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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.

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
Many
Failing
Unity
Men
Color
Diversity
Liberty
Opposites
Stranded
Belief
Hungry
Cannot
Depth
Affirm
Human
Fail
Incomplete
Humans
Harmony
Texture
Without
Therefore
Fulfillment

More quotes by Norman Cousins

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War is an invention of the human mind. The human mind can invent peace with justice.
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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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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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Death is not the enemy living in constant fear of it is.
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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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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 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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My reason nourishes my faith and my faith my reason.
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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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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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He who keeps his cool best wins.
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The possibility of war increases in direct proportion to the effectiveness of the instruments of war.
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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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What was significant about the laughter . . . was not just the fact that it provides internal exercise for a person . . . form of jogging for the innards, but that it creates a mood in which the other positive emotions can be put to work, too.
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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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Silence must be comprehended as not solely the absence of sound. It is the natural environment for serenity and contemplation. Life without silence is life without privacy. The difference between sanity and madness is the quality of our thoughts. Silence is on the side of sanity.
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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.
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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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Second only to freedom, learning is the most precious option on earth.
Norman Cousins