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Optimism doesn't wait on facts. It deals with prospects. Pessimism is a waste of time.

Norman Cousins

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Norman Cousins
Age: 75 †
Born: 1915
Born: June 24
Died: 1990
Died: November 30
Journalist
Literary Critic
Peace Activist
Professor
Writer
Union City
New Jersey
Time
Wait
Perspective
Waste
Positive
Deals
Prospects
Waiting
Pessimism
Facts
Optimistic
Doesn
Optimism

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The capacity for hope is the most significant fact of life.
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The doctor knows that it is the prescription slip itself, even more than what is written on it, that is often the vital ingredient for enabling a patient to get rid of whatever is ailing him.
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Drugs are not always necessary. Belief in recovery always is.
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All this sensory input, which begins in the brain, has its effect throughout the body.
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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 one 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.
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I cannot affirm God if I fail to affirm man. Therefore, I affirm both. Without a belief in human unity I am hungry and incomplete. Human unity is the fulfillment of diversity. It is the harmony of opposites. It is a many-stranded texture, with color and depth.
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The great challenge of the '90s... is to salvage and improve the UN and to develop it into an agency capable of meeting the wide range of serious problems that are inherent in a world that has become a single geographic unit.
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Government in the U.S. today is a senior partner in every business in the country.
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It makes little difference how many university courses or degrees a person may own. If he cannot use words to move an idea from one point to another, his education is incomplete.
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Assume responsibility for the quality of your own life
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People are never more insecure than when they become obsessed with their fears at the expense of their dreams.
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It is well known that panic, despair, depression, hate, rage, exasperation, frustration all produce negative biochemical changes in the body.
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The conquest of war and the pursuit of social justice... must become our grand preoccupation and magnificent obsession.
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The purpose of education is to enable us to develop to the fullest that which is inside us
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You are younger today than you will ever be again. Make use of it for the sake of tomorrow.
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I have learned never to underestimate the capacity of the human mind and body to regenerate - even when prospects seem most wretched. The life force may be the least understood force on earth.
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It is no longer correct to regard higher education solely as a privilege. It is a basic right in today's world.
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Where is the indignation about the fact that the US and USSR have thirty thousand pounds of destructive force for every human being in the world?
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Progress begins with the belief that what is necessary is possible.
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Ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep.
Norman Cousins