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Progress begins with the belief that what is necessary is possible.

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
Necessary
Motivational
Progress
Possible
Belief
Life
Begins

More quotes by Norman Cousins

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The possibility of war increases in direct proportion to the effectiveness of the instruments of war.
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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.
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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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People are never more insecure than when they become obsessed with their fears at the expense of their dreams.
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We will not have peace by afterthought.
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He who keeps his cool best wins.
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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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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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Words have to be crafted, not sprayed. They need to be fitted together with infinite care.
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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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The conquest of war and the pursuit of social justice... must become our grand preoccupation and magnificent obsession.
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Pessimism is a waste of time.
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A casual attitude toward human hurt and pain is the surest sign of educational failure.
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Don't defy the diagnosis, try to defy the verdict.
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The human body experiences a powerful gravitational pull in the direction of hope
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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 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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The capacity for hope is the most significant fact of life.
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The old emphasis upon superficial differences that separate peoples must give way to education for citizenship in the human community.
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We have everything we need, in fact, except the most important thing of all — time to think and the habit of thought.
Norman Cousins