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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.
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
Although
Meaning
Hold
Existence
Fact
Facts
Jurisdiction
May
Command
Men
Supreme
More quotes by Norman Cousins
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
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
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
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.
Norman Cousins
If there is a conflict between the easy drift of prosperity and the ordeal of peace, the ordeal of peace comes first.
Norman Cousins
Why are people more appalled at what they term an unnatural form of dying than by an unnatural form of living?
Norman Cousins
Education fails unless the Three R's at one end of the school spectrum lead ultimately to the Four P's at the other-Preparati on for Earning, Preparation for Living, Preparation for Understanding, Preparation for Participation in the problems involved in the making of a better world.
Norman Cousins
The old emphasis upon superficial differences that separate peoples must give way to education for citizenship in the human community.
Norman Cousins
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.
Norman Cousins
My reason nourishes my faith and my faith my reason.
Norman Cousins
The purpose of education is to enable us to develop to the fullest that which is inside us
Norman Cousins
The marvelous pharmacy that was designed by nature and placed into our being by the universal architect produces most of the medicines we need.
Norman Cousins
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.
Norman Cousins
Ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep.
Norman Cousins
The capacity for hope is the most significant fact of life.
Norman Cousins
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.
Norman Cousins
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.
Norman Cousins
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.
Norman Cousins
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.
Norman Cousins
Laughter is a form of internal jogging. It moves your internal organs around. It enhances respiration. It is an igniter of great expectations.
Norman Cousins
