This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women
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This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women
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Overview
Based on the NPR series of the same name, This I Believe features eighty Americans—from the famous to the unknown—completing the thought that the book's title begins. Each piece compels readers to rethink not only how they have arrived at their own personal beliefs but also the extent to which they share them with others.
Featuring many renowned contributors—including Isabel Allende, Colin Powell, Gloria Steinem, William F. Buckley Jr., Penn Jillette, Bill Gates, and John Updike—the collection also contains essays by a Brooklyn lawyer; a part-time hospital clerk in Rehoboth, Massachusetts; a woman who sells yellow pages advertising in Fort Worth, Texas; and a man who serves on Rhode Island's parole board.
The result is a stirring and provocative trip inside the minds and hearts of a diverse group of people whose beliefs—and the incredibly varied ways in which they choose to express them—reveal the American spirit at its best.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780805086584 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Holt, Henry & Company, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 08/21/2007 |
| Series: | This I Believe , #1 |
| Edition description: | First Edition |
| Pages: | 320 |
| Sales rank: | 87,147 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.20(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author
Dan Gediman is the executive producer of This I Believe. His work has been heard on All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Fresh Air, Marketplace, Jazz Profiles, and This American Life. He has won many of public broadcasting's most prestigious awards, including the duPont-Columbia Award.
Read an Excerpt
Foreword
Studs Terkel
“At a time when the tide runs toward a sure conformity, when dissent is often confused with subversion, when a man’s belief may be subject to investigation as well as his actions . . .”
It has the ring of a 2006 mayday call of distress, yet it was written in 1952. Ed Murrow, introducing an assemblage of voices in the volume This I Believe, sounded a claxon.
It is an old story yet ever-contemporary. In 1791, Tom Paine, the most eloquent visionary of the American Revo-lution, sounded off:
Freedom has been hunted around the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear made man afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth is that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing . . . In such a situation, man becomes what he ought to be. He sees his species not with the inhuman idea of a natural enemy, but as kindred . . .
It is the pursuit of this truth that appears to be the common tenor of all the voices you hear in this new volume.
We need not dwell on the old question: What is truth? What you see with your own eyes may differ from the received official truth. So old Pilate had only one decision to make: find the man guilty or he, the judge, will be sent back to the boondocks. Pilate did what any well-behaved hack would do. Though he had his hands scrubbed and rub-a-dub-dubbed with Ivory soap, 99.44% pure, he could not erase the awful truth of the dirt on his hands. Though Pilate’s wife pleaded for a show of mercy, he made an objective decision.
In our time, James Cameron, the nonpareil of British journalism, dealt with the matter in his own way. “I cannot remember how often I’ve been challenged for disregarding the fundamental tenet of honest journalism, which is objectivity.”
His bearing witness in North Vietnam during that war convinced him, despite all official Washington arguments to the contrary, that North Vietnam was inhabited by human beings. He was condemned for being non-objective and having a point of view. Cameron confesses, “I may not have always been satisfactorily balanced; I always tended to argue that objectivity was of less importance than the truth.”
Errol Morris, film documentarian, who appears in this book, shares the obstinancy of Cameron: “Truth is not relative. . . . It may be elusive or hidden. People may wish to disregard it. But there is such a thing as truth.” What really possesses Morris is the pursuit of the truth: “Trying to figure out what has really happened, trying to figure out how things really are.”
The chase is what it’s all about. The quarry is, as always, the truth.
On a small patch of Sag Harbor dirt is a simple stone easily passed by. Nelson Algren is buried there and his epitaph is simple: “The journey is all.”
Andrew Sullivan, editor of The New Republic, who appears in this volume, has a similar vision. He and Algren may have differed considerably in their political views, yet here, as to fundamental belief, they were as one. “I believe in the pursuit of happiness. Not its attainment, nor its final definition, but its pursuit.”
I’d be remiss with no mention of Helen Keller, whose vision we saw and whose voice we heard fifty years ago, a deaf, dumb, and blind child. It was her sense of wonder and her pursuit of truth which she saw much more clearly than sighted people, and heard much more clearly than hearing folk. They were voices in need throughout the world she heard so vividly. Above all it was her faith that the human being was better than his/her behavior.
What I believe is a compote of these ingredients. Yes I do have a point of view which I express much too frequently, I suspect. And yet there’s always that uncertainty. In all my adventures among hundreds of Americans I have discovered that the rule of thumb does not work. I’ve been astonished too often by those I’ve visited: ordinary Americans, who at times, are extraordinary in their insights and dreams.
I find the labels “liberal” and “conservative” of little meaning. Our language has become perverted along with the thoughts of many of us.
