Beliefs and Credos"I am a singer and a songwriter, but I am also a father - four times over. I am a friend to dogs. I am a sworn enemy of the saccharine, and a believer in grace over karma. I talk too much when I'm drunk and sometimes even when I'm not." - Bono, lead singer, U2
"There is great tension in the world, tension toward a breaking point, and men are unhappy and confused. At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against?" - John Steinbeck, East of Eden
"Belief? What do I believe in? I believe in sun. In rock. In the dogma of the sun and the doctrine of the rock. I believe in blood, fire, woman, rivers, eagles, storm, drums, flutes, banjos, and broom-tailed horses." - Edward Abbey, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto): Notes from a Secret Journal
I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge,
That myth is more potent than history,
That dreams are more powerful than facts,
That hope always triumphs over experience,
That laughter is the only cure for grief,
And I believe that love is stronger than death.
- Robert Fulghum, The Storyteller's Creed
"What I'm suggesting is, stand for yourself, be for something and the hell with it. Because the hand-wringers and the editorialists and the sigh-and-pontificate crowd will be against you, whatever you do." - James Carville
“Every man gives his life for what he believes. Every woman gives her life for what she believes. Sometimes people believe in little or nothing. Nevertheless, they give up their life to that little or nothing. Our life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it and then it is gone. But to surrender what you are…and live without belief…that’s more terrible than dying…more terrible than dying young.” - Maxwell Anderson, Joan of Lorraine
History Lessons
"Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power. The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small. The bee fertilizes the flower it robs. When it is dark enough, you can see the stars." - Charles A. Beard, All the Lessons of History in Four Sentences
"Our generation is realistic for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who has invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who has entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or Shema Yisrael on his lips." - Victor Frankl
"History gives us a kind of chart, and we dare not surrender even a small rushlight in the darkness. The hasty reformer who does not remember the past will find himself condemned to repeat it." - John Buchan
"If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us! But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives us is a lantern on the stern which shines only on the waves behind us." - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
On The Gettysburg Address
"Abraham Lincoln did not go to Gettysburg having commissioned a poll to find out what would sell in Gettysburg. There were no people with percentages for him, cautioning him about this group or that group or what they found in exit polls a year earlier. When will we have the courage of Lincoln?" - Robert Coles
"The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat and dishwatery utterances of the man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States." - Chicago Times, commenting on Lincoln's Gettysburg Address the next day
Robert Coles: Children Consider Human Conflict
From FORA.tv
Rabbi Harold Kushner, Overcoming Life's Disappointments (Video)
From Scott London
A Way of Seeing: The Work of Robert Coles (Essay)
From Google Books
The Call of Stories: Teaching and the Moral Imagination by Robert Coles
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