Bill Clinton; 'Set the world on fire with your imagination', Layola Marymount University - 2016

7 May 2016, Layola Marymount College, Los Angeles, California, USA

I want to begin by thanking your chair, Kathleen Aikenhead, and congratulating her not only on her degree, but on her work of many years to enable more young people go to college. President Snyder, thank you for welcoming me here, and for your service and for doing it with such remarkable energy, and a good sense of humor. We need more of that today in America. I want to thank Congresswoman Maxine Waters and her husband, Ambassador Sidney Williams. Maxine, for her service or devotion to this district, and her longtime friendship to Hillary and me, which means more than I can say. I thank the provost, the vice chair of the board and all the other faculty and staff of LMU, and a lot of proud parents in this audience. But as people who are in public service, I do want to note that Sen. John Barrasso from Wyoming and his family are here because his daughter, Hadley, is, also, in the graduating class, so I thank him for his presence.

At least two of your alumni were very important parts of my administration. I want to acknowledge former Deputy Secretary of Defense Rudy deLeon, and a man who is not here, Tony Coelho, who was a great congressman from California, the primary sponsor of the American with Disabilities Act, who served on the commission with people with disabilities.

I am here in two capacities. Not just as the commencement speaker, but Hillary and I came as the proud uncle and aunt of our nephew, Tyler, who is a member of this class. So I want to congratulate Tyler's mom and dad, and all the parents and family members and support systems that got all these graduates here today, as well as the graduates themselves.

I am well aware that for most of you, the least important part of this ceremony is my talk. Look, I graduated from Georgetown 48 years ago, and I can say with some conviction that most people who've been out of college as long as I have cannot remember either their commencement speaker, much less what he said. However, I remember both, and I learned a lot from it. Like you, we had our commencement outside. Like you, it started out as a cloudy day, but just as the commencement speaker, the mayor of Washington, D.C., Walter Washington, got up to speak, this huge thundercloud rolled over. The thunder was incredibly loud. A massive lightening bolt came out of the sky, and Walter Washington looked at us and said, “If we don't got out of here, we're all going to drown. I wish you all the best. If you'd like to read my speech, I'll send you a copy. Good luck.” That was it. I learned that the very finest commencement speeches are both brief and highly relevant.

Here's my only slightly longer attempt. You are graduating in the most interdependent age in human history. Interdependent with each other, within your community, your state, your nation and the world. This campus has seen global imagination, and what you have all said today, “light the world on fire,” both have to be defined, because all interdependence means is that here we are, stuck together. We can't get away from each other. Divorce, walls, borders, you name it, we're still stuck with our interdependence.

Whether we like it or not, for the rest of your lives, what happens to you will, in some measure, be determined by what happens to other people, by how you react to it, how they treat you, how you treat them, and what larger forces are at work in the world. The global economy, the internet, mobile technology, the explosion of the social media have unleashed both positive and negative forces. The last few years have seen an amazing explosion of economic, social and political empowerment. They have, also, laid bare the power of persistent inequalities, political and social instability, and identity politics based on the simple proposition that our differences are all that matter.

At the root of it all is a simple profound question: Will you define yourselves and your relationship to others in positive or negative terms? Because if we're bound to share the future, it seems to me that it is clear that all of us have a responsibility, each in our own way, to build up the positive and to reduce the negative forces of our interdependence. This applies to people on the left, the right, somewhere in the middle or somewhere out there. There are so many people who feel that they're losing out in the modern world, because people either don't see, don't know, or they see them only as members of groups that they feel threatened by.

The young people pushing for immigration reform, clinging to DACA and DAPA, hoping to make their way in a country where their future is uncertain, feel that way. The young people in the Black Lives Matter movement feel that way. But so do the coal miners in communities where their present is bleak and they think their future is bleaker, and they think all of us who want to fight climate change don't give a rip about the wreckage of their lives. It's everywhere. When we try to drift apart in an interdependent age, all we do is build up the negative and reduce the positive forces of interdependence.

What does set the world on fire mean anyway? It means you can set the world on fire by the power of your imagination, by the gift of your passion, by the devotion of your heart and your skills to make your life richer and to lift others; or it means you can set the world on fire. You have to decide, but because the world is interdependent, you can't take a pass.

I think the future begins by accepting the wonderful instruction of our very first Jesuit pope. Pope Francis has fostered a culture of encounter. Where my foundation works in Africa and the hills of central Africa, nobody's got any kind of wheel transportation, so everybody meets each other on foot, and when people pass each other on path and one says, “Good morning, hello. How are you?” the response translated into English is, “I see you. I encounter you. You are real to me.”

