This I Believe: June 20

Listener Steve Porter has a theory that life swings like a pendulum between good and bad. This belief allows him to prepare for the worst in life and savor the best, as he shares during Morning Edition for the continuing series This I Believe.

Also: Listen to Weekend Edition Sunday on June 19 for a special installment of the series with Elizabeth Deutsch Earle. In 1954, 16-year-old Deutsch wrote an insightful essay about her values for Edward R. Murrow's radio series. Fifty-one years later, she returns to the series to share her beliefs in a new essay, and talk to Liane Hansen about her experiences.

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Online Extra: Producers Jay Allison and Dan Gediman discuss the local origins of This I Believe, and why they decided to bring the series back to radio.

This I Believe Official Site

Listen to each installment, see pictures of essayists, explore the archive of essays from the original series and submit your own essay for consideration.

History Speaks

Original essayists for Murrow's This I Believe included Eleanor Roosevelt, Presidents Harry Truman and Herbert Hoover, Helen Keller, Albert Einstein and Jackie Robinson. Here's a taste of what they had to say:

"I do not believe that every person, in every walk of life, can succeed in spite of any handicap. That would be perfection. But I do believe that what I was able to attain came to be because we put behind us (no matter how slowly) the dogmas of the past: to discover the truth of today; and perhaps find the greatness of tomorrow."

-- Baseball player Jackie Robinson

"I believe that I should behave with courageous dignity in the presence of fate and strive to be a worthy companion of the Beautiful, the Good and the True. But fate has its master in the faith of those who surmount it, and limitation has its limits for those who, though disillusioned, live greatly. True faith is not a fruit of security. It is the ability to blend mortal fragility with the inner strength of the Spirit. It does not shift with the changing shades of one's thought."

-- Helen Keller

"I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in human beings. Like Confucius of old, I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and the angels. I have enough for this life. If there is no other life, then this one has been enough to make it worth being born."

-- Novelist Pearl S. Buck

"In all honesty, what I believe is neither inspirational nor evangelical. I cannot say that I am even a sound Christian, though the code of conduct to which I subscribe was preached more eloquently by Jesus Christ than by any other. About God I simply do not know; I don’t think I can know."

-- Writer Wallace Stegner

Hear more essays from the original series at NPR's This I Believe page

Based on the immensely popular 1950s radio series of the same name hosted by legendary broadcaster Edward R. Murrow, this national media project invites Americans from all walks of life to share brief essays describing the core values that guide their lives. Murrow and his co-producers conceived the original series as a means to engage tense Cold War America in public discourse -- a motive similar to the revival of This I Believe by producers Jay Allison (pictured) and Dan Gediman, who see 21st century America, like it was in the 1950s, divided over political policy, ethics and beliefs.

Similar to the first go-around, essays for the series include both commissioned works from prominent individuals -- Charles Barkley, Drew Barrymore, Sen. John McCain and John Updike to name a few -- and submissions from the general public, and represent "passionate, unique, interesting and innovative points of view."

This I Believe will air Mondays during Morning Edition, weekdays from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m., or All Things Considered, weekdays from 4 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.