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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
Needs
Men
Perfection
Species
Talk
Another
Need

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.
Norman Cousins
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Laughter is a powerful way to tap positive emotions
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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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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.
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War is an invention of the human mind. The human mind can invent peace with justice.
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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.
Norman Cousins
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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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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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Freedom of religion, as the Founding Fathers saw it, was not just the right to associate oneself with a certain denomination but the right to disassociate without penalty. Belief or nonbelief was a matter of individual choice - a right underwritten in the basic charter of the nation's liberties.
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People are never more insecure than when they become obsessed with their fears at the expense of their dreams.
Norman Cousins
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Drugs are not always necessary. Belief in recovery always is.
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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 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.
Norman Cousins
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Cynicism is intellectual treason.
Norman Cousins
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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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Pessimism is a waste of time.
Norman Cousins
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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.
Norman Cousins
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Your heaviest artillery will be your will to live. Keep that big gun going.
Norman Cousins
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He who keeps his cool best wins.
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