Think about all the people today, yesterday and tomorrow, you will pass and not see. Do you really see everybody who works in a restaurant where you'll go after here to have a celebratory meal? Do we see people that we pass on the street, who may have a smile or a frown, or a burden they can barely carry alone? When we passionately advocate for the causes we believe in, have we anticipated all the unanticipated consequences so that we can take everybody along for a ride to the future we imagine.

When Pope Francis tells us to engage in a culture of encounter, he's thinking about the LMU students in this class who since they were freshman have performed almost 200,000 hours of community service. Thank you. That's a fancy elevated way of saying you saw a need, and you stepped in to solve it, and you did it, not only because it was the morally right thing for other people, but because it made your life more meaningful. That's the way you want to set the world on fire.

The young people that were mentioned in my introduction who have been part of our global initiative community for university students made very specific commitments. They promised to mentor high school girls to help them overcome any preconceived notions of their own limitations. They promised to help the victims of domestic violence and violence against the homeless. They promised to provide more capital to small businesspeople in Haiti through micro-credit loans, something that means a lot to Hillary and me personally, because for more than 40 years since we took a honeymoon trip there, we've cared about them and believed in them. They promised an educational exchange with the National University of Rwanda. We can learn a lot from them, because they lost 10 percent of their people in ninety days to a genocide in 1994, and they came back because they refused to be paralyzed by the past. They joined hands across the land that led to all that bloodshed to create a common future.

That's what's at the heart of your restorative justice program here. Instead of figuring out who to punish, figure out how to repair the harm. Instead of focusing on getting even for the past, focus on how we can share the future. It's at the heart of your efforts here to improve the juvenile justice system. You, without knowing it, have often embodied the future of positive interdependence we hope to build. You can't have shared prosperity and an inclusive community unless we believe our common humanity is even more important than our incredibly interesting differences.

I will say this again. On every continent, think of the struggles in Latin America; think of the political struggles and social and economic struggles in America; think of what's going on in Asia; think of what's going on in Africa; think of how Europe is dealing with this influx from the Middle East of the largest number of refugees since World War II, and all the conflicts within all these countries, and whether they should keep Europe together. Every single one of these is part of an ongoing battle to define the terms of our interdependence.

Will we do it in positive or negative terms? Are we going to expand the definition of us and shrink the definition of them, or shall we just hunker down in the face of uncomfortable realities and just stick with our own crowd? It will be a bleaker future if you do that.

Set the world on fire with your imagination, not with your matches. Set the world on fire by proving that what we have in common is a million times more important than our admittedly utterly fascinating differences.

Finally, I just want to say that all this is, this great struggle that will go on for several years now to define our relationships in an interdependent world, is for you the background of a real life, your life, the life in which you will write your own story, live your own dreams, suffer your own disappointments. It is an empowering gift, this education you have. For most of human history, adults had no choice about what they did with their waking hours. They got up and did what their forbears had done to survive, to feed, to propagate the species, to have children, to raise them, to go on a more or less routinized way. If someone had said to them in whatever language they communicated in, “Your job is to set the world on fire,” they would have had no clue, except maybe to try to put two sticks or stones together to be warm at night and cook food. But you can set the world on fire, because of the empowerment of your education and the empowerment of your circumstances.

Here's my last shot. There are no final victories or defeats in this life. You will make mistakes and you will fail, and if you keep trying, you will be glad you did. The only thing that matters is how quick you get up and how resolutely you go on. It is not given to us to win every battle, but to fight the right fight. Mother Theresa once said it was far more important that she and her fellow nuns be faithful than that they always be successful.

I can tell you, after 48 years, it doesn't take long to live a life, but the journey can be utterly glorious, and I would give anything to be your age again, just to see what's going to happen. I do believe that this will be the most prosperous, discovery ridden, exhilarating period in human history, if we decide how best to set the world on fire, if we keep expanding the definition of us and shrinking the definition of them, if every day we all get a little better in seeing everyone we encounter physically or virtually, if we remember that a very short life, the things that we share that are even more than the things about us that are special.

Do well. Do good. Have a good time doing it, and remember, it's the journey that matters. Set the world on fire in the right way. God bless you.

