Quote

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

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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
Quality
Reading
Literacy
Read
Author
Anything
Puts
Book
Qualities
Much
Brings
Way
Reader
Worth

More quotes by Norman Cousins

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Don't defy the diagnosis, try to defy the verdict.
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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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People are never more insecure than when they become obsessed with their fears at the expense of their dreams.
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The heart of the matter is that some people like to cause injury or death to living things. And many of those who do not are indifferent to those who do.
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In a democracy, the individual enjoys not only the ultimate power but carries the ultimate responsibility.
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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.
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We are wide-eyed in contemplating the possibility that life may exist elsewhere in the universe, but we wear blinders when contemplating the possibilities of life on earth.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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The possibility of war increases in direct proportion to the effectiveness of the instruments of war.
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Just as there is no loss of basic energy in the universe, so no thought or action is without its effects, present or ultimate, seen or unseen, felt or unfelt.
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Second only to freedom, learning is the most precious option on earth.
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Assume responsibility for the quality of your own life
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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.
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Progress begins with the belief that what is necessary is possible.
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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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The poet reminds men of their uniqueness and it is not necessary to possess the ultimate definition of this uniqueness. Even to speculate is a gain.
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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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