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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
Doesn
Optimism
Time
Wait
Perspective
Waste
Positive
Deals
Prospects
Waiting
Pessimism
Facts
Optimistic
More quotes by Norman Cousins
Death is not the enemy living in constant fear of it is.
Norman Cousins
Death is not the greatest tragedy in life. The greatest tragedy is what dies inside us while we live. We need not fear death. We need fear only that we may exist without having sensed something of the possibilities that lie within human existence.
Norman Cousins
People are never more insecure than when they become obsessed with their fears at the expense of their dreams.
Norman Cousins
Government in the U.S. today is a senior partner in every business in the country.
Norman Cousins
Education fails unless the Three R's at one end of the school spectrum lead ultimately to the Four P's at the other-Preparati on for Earning, Preparation for Living, Preparation for Understanding, Preparation for Participation in the problems involved in the making of a better world.
Norman Cousins
We are becoming a nation of sissies and hypochondriacs, a self medicating society easily intimidated by pain and prone to panic. We understand almost nothing about the essential robustness of the human body or its ability to meet the challenge of illness.
Norman Cousins
The old emphasis upon superficial differences that separate peoples must give way to education for citizenship in the human community.
Norman Cousins
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.
Norman Cousins
Hearty laughter is a good way to jog internally without having to go outdoors.
Norman Cousins
All this sensory input, which begins in the brain, has its effect throughout the body.
Norman Cousins
The most costly disease is boredom costly for both individual and society.
Norman Cousins
Words have to be crafted, not sprayed. They need to be fitted together with infinite care.
Norman Cousins
The way a book is read, which is to say, the qualities a reader brings to a book can have as much to do with its worth as anything the author puts into it.
Norman Cousins
Why are people more appalled at what they term an unnatural form of dying than by an unnatural form of living?
Norman Cousins
Reverence for life is more than solicitude or sensitivity for life. It is a sense of the whole, a capacity for inspired response, a respect for the intricate universe of individual life. It is the supreme awareness of awareness itself.
Norman Cousins
Progress begins with the belief that what is necessary is possible.
Norman Cousins
A casual attitude toward human hurt and pain is the surest sign of educational failure.
Norman Cousins
Cynicism is intellectual treason.
Norman Cousins
Since the human body tends to move in the direction of its expectations- plus or minus-it is important to know that attitudes of confidence and determination are no less a part of the treatment program than medical science and technology.
Norman Cousins
I've learned that next to the atomic bomb, the greatest danger is defeatism, despair, and inadequate awareness of what human beings possess. I feel that any problem that can be defined is capable of being resolved. Out of this has come my conviction that no person knows enough to be a pessimist.
Norman Cousins