Robert Reich: 'I'm a class worrier, not a class warrier', Berkeley - 2015

20 December 2015, Berkeley, San Francisco, USA

Thank you so much, Diane. Chancellor Dirks, deans, faculty. Jonathan, thank you for that great address. Alumni, friends, parents, significant others and insignificant others, members of the great class of 2015. As you can see, the economy has worn me down. But we are in a recovery. As former Secretary of Labour, I do have to warn you, it's still a lousy job market. But there are two pieces of good news I want to share with you. First, college graduates are doing far better than they did last year, and secondly, in a few minutes, you're going to be a graduate of the best public university in the world.

With your degree, you will be on the winning side of the great divide. That great divide is one of the largest challenges we confront as a society, and it's not just in the United States, but it's in almost all other countries as well. The United States, along with other rich countries, is heading back to the wealth concentrations last seen in the Gilded Age of the 19th century. The American economy today is about twice as large as it was 30 years ago, but the median income has barely risen. When I say median income, that's different from average, right? Shaquille O'Neal, that basketball player, and I have an average height of six-foot-two. Do you get my drift? People at the top bring up the average. That's why we need to look at the median, half above, half below, and median incomes have barely increased, adjusted for inflation, over the past 35 years.

Most of the income and wealth has gone to the top. When I say this, sometimes I'm accused of being a class warrior. I am not a class warrior. I'm a class worrier. There's a difference, two letters, but it's more than that. I worry about a nation, a society growing too divided, with a middle class that is shrinking. An economy cannot be sustained as an economy when the vast middle class and the poor don't have enough purchasing power to buy what the economy can produce. A democracy cannot be sustained when the rich have enough political purchasing power to buy what elected officials can produce.

Why this fundamental change? What has occurred. Partly it is due to, over the last 35 years, something we call globalisation. Globalisation is one of those words to have gone directly from obscurity to meaninglessness without any intervening period of coherence. But when I say globalisation, I mean the integration of not only product markets but also direct investment, and also to some extent immigration, everything else that brings the world together. Gone forever are the good manufacturing jobs for Americans without much education. But partly it's also due to labour replacing technologies, technologies that have replaced bank tellers and telephone operators and elevator operators and service station attendants, and soon many professional services.

The problem is not the number of jobs. Jobs are returning. The problem is that the wages of most of the jobs that are returning are lower than the jobs that were lost during the Great Recession. At the same time, Americans are segregating by income into different towns and cities, more than we've ever segregated before. Being rich in America essentially means not having to come across anybody who's not. Moreover, widening inequality and climate change together are conspiring all over the world to impose hardship where supplies of food and water are growing scarce, where the poor live in low-lying areas that are prone to flooding, or in homes most likely damaged by extreme weather. You see how these issues are absolutely inextricably related to one another. The challenge is daunting, but we have no choice but to reverse these trends, and they will be reversed, either through reforms or populist insurrection. Reform is the more prudent direction.

Three things I'd like you to carry away with you. A recent study showed that a week after graduating, only 2% of graduates remembered anything their commencement speaker said, so I'm going to be very pointed about these three things, all right? If I come across any one of you certainly within the next two months, I'm going to ask you what these three things were. Number one, a first in this era of widening inequality, always make sure to respect those who don't have the education or the status you do. A college degree is not a licence for arrogance. In fact, respect everybody you work with, regardless of their station.

My first job, 50 years ago, was working in the Senate office of Robert F. Kennedy. It sounds glamorous, but my job was not glamorous. I ran his signature machine. You know what that is? There's a little pen at the end of a long wooden handle, and I would push a little button and make sure that all of the letters to constituents were lined up exactly right so that the pen and his signature were appropriate and lined up nicely. It was a fine job, but after three months, I was going crazy. I was so bored that I did something that I'm not terribly proud of. Will you keep it in this room please what I'm about to tell you? I snuck in at night, and on the same typewriters, the Selectric we then had typewriters, that the secretarial pool then used, I wrote letters on Robert F. Kennedy's stationery to my friends. They were letters like, "Dear Mr. Dworkin, congratulations on having the largest nose in New York state." Then I used the signature machine, "Robert F. Kennedy." My friends still have this. I see them on their walls framed.

But then one day, one day after months and months of this, I was standing in the Senate hallway, in the hallway of the office building there, and the elevator doors opened, and out came from the elevator Senator Robert F. Kennedy, surrounded by his aides, looking like he was doing, and he was doing very important work, and I had not seen him. I'd not even laid eyes on him. I saw his signature, but I had not actually seen the senator. I was so excited. He looked at me and he said, "How you doing, Bob?" He knew my name. I couldn't believe it. He had asked me a question. I couldn't even summon the answer out of my throat, I was so overwhelmed. But I'll tell you something. From that day on, if he had asked me to work his signature machine for the next three years, I would have done it. Respect. Respect.

