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Governments are not built to perceive large truths. Only people can perceive great truths. Governments specialize in small and intermediate truths. They have to be instructed by their people in great truths.

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
Large
Built
Small
Specialize
Government
Intermediate
Great
Instructed
People
Governments
Truths
Perceive

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If there is a conflict between the easy drift of prosperity and the ordeal of peace, the ordeal of peace comes first.
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Laughter is a powerful way to tap positive emotions
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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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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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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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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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Government in the U.S. today is a senior partner in every business in the country.
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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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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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To talk about the need for perfection in man is to talk about the need for another species.
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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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It makes little difference how many university courses or degrees a person may own. If he cannot use words to move an idea from one point to another, his education is incomplete.
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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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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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Progress begins with the belief that what is necessary is possible.
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All this sensory input, which begins in the brain, has its effect throughout the body.
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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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My reason nourishes my faith and my faith my reason.
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Second only to freedom, learning is the most precious option on earth.
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You are younger today than you will ever be again. Make use of it for the sake of tomorrow.
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