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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
Talk
Another
Need
Needs
Men
Perfection
Species

More quotes by 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.
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Integration is a basic law of life when we resist it, disintegration is the natural result, both inside and outside of us. Thus we come to the concept of harmony through integration.
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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.
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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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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.
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Laughter is a powerful way to tap positive emotions
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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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The control center of your life is your attitude.
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We will not have peace by afterthought.
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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.
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In a democracy, the individual enjoys not only the ultimate power but carries the ultimate responsibility.
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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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Cynicism is intellectual treason.
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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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Government in the U.S. today is a senior partner in every business in the country.
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The most costly disease is boredom costly for both individual and society.
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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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The human body experiences a powerful gravitational pull in the direction of hope
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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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Pessimism is a waste of time.
Norman Cousins