Number two, I've talked to you about these trends, widening inequality and the interaction between widening inequality and climate change. I hope that you will help, you will help reverse these trends in some way, in some way. Thank you. You will. You will be in positions to exercise leadership. You don't have to be a secretary of some cabinet department or President of the United States in order to exercise leadership. You can exercise leadership in very modest ways. Leadership is the art and the practise of getting many people around you to focus on problems that they would rather not focus on. They'd prefer to deny that the problems exist or they prefer to escape from the problems or blame others for the problems or find relief in cynicism that says nothing can be changed. The role of a leader is to overcome these escape mechanisms, these work avoidance mechanisms, and you, every one of you, will be in a position to do that.

Third and finally, know the difference between tenacity and martyrdom. In other words, be tenacious but don't burn yourself out. If you're going to change the world for the better, even a little bit for the better, you're going to need patience. It is not easy to do. There are going to be setbacks. Change doesn't come easily. You'll need to accept what you cannot change, at least right away. Dedicate yourself again and again to changing what you cannot accept.

Members of the great class of 2015, go forth and do your best. Comfort the afflicted, even if that means occasionally afflicting the comfortable. Use every opportunity you get to renew and reenergize yourself. May your work be filled with meaning, may your days be filled with purpose, and may your lives be filled with joy. Thank you.

Art Buchwald: 'When I attended USC, there was nothing but buffalo as far as the eye could see,' University of Southern California - 1993

17 May 1993, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA

My fellow Trojans, for those of you who can’t see me today, I look exactly like Robert Redford.

Before I begin, I’m just curious about one thing. I would like to see the hands of all the graduates who believe that they are better off today than they were four years ago.

Now a follow-up question. I would like to see the hands of all those who think that Woody Allen is having a mid-life crisis.

As I look down on your smiling faces, I am reminded of a cartoon in the New Yorker magazine.

It shows a boy in cap and gown and his father is saying to him, ‘Congratulations, son, you are now a man. You owe me $370,000.’

Dr. Sample, I can’t tell you how happy I am to receive an honorary degree today. I don’t know if I deserve it, but I want it.

This moment is a highlight for me because my own school has seen fit to recognize me. This university has changed so much since I was here in 1948. When I attended USC, there was nothing but buffalo as far as the eye could see.

I would like to set the record straight about my educational credentials. When I was 16 years old, World War II started, and I was afraid it would be over before I got in. So I ran away from high school to join the Marine Corps. While I was in the Marines, I realized if I ever hoped to get out, I’d better go to college. But I didn’t have a high school diploma. So I went down to USC to find out what I would have to take in night high school to make up the grades. But before I could ask what I needed, they enrolled me, assuming no one would try to register if they didn’t have a high school diploma.

A year later, they called me in and said, ‘You don’t have a high school diploma.’

I said, ‘I know.’

They said, ‘You’re not supposed to be in college.’

I said, ‘I know. What do you want me to do now?’

They said they’d make me a special student.

I said, ‘What does that mean?’

They said, ‘You can’t work for a degree.’

I said, ‘I don’t care about that. If I don’t have a high school diploma, there’s no sense having a college degree.’

So I went for three years and had a ball. Now, 42 years later, they have given me a degree, which confirms what I have been saying all along: All of you graduates today have wasted your
time.

Now although I never participated in any USC athletics, I did make a vital contribution to the athletics program: I took the English tests for the football team.

I thought I was doing a good job until the tackle complained to the coach that I got him a D in Shakespeare, and was hurting his chances of getting into medical school.

I am not here today to bring you a message of doom. I say the class of 1993 is the luckiest one that ever graduated — and probably the last. My message to you today is that we, the older
generation, have given you a perfect world — so don’t screw it up.

You are the generation of Madonna, Nike sneakers and Ross Perot. You can’t find work, and you can’t get health insurance, and NBC puts firecrackers on your pickup trucks.

But I don’t feel sorry for you. As I told Hillary Clinton the other day, ‘We never promised you a Rose Garden.’

The tendency these days is to wring our hands and say everything is rotten, but I don’t feel that way. I am basically an optimist — otherwise I would never drive on the San Diego Freeway.

I know that many of you are angry with our generation because we left you a $4 trillion debt. Well, I would like to remind you of one thing: It was our money and we could do anything we wanted with it.

I don’t know if this is the best of times or the worst of times. But I can assure you of this: It’s the only time you’ve got. So you can either stay in bed or go out and pick a daisy.

