Article February 1, 1988 Issue

The most important single lesson I have learned...

Norman Cousins

Human Options

The most important single lesson I have learned ... is that human capacity is what it has to be. This does not mean that the prodigious problems involved in operating a world society will automatically find solutions. It simply means that the size and complexity of those problems need not be a cause for despair. If we are defeated it will only be because we became weakened and deflected by feelings of helplessness.

Excerpted from Human Options by Norman Cousins.
Copyright © 1981 by Norman Cousins.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher,
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

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On agreeing "with thine adversary"
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