Norman Cousins

The capacity for hope is the most significant fact of life. It provides human beings with a sense of destination and the energy to get started.

    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 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. 

The growth of the human mind is still high adventure, in many ways the highest adventure on earth.

Life is an adventure in forgiving.

Cynicism is intellectual treason.

Don't deny the diagnosis. Try to defy the verdict.

Just as there is no loss of basic energy in the universe, so no thought or action is without its effects, present or ultimate, seen or unseen, felt or unfelt.

If something comes to life in others because of you, then you have made an approach to immortality.

History is a vast early warning system.

The starting point for a better world is the belief that it is possible.