We seem to be going through a period of nostalgia, and everyone seems to think that yesterday was better than today. I personally don’t think it was — and if you’re hung up on nostalgia, my advice is to pretend that today is yesterday and go out and have a helluva time.

For starters, there are many things you can do after the ceremony is over today. I would recommend hugging your parents and grandparents as hard as you possibly could. I would ask your favorite professor for his or her autograph. And finally, I would take one last walk around the campus with someone you love. I am not one of these graduation speakers who is going to tell you how to make a better world. I am here to give you practical advice on how to deal with the real jungle out there.

For example, some of you may have chosen to become doctors. If you do, my advise to you is get as much malpractice insurance as you possibly can. Because for every student graduated from USC medical school today, there are two students graduating from the law school waiting to kill you.

Then you’re probably wondering if there will be any jobs waiting for you when you finish your schooling. You have nothing to worry about. I can assure you that out of this class of 7,900 students, 131 of you are going to find jobs. I know who you are, but I’m not at liberty to tell you.

The most important piece of advice I can give you in your job hunting is that every time you make a phone call, there will always be some secretary trying to stonewall you who won’t let you speak to the person you want to.

Secretaries are very protective of their bosses, and theydemand to know what your business is and what you’re calling about.

Now this is how I suggest you handle this, because this is the way I handle it. Whenever a secretary says to me, in a very snooty voice, ‘May I inquire what you’re calling about?’ I say,
‘Tell Mr. Golson, I’m at his house with a truckload of pork bellies that he bought in the commodities market. Does he want me to dump them on his lawn or stuff them in the cellar?’

If that doesn’t work, the second one usually does: ‘Tell Mr. Golson we just got his tests back from the lab.’

And if that one fails, this one never has: ‘Tell Mr. Golson I just found his American Express Card on a bed at the Silk Pussycat Motel. Does he want me to bring it in or mail it to him?’

My final message to you today is that I could have said something profound, but you would have forgotten it in 15 minutes — which is the afterlife of a graduation speech.

Therefore, I chose to give this kind of speech, so that 20 years from today, when your children ask you what you did on graduation day, you can say, ‘I laughed.’

Thank you.

Barack Obama: 'Don't lose hope in the face of naysayers', Rutgers University - 2016

15 May 2016, Rutgers State University, Brunswick, New Jersey, USA

Hello Rutgers!  (Applause.)  R-U rah-rah!  (Applause.)  Thank you so much.  Thank you.  Everybody, please have a seat.  Thank you, President Barchi, for that introduction. Let me congratulate my extraordinarily worthy fellow honorary Scarlet Knights, Dr. Burnell and Bill Moyers.  

Matthew, good job.  (Applause.)  If you are interested, we can talk after this.  (Applause.)        

One of the perks of my job is honorary degrees.  (Laughter.) But I have to tell you, it impresses nobody in my house.  (Laughter.)  Now Malia and Sasha just say, “Okay, Dr. Dad, we’ll see you later.  Can we have some money?”  (Laughter.) 

To the Board of Governors; to Chairman Brown; to Lieutenant Governor Guadagno; Mayor Cahill; Mayor Wahler, members of Congress, Rutgers administrators, faculty, staff, friends, and family -- thank you for the honor of joining you for the 250th anniversary of this remarkable institution.  (Applause.)  But most of all, congratulations to the Class of 2016!  (Applause.)    
I come here for a simple reason -- to finally settle this pork roll vs. Taylor ham question.  (Laughter and applause.)  I'm just kidding.  (Laughter.)  There’s not much I’m afraid to take on in my final year of office, but I know better than to get in the middle of that debate.  (Laughter.)   

The truth is, Rutgers, I came here because you asked.  (Applause.)  Now, it's true that a lot of schools invite me to their commencement every year.  But you are the first to launch a three-year campaign.  (Laughter.)  Emails, letters, tweets, YouTube videos.  I even got three notes from the grandmother of your student body president.  (Laughter.)  And I have to say that really sealed the deal.  That was smart, because I have a soft spot for grandmas.  (Laughter.)   

So I'm here, off Exit 9, on the banks of the Old Raritan -- (applause) -- at the site of one of the original nine colonial colleges.  (Applause.)  Winners of the first-ever college football game.  (Applause.)  One of the newest members of the Big Ten.  (Applause.)  Home of what I understand to be a Grease Truck for a Fat Sandwich.  (Applause.)  Mozzarella sticks and chicken fingers on your cheesesteaks -- (applause.)  I’m sure Michelle would approve.  (Laughter.)    

