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Pessimism is a waste of time.

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
Time
Pessimism
Waste

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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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The possibility of war increases in direct proportion to the effectiveness of the instruments of war.
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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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Progress begins with the belief that what is necessary is possible.
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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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Assume responsibility for the quality of your own life
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People are never more insecure than when they become obsessed with their fears at the expense of their dreams.
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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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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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In a democracy, the individual enjoys not only the ultimate power but carries the ultimate responsibility.
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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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The human body experiences a powerful gravitational pull in the direction of hope. That is why the patient's hopes are the physician's secret weapon. They are the hidden ingredients in any prescription.
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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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We have everything we need, in fact, except the most important thing of all — time to think and the habit of thought.
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The purpose of education is to enable us to develop to the fullest that which is inside us
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Optimism doesn't wait on facts. It deals with prospects. Pessimism is a waste of time.
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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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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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We will not have peace by afterthought.
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