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To talk about the need for perfection in man is to talk about the need for another species.

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
Men
Perfection
Species
Talk
Another
Need
Needs

More quotes by Norman Cousins

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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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Drugs are not always necessary. Belief in recovery always is.
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Don't defy the diagnosis, try to defy the verdict.
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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
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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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The great challenge of the '90s... is to salvage and improve the UN and to develop it into an agency capable of meeting the wide range of serious problems that are inherent in a world that has become a single geographic unit.
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Your heaviest artillery will be your will to live. Keep that big gun going.
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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.
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The capacity for hope is the most significant fact of life.
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The physician's ability to reassure the patient is a major factor in activating the body's own healing system.
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The control center of your life is your attitude.
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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.
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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.
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Pessimism is a waste of time.
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The doctor knows that it is the prescription slip itself, even more than what is written on it, that is often the vital ingredient for enabling a patient to get rid of whatever is ailing him.
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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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The conquest of war and the pursuit of social justice... must become our grand preoccupation and magnificent obsession.
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For every low there is an equal but opposite high.
Norman Cousins
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He who keeps his cool best wins.
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Laughter is a powerful way to tap positive emotions
Norman Cousins