But somehow, you have survived such death-defying acts.  (Laughter.)  You also survived the daily jockeying for buses, from Livingston to Busch, to Cook, to Douglass, and back again.  (Applause.)  I suspect that a few of you are trying to survive this afternoon, after a late night at Olde Queens.  (Applause.)  You know who you are.  (Laughter.)     

But, however you got here, you made it.  You made it.  Today, you join a long line of Scarlet Knights whose energy and intellect have lifted this university to heights its founders could not have imagined.  Two hundred and fifty years ago, when America was still just an idea, a charter from the Royal Governor -- Ben Franklin’s son -- established Queen’s College.  A few years later, a handful of students gathered in a converted tavern for the first class.  And from that first class in a pub, Rutgers has evolved into one of the finest research institutions in America.  (Applause.)    

This is a place where you 3D-print prosthetic hands for children, and devise rooftop wind arrays that can power entire office buildings with clean, renewable energy.  Every day, tens of thousands of students come here, to this intellectual melting pot, where ideas and cultures flow together among what might just be America’s most diverse student body.  (Applause.)  Here in New Brunswick, you can debate philosophy with a classmate from South Asia in one class, and then strike up a conversation on the EE Bus with a first-generation Latina student from Jersey City, before sitting down for your psych group project with a veteran who’s going to school on the Post-9/11 GI Bill.  (Applause.)  

America converges here.  And in so many ways, the history of Rutgers mirrors the evolution of America -- the course by which we became bigger, stronger, and richer and more dynamic, and a more inclusive nation.  

But America’s progress has never been smooth or steady.  Progress doesn’t travel in a straight line.  It zigs and zags in fits and starts.  Progress in America has been hard and contentious, and sometimes bloody.  It remains uneven and at times, for every two steps forward, it feels like we take one step back.  

Now, for some of you, this may sound like your college career.  (Laughter.)  It sounds like mine, anyway.  (Laughter.)  Which makes sense, because measured against the whole of human history, America remains a very young nation -- younger, even, than this university.

But progress is bumpy.  It always has been.  But because of dreamers and innovators and strivers and activists, progress has been this nation’s hallmark.  I’m fond of quoting Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”  (Applause.)  It bends towards justice.  I believe that.  But I also believe that the arc of our nation, the arc of the world does not bend towards justice, or freedom, or equality, or prosperity on its own.  It depends on us, on the choices we make, particularly at certain inflection points in history; particularly when big changes are happening and everything seems up for grabs.

And, Class of 2016, you are graduating at such an inflection point.  Since the start of this new millennium, you’ve already witnessed horrific terrorist attacks, and war, and a Great Recession.  You’ve seen economic and technological and cultural shifts that are profoundly altering how we work and how we communicate, how we live, how we form families.  The pace of change is not subsiding; it is accelerating.  And these changes offer not only great opportunity, but also great peril. 

Fortunately, your generation has everything it takes to lead this country toward a brighter future.  I’m confident that you can make the right choices -- away from fear and division and paralysis, and toward cooperation and innovation and hope.  (Applause.)  Now, partly, I’m confident because, on average, you’re smarter and better educated than my generation -- although we probably had better penmanship -- (laughter) -- and were certainly better spellers.  We did not have spell-check back in my day.  You’re not only better educated, you’ve been more exposed to the world, more exposed to other cultures.  You’re more diverse.  You’re more environmentally conscious.  You have a healthy skepticism for conventional wisdom.  

So you’ve got the tools to lead us.  And precisely because I have so much confidence in you, I’m not going to spend the remainder of my time telling you exactly how you’re going to make the world better.  You’ll figure it out.  You’ll look at things with fresher eyes, unencumbered by the biases and blind spots and inertia and general crankiness of your parents and grandparents and old heads like me.  But I do have a couple of suggestions that you may find useful as you go out there and conquer the world. 

Point number one:  When you hear someone longing for the “good old days,” take it with a grain of salt.  (Laughter and applause.)  Take it with a grain of salt.  We live in a great nation and we are rightly proud of our history.  We are beneficiaries of the labor and the grit and the courage of generations who came before.  But I guess it's part of human nature, especially in times of change and uncertainty, to want to look backwards and long for some imaginary past when everything worked, and the economy hummed, and all politicians were wise, and every kid was well-mannered, and America pretty much did whatever it wanted around the world.  

Guess what.  It ain’t so.  (Laughter.)  The “good old days” weren’t that great.  Yes, there have been some stretches in our history where the economy grew much faster, or when government ran more smoothly.  There were moments when, immediately after World War II, for example, or the end of the Cold War, when the world bent more easily to our will.  But those are sporadic, those moments, those episodes.  In fact, by almost every measure, America is better, and the world is better, than it was 50 years ago, or 30 years ago, or even eight years ago.  (Applause.)    

