Man is not imprisoned by habit. Great changes in him can be wrought by crisis - once that crisis can be recognized and understood.

Cousins argues against a deterministic view of human behavior in which habit is a prison. While routines and conditioning are powerful, they are not absolute: under the pressure of a “crisis” (a rupture in ordinary life—illness, loss, moral shock, social upheaval), people can re-evaluate assumptions and reorganize priorities. The crucial condition is consciousness: the crisis must be “recognized and understood,” not merely endured. In other words, transformation is not automatic; it depends on interpretation—making meaning of disruption and converting it into insight. The line reflects Cousins’s broader humanistic faith in agency, learning, and the possibility of deliberate change even late in life.