Norman Cousins
Overview
 
Norman Cousins was an American political journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

, author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

, professor
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...

, and world peace
World peace
World Peace is an ideal of freedom, peace, and happiness among and within all nations and/or people. World peace is an idea of planetary non-violence by which nations willingly cooperate, either voluntarily or by virtue of a system of governance that prevents warfare. The term is sometimes used to...

 advocate.
Cousins was born in Union City, New Jersey
Union City, New Jersey
Union City is a city in Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. According to the 2010 United States Census the city had a total population of 66,455. All of the city is on land, an area of...

. At age 11, he was misdiagnosed with tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

 and placed in a sanatorium
Sanatorium
A sanatorium is a medical facility for long-term illness, most typically associated with treatment of tuberculosis before antibiotics...

. Despite this, he was an athletic youth, and he claimed that as a young boy, he had “set out to discover exuberance.”

Cousins attended Theodore Roosevelt High School
Theodore Roosevelt High School (New York City)
Theodore Roosevelt High School is a public high school located in The Bronx, New York City, United States. It was first organized November 14, 1918. When Theodore Roosevelt died on January 6, 1919, the Board of Education decided to give the school his name...

 in the Bronx, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, graduating on February 3, 1933. He edited the high school paper, "The Square Deal", where his editing abilities were already in evidence.
Quotations

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

Who Speaks for Man? (1953), p. 318

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)

What a man really says when he says that someone else can be persuaded by force, is that he himself is incapable of more rational means of communication.

Quoted in Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Time (1977) by Laurence J. Peter

What was most significant about the lunar voyage was not that men set foot on the moon but that they set eye on the earth.

Reader’s Digest (September 1980)

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.

The Pathology of Power (1987), pg. 207)

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

We will not have peace by afterthought.

Editorial (1956) on importance of preservation rather than breaches of world peace

If the United Nations is to survive, those who represent it must bolster it; those who advocate it must submit to it; and those who believe in it must fight for it.

Editorial (1956) on importance of preservation rather than breaches of world peace

 
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