Norman Cousins Quotes

Despair is the conclusion of fools.

Pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; it reproduces itself by crippling our willingness to act.

The main trouble with despair is that it is self-fulfilling.

Learned helplessness is the giving-up reaction, the quitting response that follows from the belief that whatever you do doesn't matter.

There's not anything, I don't think, that I can do or accomplish.

To expect defeat is nine-tenths of defeat itself.

I'm probably the most negative person around.

Pessimism is my default setting.

I'm a bad pessimist. I don't think about how successful any record I've ever done is going to do before it came out.

Depression is a situation of self-fulfilling pessimism.

I've always been a glass-half-empty sort of person.

I'm a massive pessimist.

Hopelessness is a feeling. It's not a fact.

Everyone wrote me off, including me.

I'm sort of a negative guy.

Self-pity is the campsite of self-defeat; it is a dark refuge for those parts of us that would rather wallow in what cannot be than dare to explore what is possible.

Pessimism is the one ism which kills the soul.

Cynicism is a form of cowardice, a failure of courage to hope.

Helplessness induces hopelessness, and history attests that loss of hope and not loss of lives is what decides the issue of war.

Let whatever is going to happen to me happen. I'm expecting the worst for myself and I'm resigned to it.

We lost because we told ourselves we lost.

Hope is the raw material of losers.

Basically I wake up in the morning and I think everything's going to be great. I'm really kind of optimistic, and I look forward to a new day. I pick up 'The New York Times,' and I look at the front page and realize that once again I'm wrong. I start to fixate on stuff.

I'm just a negative person, a deeply negative person. I see the worst aspects of everything.

I've never been an optimist.