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Second only to freedom, learning is the most precious option on earth.

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
Second
Learning
Freedom
Earth
Option
Precious

More quotes by Norman Cousins

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The old emphasis upon superficial differences that separate peoples must give way to education for citizenship in the human community.
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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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In a democracy, the individual enjoys not only the ultimate power but carries the ultimate responsibility.
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The most costly disease is boredom costly for both individual and society.
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To talk about the need for perfection in man is to talk about the need for another species.
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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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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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Optimism doesn't wait on facts. It deals with prospects. Pessimism is a waste of time.
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The possibility of war increases in direct proportion to the effectiveness of the instruments of war.
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Education fails unless the Three R's at one end of the school spectrum lead ultimately to the Four P's at the other-Preparati on for Earning, Preparation for Living, Preparation for Understanding, Preparation for Participation in the problems involved in the making of a better world.
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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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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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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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It is well known that panic, despair, depression, hate, rage, exasperation, frustration all produce negative biochemical changes in the body.
Norman Cousins
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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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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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Laughter is a powerful way to tap positive emotions
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Drugs are not always necessary. Belief in recovery always is.
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Pessimism is a waste of time.
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Nothing is more essential in the treatment of serious disease than the liberation of the patient from panic and foreboding.
Norman Cousins