64 thoughtful stories, motivational tales,
and pieces of wisdom from around the world
Some of the most memorable lessons in life come from stories - whether these be nursery rhymes or children's fables read to us by our parents, parables from the Bible or Jewish wisdom tales, or motivational booklets like "Who Moved My Cheese?" [click here]. I thought that it would be fun and helpful to collect some of the stories that I've found meaningful and share them with you. Each new story is added at the top of the page, so visit as often as you like and feel free to e-mail me your story.
"Tell me a fact and I’ll learn. Tell me a truth and I’ll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever."
Native American proverb
"All stories teach, whether the storyteller intends them to or not. They teach the world we create. They teach the morality we live by. They teach it much more effectively than moral precepts and instructions".
Philip Pullman, author of the "His Dark Materials" trilogy, speaking in 1996
"Everything we know comes in the form of a story, a narrative with a beginning and end. Delia Smiths recipes and the handbook of latest version of Windows are stories just as much as 'Coronation Street'. A thing becomes meaningful only when we can embed it in a story."
Dorothy Rowe, "The Independent on Sunday", 31 March 1996
"Human beings are meaning-seeking creatures; we crave narratives that have a beginning and an end - something that we rarely encounter in everyday life. Stories give coherence to the confusion of our experience."
Author Karen Armstrong, "Guardian", 26 August 2006
"Stories are memory aids, instruction manuals and moral compasses."
Aleks Krotoski, "Observer", 7 August 2011
"Stories are compensatory. The world is unfair, unjust, unknowable, out of control."
"Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?" by Jeannette Winterson (2011)
"Telling stories is our way of coping, a way of creating shape out of a mess. It binds everyone together."
Canadian film director Sarah Polley, "Observer", 23 June 2013
“The key to the future of the world is finding the optimistic stories and letting them be known.”
American singer-songwriter Pete Seeger (1919-2014)
