This I Believe
Leonard Bernstein was an American composer, conductor, pianist, music educator, author, and lifelong humanitarian. He was one of the most significant American cultural personalities of the 20th century. According to music critic Donal Henahan, he was "one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history". Here is an excerpt from a credo written in 1954, encouraged by many friends, including Eleanor Roosevelt, for a book entitled: THIS I BELIEVE.
This I believe
I believe in people. I feel, love, need, and respect people above all else, including the arts, natural scenery, organized piety, or nationalistic superstructures. One human figure on the slope of an Alp can make the Alp disappear for me. One person fighting for truth can disqualify for me the platitudes of centuries. And one human being who meets with injustice can render invalid the entire system which has dispensed it….
I believe that man's noblest endowment is his capacity to change. In this he is divine. Armed with reason, he can see two sides and choose: he can be divinely wrong. I believe in man's right to be wrong. Out of this right he has built, laboriously and lovingly, something we reverently call democracy. He has done it the hard way, and continues to do it the hard way - by reason, by choosing, by error and rectification. Democracy is being achieved only by democratic method. There are far easier methods -swifter, more impressive, apparently more efficacious. But they ultimately achieve nothing as compared with the difficult, slow method in which the dignity of A is acknowledged by B, without impairing the dignity of C….
I believe in the potential of people. I cannot rest passively with those who give up in the name of “human nature”. Human nature is only animal nature if it is obliged to remain static. Human nature must, by definition, include among its elements the element of metamorphosis. Without growth there is no godhead. If we are to believe that man can never achieve a society without wars, then we are condemned to wars forever. This is again the easy way. But the laborious, loving way, the way of dignity and divinity, presupposes a belief in people and in their capacity to change, grow, communicate, and to love.