And by the way, I'm not -- set aside 150 years ago, pre-Civil War -- there’s a whole bunch of stuff there we could talk about.  Set aside life in the ‘50s, when women and people of color were systematically excluded from big chunks of American life.  Since I graduated, in 1983 -- which isn't that long ago -- (laughter) -- I'm just saying.  Since I graduated, crime rates, teenage pregnancy, the share of Americans living in poverty -- they’re all down.  The share of Americans with college educations have gone way up.  Our life expectancy has, as well.  Blacks and Latinos have risen up the ranks in business and politics.  (Applause.)  More women are in the workforce.  (Applause.)  They’re earning more money -- although it’s long past time that we passed laws to make sure that women are getting the same pay for the same work as men.  (Applause.)    

Meanwhile, in the eight years since most of you started high school, we’re also better off.  You and your fellow graduates are entering the job market with better prospects than any time since 2007.  Twenty million more Americans know the financial security of health insurance.  We’re less dependent on foreign oil.  We’ve doubled the production of clean energy.  We have cut the high school dropout rate.  We've cut the deficit by two-thirds.  Marriage equality is the law of the land.  (Applause.)    

And just as America is better, the world is better than when I graduated.  Since I graduated, an Iron Curtain fell, apartheid ended.  There’s more democracy.  We virtually eliminated certain diseases like polio.  We’ve cut extreme poverty drastically.  We've cut infant mortality by an enormous amount.  (Applause.)    
Now, I say all these things not to make you complacent.  We’ve got a bunch of big problems to solve.  But I say it to point out that change has been a constant in our history.  And the reason America is better is because we didn’t look backwards we didn’t fear the future.  We seized the future and made it our own.  And that’s exactly why it’s always been young people like you that have brought about big change -- because you don't fear the future.  

That leads me to my second point:  The world is more interconnected than ever before, and it’s becoming more connected every day.  Building walls won’t change that.  (Applause.)    

Look, as President, my first responsibility is always the security and prosperity of the United States.  And as citizens, we all rightly put our country first.  But if the past two decades have taught us anything, it’s that the biggest challenges we face cannot be solved in isolation.  (Applause.)  When overseas states start falling apart, they become breeding grounds for terrorists and ideologies of nihilism and despair that ultimately can reach our shores.  When developing countries don’t have functioning health systems, epidemics like Zika or Ebola can spread and threaten Americans, too.  And a wall won't stop that. (Applause.)    

If we want to close loopholes that allow large corporations and wealthy individuals to avoid paying their fair share of taxes, we’ve got to have the cooperation of other countries in a global financial system to help enforce financial laws.  The point is, to help ourselves we’ve got to help others -- (applause) -- not pull up the drawbridge and try to keep the world out. (Applause.)   

And engagement does not just mean deploying our military.  There are times where we must take military action to protect ourselves and our allies, and we are in awe of and we are grateful for the men and women who make up the finest fighting force the world has ever known.  (Applause.)  But I worry if we think that the entire burden of our engagement with the world is up to the 1 percent who serve in our military, and the rest of us can just sit back and do nothing.  They can't shoulder the entire burden.  And engagement means using all the levers of our national power, and rallying the world to take on our shared challenges.  

You look at something like trade, for example.  We live in an age of global supply chains, and cargo ships that crisscross oceans, and online commerce that can render borders obsolete.  And a lot of folks have legitimate concerns with the way globalization has progressed -- that's one of the changes that's been taking place -- jobs shipped overseas, trade deals that sometimes put workers and businesses at a disadvantage.  But the answer isn’t to stop trading with other countries.  In this global economy, that’s not even possible.  The answer is to do trade the right way, by negotiating with other countries so that they raise their labor standards and their environmental standards; and we make sure they don’t impose unfair tariffs on American goods or steal American intellectual property.  That’s how we make sure that international rules are consistent with our values -- including human rights.  And ultimately, that's how we help raise wages here in America.  That’s how we help our workers compete on a level playing field.  

