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Don't defy the diagnosis, try to defy the verdict.

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
Trying
Verdict
Defy
Diagnosis
Wisdom

More quotes by Norman Cousins

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We will not have peace by afterthought.
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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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It is no longer correct to regard higher education solely as a privilege. It is a basic right in today's world.
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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 marvelous pharmacy that was designed by nature and placed into our being by the universal architect produces most of the medicines we need.
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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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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.
Norman Cousins
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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?
Norman Cousins
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You are younger today than you will ever be again. Make use of it for the sake of tomorrow.
Norman Cousins
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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.
Norman Cousins
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Capitalism in the United States has undergone profound modification, not just under the New Deal but through a consensus that continued to grow after the New Deal. Government in the U.S. today is a senior partner in every business in the country.
Norman Cousins
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Assume responsibility for the quality of your own life
Norman Cousins
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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.
Norman Cousins
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Optimism doesn't wait on facts. It deals with prospects. Pessimism is a waste of time.
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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.
Norman Cousins
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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.
Norman Cousins
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He who keeps his cool best wins.
Norman Cousins
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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.
Norman Cousins
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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.
Norman Cousins
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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