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The human body experiences a powerful gravitational pull in the direction of hope. That is why the patient's hopes are the physician's secret weapon. They are the hidden ingredients in any prescription.

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
Body
Hidden
Prescriptions
Human
Direction
Physician
Humans
Experiences
Physicians
Life
Patient
Ingredients
Weapons
Hopeful
Secret
Weapon
Powerful
Hopes
Gravitational
Hope
Pull
Prescription

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Capitalism in the United States has undergone profound modification, not just under the New Deal but through a consensus that continued to grow after the New Deal. Government in the U.S. today is a senior partner in every business in the country.
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Pessimism is a waste of time.
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Laughter is a form of internal jogging. It moves your internal organs around. It enhances respiration. It is an igniter of great expectations.
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Freedom of religion, as the Founding Fathers saw it, was not just the right to associate oneself with a certain denomination but the right to disassociate without penalty. Belief or nonbelief was a matter of individual choice - a right underwritten in the basic charter of the nation's liberties.
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Although a man may have no jurisdiction over the fact of his existence, he can hold supreme command over the meaning of existence for him.
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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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To talk about the need for perfection in man is to talk about the need for another species.
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Words have to be crafted, not sprayed. They need to be fitted together with infinite care.
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The marvelous pharmacy that was designed by nature and placed into our being by the universal architect produces most of the medicines we need.
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Your heaviest artillery will be your will to live. Keep that big gun going.
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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 American people are beginning to think in new ways about health and illness . . . Bernie Siegel is helping to define and open up these new frontiers. In this sense he is in the best medical tradition.
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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.
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More and more, the choice for the world's people is between becoming world warriors or world citizens.
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The physician's ability to reassure the patient is a major factor in activating the body's own healing system.
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Why are people more appalled at what they term an unnatural form of dying than by an unnatural form of living?
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The possibility of war increases in direct proportion to the effectiveness of the instruments of war.
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Laughter serves as a blocking agent. Like a bullet-proof vest, it may help protect you against the ravages of negative emotions that can assault you in disease.
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Progress begins with the belief that what is necessary is possible.
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Nothing is more essential in the treatment of serious disease than the liberation of the patient from panic and foreboding.
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