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The most costly disease is boredom costly for both individual and society.

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
Sports
Society
Individual
Costly
Boredom
Disease
Leadership

More quotes by Norman Cousins

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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.
Norman Cousins
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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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The old emphasis upon superficial differences that separate peoples must give way to education for citizenship in the human community.
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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The possibility of war increases in direct proportion to the effectiveness of the instruments of war.
Norman Cousins
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To be able to rise from the earth to be able, from a station in outer space, to see the relationship of the planet earth to other planets to be able to contemplate the billions of factors in precise and beautiful combination that make human existence possible to be able to dwell on an encounter of the human brain and spirit with the universe
Norman Cousins
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Death is not the enemy living in constant fear of it is.
Norman Cousins
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If the United Nations is to survive, those who represent it must bolster it those who advocate it must submit to it and those who believe in it must fight for it.
Norman Cousins
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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
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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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Hearty laughter is a good way to jog internally without having to go outdoors.
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
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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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The human body experiences a powerful gravitational pull in the direction of hope
Norman Cousins
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The purpose of education is to enable us to develop to the fullest that which is inside us
Norman Cousins
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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
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Second only to freedom, learning is the most precious option on earth.
Norman Cousins
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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.
Norman Cousins
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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
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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.
Norman Cousins