Quote

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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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
May
Understood
Human
Seem
Humans
Learned
Regenerate
Even
Least
Prospects
Mind
Force
Wretched
Never
Seems
Underestimate
Life
Earth
Illness
Body
Capacity

More quotes by 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.
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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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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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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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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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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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We will not have peace by afterthought.
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The essence of man is imperfection. Failure is simply a price we pay to achieve success. If we learn to embrace that new definition of failure, then we are free to start moving ahead - and failing forward.
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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.
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Don't defy the diagnosis, try to defy the verdict.
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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.
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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.
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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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Death is not the enemy living in constant fear of it is.
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The human body experiences a powerful gravitational pull in the direction of hope
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The most costly disease is boredom costly for both individual and society.
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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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The greatest force in the human body is the natural drive of the body to heal itself - but that force in not independent of the belief system. Everything begins with belief. What we believe is the most powerful option of all.
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War is an invention of the human mind. The human mind can invent peace with justice.
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Hearty laughter is a good way to jog internally without having to go outdoors.
Norman Cousins