norman Cousins / quote ↗
05UndatedIf 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.Norman Cousins / quote ↗
06UndatedIllness 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.Norman Cousins / quote ↗
07UndatedSuppose 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.Norman Cousins / quote ↗
08UndatedTime 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.Norman Cousins / quote ↗
09UndatedPeople who develop the habit of thinking of themselves as world citizens are fulfilling the first requirement of sanity in our time.Norman Cousins / quote ↗
10UndatedThe individual is capable of both great compassion and great indifference. He has it withing his means to nourish the former and outgrow the latter.Norman Cousins / quote ↗
11UndatedNot 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.Norman Cousins / quote ↗
13UndatedThe 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.475Norman Cousins / quote ↗
14UndatedA library is the delivery room for the birth of ideas, a place where history comes to life.Norman Cousins / quote ↗
15UndatedA 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 / quote ↗
16UndatedNever deny a diagnosis but do deny the negative verdict that may go with it.Norman Cousins / quote ↗
18UndatedThe most costly disease is not cancer or coronaries. The most costly disease is boredom - costly for both individual and society.Norman Cousins / quote ↗
19UndatedCapitalism 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 / quote ↗
20UndatedThe 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.Norman Cousins / quote ↗
21UndatedIt has always seemed to me that hearty laughter is a good way to jog internally without having to go outdoors.Norman Cousins / quote ↗
22UndatedThe eternal quest of the individual human being is to shatter his loneliness.Norman Cousins / quote ↗
24UndatedNothing is more essential in the treatment of serious disease than the liberation of the patient from panic and forboding.Norman Cousins / quote ↗