“Liberal” according to any dictionary is defined as the freedom to speak out, no matter what the official word may be, and the right to defend all others who speak out whether or not they agree with you. “Conservative” is the word I’ve always associated with conserving our environment from pollution, ensuring that our water is potable and our grass green. So I declare myself a radical conservative. Radical, as in getting to the root of things. Pasteur was a radical. Semmelweiss was a radical. “Wash your hands,” he declared to doctors and nurses. He may have wound up in a nuthouse, but he pursued the truth, found it, and saved untold millions of lives. I am a conservative in that I’m out to conserve the blue of the sky, the freshness of the air of which we have less and less, the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, and whatever semblance of sanity we may have left. As for faith, I’ve always called myself an agnostic. Were Ambrose Bierce alive today, he would no doubt have added to his Devil’s Dictionary: “An agnostic is a cowardly atheist.” Perhaps. But perhaps I do believe there is a God deposited in each of us ever since the Big Bang.
I secretly envy those who believe in the hereafter and with it the idea that they may once again meet dear ones. They cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that there is such a place. Neither can I disprove it. I cannot find the bookmaker willing to take my bet on it. How will one who guesses right be able to collect his winnings? So speaking on behalf of the bookies of the world, all bets are off.
Maybe the poet Keats was right after all in the “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” He envied the fortunate youth who is forever chasing his love, never quite catching her. The pursuit is all.
And yet there is something which I believe with no uncertainty. There is something we can do while we’re alive and breathing on this planet. It is to become an activist in this pursuit of a world in which it would be easier for people to behave decently. (I am paraphrasing Dorothy Day, who founded the Catholic Worker Movement.)
Being an activist is self-explanatory: you act; you take part in something outside yourself. You join with others, who may astonish you in thinking precisely as you do on the subjects, say, of war, civil liberties, human rights.
My belief came into being during the most traumatic moment in American history, the Great Depression of the 1930s. I remember seeing pots and pans and bedsteads and mattresses on the sidewalks. A family had just been evicted and there was an individual cry of despair, multiplied by millions. But that community had a number of people on that very block, electricians and plumbers and carpenters, who appeared that very evening, and moved the household goods back into the flat where they had been. They turned on the gas, they fixed the plumbing. It was a community in action accomplishing something.
Albert Einstein once observed that westerners have a feeling the individual loses his freedom if he joins, say, a union or any group. Precisely the opposite is the case. Once you join others, even though at first your mission fails, you become a different person, a much stronger one. You feel that you really count, you discover your strength as an individual because you have along the way discovered others share in what you believe, you are not alone; and thus a community is formed. I am paraphrasing Einstein. I love to do that; nobody dares contradict me.
So, my credo consists of the pursuit and the act. One without the other is self-indulgence. This I believe.
Copyright © 2006 by This I Believe, Inc. All rights reserved.
Table of Contents
ForewordStuds Terkel
Introduction
Jay Allison
Be Cool to the Pizza Dude
Sarah Adams
Leaving Identity Issues to Other Folks
Phyllis Allen
In Giving I Connect with Others
Isabel Allende
Remembering All the Boys
Elvia Bautista
The Mountain Disappears
Leonard Bernstein
How Is It Possible to Believe in God?
William F. Buckley, Jr.
The Fellowship of the World
Niven Busch
There is No Job More Important than Parenting
Benjamin Carson
A Journey toward Acceptance and Love
Greg Chapman
A Shared Moment of Trust
Warren Christopher
The Hardest Work You Will Ever Do
Mary Cook
Good Can Be as Communicable as Evil
Norman Corwin
A Daily Walk Just to Listen
Susan Cosio
The Elusive Yet Holy Core
Kathy Dahlen
My Father's Evening Star
William O. Douglas
An Honest Doubter
Have I Learned Anything Important Since I Was Sixteen?
Elizabeth Deutsch Earle
An Ideal of Service to Our Fellow Man
Albert Einstein
The Power and Mystery of Naming Things
Eve Ensler
A Goal of Service to Humankind
Anthony Fauci
The God Who Embraced Me
John W. Fountain
Unleashing the Power of Creativity
Bill Gates
The People Who Love You When No One Else Will
Cecile Gilmer
The Willingness to Work for Solutions
Newt Gingrich
The Connection between Strangers
Miles Goodwin
An Athlete of God
Martha Graham
Seeing in Beautiful, Precise Pictures
Temple Grandin
Disrupting My Comfort Zone
Brian Grazer
Science Nourishes the Mind and the Soul
Brian Greene
In Praise of the "Wobblies"
Ted Gup
The Power of Presence
Debbie Hall
A Grown-Up Barbie
Jane Hamill
Happy Talk
Oscar Hammerstein II
Natural Links in a Long Chain of Being
Victor Hanson
Talking with the Sun
Joy Harjo
A Morning Prayer in a Little Church
Helen Hayes
Our Noble, Essential Decency
Robert A. Heinlein
A New Birth of Freedom
Maximilian Hodder
The Benefits of Restlessness and Jagged Edges
Kay Redfield Jamison
There Is No God
Penn Jillette
A Duty to Heal
Pius Kamau
Living Life with "Grace and Elegant Treeness"
Ruth Kamps
The Light of a Brighter Day
Helen Keller
The Bright Lights of Freedom
Harold Hongju Koh
The Power of Love to Transform and Heal
Jackie Lantry
The Power of Mysteries
