Norman Cousins citáty
Norman Cousins
Datum narození: 24. červen 1915
Datum úmrtí: 30. listopad 1990
Norman Cousins byl americký politický novinář, profesor a světový obhájce míru.
Citáty Norman Cousins
„Smrt není nepřítelem; život v neustálém strachu z ní ano.“
Originál: (en) Death is not the enemy; living in constant fear of it is.
Zdroj: [Simons, Richard C., 1985, Understanding human behavior in health and illness, Williams & Wilkins, 521, angličtina]
„Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies within us while we live.“
Quoted in History of Sikh Struggles (1989) by Gurmit Singh, p. 189.
„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.“
American Library Association Bulletin (Oct 1954).
„There is a tendency to mistake data for wisdom, just as there has always been a tendency to confuse logic with values, intelligence with insight. Unobstructed access to facts can produce unlimited good only if it is matched by the desire and ability to find out what they mean and where they lead.“
"Freedom as Teacher" in Human Options : An Autobiographical Notebook (1981).
Kontext: There is a tendency to mistake data for wisdom, just as there has always been a tendency to confuse logic with values, intelligence with insight. Unobstructed access to facts can produce unlimited good only if it is matched by the desire and ability to find out what they mean and where they lead. Facts are terrible things if left sprawling and unattended. They are too easily regarded as evaluated certainties rather than as the rawest of raw materials crying to be processed into the texture of logic. It requires a very unusual mind, Whitehead said, to undertake the analysis of a fact. The computer can provide a correct number, but it may be an irrelevant number until judgment is pronounced.
„Far more real than the ticking of time is the way we open up the minutes and invest them with meaning. Death is not the ultimate tragedy in life. The ultimate tragedy is to die without discovering the possibilities of full growth.“
Quoted in Good Housekeeping (November 1989), p. 92.
Kontext: Hope, faith, love and a strong will to live offer no promise of immortality, only proof of our uniqueness ans human beings and the opportunity to experience full growth even under the grimmest circumstances. Far more real than the ticking of time is the way we open up the minutes and invest them with meaning. Death is not the ultimate tragedy in life. The ultimate tragedy is to die without discovering the possibilities of full growth.
„People who develop the habit of thinking of themselves as world citizens are fulfilling the first requirement of sanity in our time.“
Editorial (1971).
Saturday Review
Kontext: The present mode of life on earth is madness, which is nontheless lethal for being legal. Rational existence is possible, but it calls for a world consciousness and a world design. People who develop the habit of thinking of themselves as world citizens are fulfilling the first requirement of sanity in our time.
„Governments are not built to perceive large truths. Only people can perceive great truths.“
The Pathology of Power (1987), pg. 207).
Kontext: 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.
„Each patient carries his own doctor inside him.“
Zdroj: Anatomy of an Illness
„Life is an adventure in forgiveness.“
15 April 1978.
Saturday Review
„History is a vast early warning system.“
15 April 1978.
Saturday Review
„[The recovery] began, I said, when I decided that some experts don't really know enough to make a pronouncement of doom on a human being. And I said I hoped they would be careful about what they said to others; they might be believed and that could be the beginning of the end.“
http://books.google.com/books?id=XFmDIpxyI_sC&q=%22It+all+began+I+said+when+I+decided+that+some+experts+don't+really+know+enough+to+make+a+pronouncement+of+doom+on+a+human+being+And+I+said+I+hoped+they+would+be+careful+about+what+they+said+to+others+they+might+be+believed+and+that+could+be+the+beginning+of+the+end%22&pg=PA160#v=onepage
Anatomy of an Illness (1979)
„Most men think they are immortal--until they get a cold, when they think they are going to die within the hour.“
http://books.google.com/books?id=feWS3EhzaRwC&q=%22Most+men+think+they+are+immortal+until+they+get+a+cold+when+they+think+they+are+going+to+die+within+the+hour%22&pg=PA216#v=onepage
Human Options (1981)
