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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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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
Effectiveness
Increases
Proportion
Instruments
Increase
Direct
Possibility
War

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Death is not the enemy living in constant fear of it is.
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Why are people more appalled at what they term an unnatural form of dying than by an unnatural form of living?
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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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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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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.
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The human body experiences a powerful gravitational pull in the direction of hope
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Assume responsibility for the quality of your own life
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He who keeps his cool best wins.
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Hearty laughter is a good way to jog internally without having to go outdoors.
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A casual attitude toward human hurt and pain is the surest sign of educational failure.
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It makes little difference how many university courses or degrees a person may own. If he cannot use words to move an idea from one point to another, his education is incomplete.
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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.
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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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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 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 conquest of war and the pursuit of social justice... must become our grand preoccupation and magnificent obsession.
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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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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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I've learned that next to the atomic bomb, the greatest danger is defeatism, despair, and inadequate awareness of what human beings possess. I feel that any problem that can be defined is capable of being resolved. Out of this has come my conviction that no person knows enough to be a pessimist.
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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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