Alan Lightman
Life Grows in the Soil of Time
Thomas Mann
Why I Close My Restaurant
George Mardikian
The Virtues of the Quiet Hero
John McCain
The Joy and Enthusiasm of Reading
Rick Moody
There Is Such a Thing as Truth
Errol Morris
The Rule of Law
Michael Mullane
Getting Angry Can Be a Good Thing
Cecilia Muñoz
Mysterious Connection That Link Us Together
Azar Nafisi
The Making of Poems
Gregory Orr
We Are Each Other's Business
Eboo Patel
The 50-Percent Theory of Life
Steve Porter
The America I Believe In
Colin Powell
The Real Consequences of Justice
Frederic Reamer
There Is More to Life than My Life
Jamaica Ritcher
Tomorrow Will Be a Better Day
Josh Rittenberg
Free Minds and Hearts at Work
Jackie Robinson
Growth That Starts from Thinking
Eleanor Roosevelt
The Artistry in Hidden Talents
Mel Rusnov
My Fellow Worms
Carl Sandburg
When Children Are Wanted
Margaret Sanger
Jazz Is the Sound of God Laughing
Colleen Shaddox
There Is No Such Thing as Too Much Barbecue
Jason Sheehan
The People Have Spoken
Mark Shields
Everything Potent Is Dangerous
Wallace Stegner
A Balance between Nature and Nurture
Gloria Steinem
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness
Andrew Sullivan
Always Go to the Funeral
Deirdre Sullivan
Finding Prosperity by Feeding Monkeys
Harold Taw
I Agree with a Pagan
Arnold Toynbee
Testing the Limits of What I Know and Feel
John Updike
How Do You Believe in a Mystery?
Loudon Wainwright III
Creative Solutions to Life's Challenges
Frank X Walker
Goodness Doesn't Just Happen
Rebecca West
When Ordinary People Achieve Extraordinary Things
Jody Williams
Afterword: The History of This I Believe: The Power of an Idea
Dan Gediman
Appendix A: Introduction to the 1950s This I Believe Radio Series
Edward R. Murrow
Appendix B: How to Write Your Own This I Believe Essay
Appendix C: How to Use This I Believe in Your Community
Acknowledgments
Reading Group Guide
Discussion Questions
1. Studs Terkel's foreword raises the question of truth and how we discern it. What do the essays in This I Believe tell us about the way we go about deciding what is true and what should not be believed? Do you think there are any absolute truths that apply to everyone?
2. In two essays reflecting the toll of war, Newt Gingrich emphasizes the need for vigilance ("I believe that the world is inherently a very dangerous place"), while John McCain celebrates the power of the quiet hero ("The true worth of a person is measured by how faithfully we serve a cause greater than our self-interest"). What is your approach to the tides of danger and victory, destruction and reconstruction that have shaped the world for as long as history has been recorded? Do you think the future can be more peaceful than the past?
3. Several of the essays describe discrimination, such as Phyllis Allen's recollections of growing up in a racially segregated town, and Eve Ensler's observations about atrocities committed against women. What do you believe is at the root of discriminatory behavior? What causes some members of society to feel justified in causing the suffering of entire populations? How can we ensure equality in the face of the forces behind discrimination?
4. What did you observe about the essays from half a century ago compared with contemporary ones? Which issues have remained constant? What new ones have arisen that Edward R. Murrow's generation could not have imagined?
5. Questions of mortality and immortality are raised throughout the book, from Isabel Allende's response to her daughter's death to Elvia Bautista's experience of visiting her brother's grave. At the heart of many of these essays is the notion that love endures beyond a person's lifetime. How does this book define a life well lived and a grief that is not in vain?
6. Martha Graham's "An Athlete of God" closes by describing the acrobat as "practicing living at that instant of danger. He does not choose to fall." In what way does this describe the tandem of fear and faith experienced in our daily lives? What does it take to "choose" not to fall?
7. What is the role of art and whimsy in shaping our beliefs? What do the contributors' words about fashion, reading, jazz, and other creative ventures say about the significance or value of imagination?
8. In "Seeing Beautiful, Precise Pictures," Temple Grandin describes how her ability to visualize resulted in humane new procedures for numerous livestock-handling facilities. What ethical balance shapes her work? What small vision could you translate into grand action in your community?
9. The contributors to this book express a broad variety of viewpoints about religious beliefs, including the belief that there is no God (Penn Jillette) and the belief that we should protect our fellow human beings from harm, even when their religious affiliations are quite different from ours (Eboo Patel). What cultural observations are made in the essays on religion? What is its role in shaping identities and worldviews?
10. Benjamin Carson pays eloquent tribute to his mother in "There Is No Job More Important than Parenting." What qualities make her a good parent? What beliefs enabled her to sustain and inspire her son? Who has held a similar role of redemption in your life?
11. In what ways does This I Believe serve as a time capsule for the dawn of a new millennium? What conclusions will future readers draw about our era when reading these entries in another half century?
12. Which of the essays resonated with you the most? Did any of them inspire you to become an agent for change, either globally or simply in the way you affect the life of another individual?
13. What do you believe? What were your greatest influences in shaping those beliefs? How have your beliefs changed throughout your life?
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