Building walls won't do that. (Applause.)  It won't boost our economy, and it won’t enhance our security either.  Isolating or disparaging Muslims, suggesting that they should be treated differently when it comes to entering this country -- (applause) -- that is not just a betrayal of our values -- (applause) -- that's not just a betrayal of who we are, it would alienate the very communities at home and abroad who are our most important partners in the fight against violent extremism.   Suggesting that we can build an endless wall along our borders, and blame our challenges on immigrants -- that doesn’t just run counter to our history as the world’s melting pot; it contradicts the evidence that our growth and our innovation and our dynamism has always been spurred by our ability to attract strivers from every corner of the globe.  That's how we became America.  Why would we want to stop it now?  (Applause.)    

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Four more years!

THE PRESIDENT:  Can't do it.  (Laughter.) 

Which brings me to my third point:  Facts, evidence, reason, logic, an understanding of science -- these are good things.  (Applause.)  These are qualities you want in people making policy.  These are qualities you want to continue to cultivate in yourselves as citizens.  (Applause.)  That might seem obvious. (Laughter.)  That's why we honor Bill Moyers or Dr. Burnell.

We traditionally have valued those things.  But if you were listening to today’s political debate, you might wonder where this strain of anti-intellectualism came from.  (Applause.)  So, Class of 2016, let me be as clear as I can be.  In politics and in life, ignorance is not a virtue.  (Applause.)  It's not cool to not know what you're talking about.  (Applause.)  That's not keeping it real, or telling it like it is.  (Laughter.)  That's not challenging political correctness.  That's just not knowing what you're talking about.  (Applause.)  And yet, we've become confused about this.          

Look, our nation’s Founders -- Franklin, Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson -- they were born of the Enlightenment.  They sought to escape superstition, and sectarianism, and tribalism, and no-nothingness.  (Applause.)  They believed in rational thought and experimentation, and the capacity of informed citizens to master our own fates.  That is embedded in our constitutional design.  That spirit informed our inventors and our explorers, the Edisons and the Wright Brothers, and the George Washington Carvers and the Grace Hoppers, and the Norman Borlaugs and the Steve Jobses.  That's what built this country.

And today, in every phone in one of your pockets -- (laughter) -- we have access to more information than at any time in human history, at a touch of a button.  But, ironically, the flood of information hasn’t made us more discerning of the truth. In some ways, it’s just made us more confident in our ignorance. (Applause.)  We assume whatever is on the web must be true.  We search for sites that just reinforce our own predispositions. Opinions masquerade as facts.  The wildest conspiracy theories are taken for gospel.  

Now, understand, I am sure you’ve learned during your years of college -- and if not, you will learn soon -- that there are a whole lot of folks who are book smart and have no common sense.  (Applause.)  That's the truth.  You’ll meet them if you haven't already.  (Laughter.)  So the fact that they’ve got a fancy degree -- you got to talk to them to see whether they know what they’re talking about.  (Laughter.)  Qualities like kindness and compassion, honesty, hard work -- they often matter more than technical skills or know-how.  (Applause.)    

But when our leaders express a disdain for facts, when they’re not held accountable for repeating falsehoods and just making stuff up, while actual experts are dismissed as elitists, then we’ve got a problem.  (Applause.)  

You know, it's interesting that if we get sick, we actually want to make sure the doctors have gone to medical school, they know what they’re talking about.  (Applause.)  If we get on a plane, we say we really want a pilot to be able to pilot the plane.  (Laughter.)  And yet, in our public lives, we certainly think, “I don't want somebody who’s done it before.”  (Laughter and applause.)  The rejection of facts, the rejection of reason and science -- that is the path to decline.  It calls to mind the words of Carl Sagan, who graduated high school here in New Jersey -- (applause) -- he said:  “We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depths of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good.” 

The debate around climate change is a perfect example of this.  Now, I recognize it doesn’t feel like the planet is warmer right now.  (Laughter.)  I understand.  There was hail when I landed in Newark.  (Laughter.)  (The wind starts blowing hard.)  (Laughter.)   But think about the climate change issue.  Every day, there are officials in high office with responsibilities who mock the overwhelming consensus of the world’s scientists that human activities and the release of carbon dioxide and methane and other substances are altering our climate in profound and dangerous ways.  

A while back, you may have seen a United States senator trotted out a snowball during a floor speech in the middle of winter as “proof” that the world was not warming.  (Laughter.)  I mean, listen, climate change is not something subject to political spin.  There is evidence.  There are facts.  We can see it happening right now.  (Applause.)  If we don’t act, if we don't follow through on the progress we made in Paris, the progress we've been making here at home, your generation will feel the brunt of this catastrophe.  

So it’s up to you to insist upon and shape an informed debate.  Imagine if Benjamin Franklin had seen that senator with the snowball, what he would think.  Imagine if your 5th grade science teacher had seen that.  (Laughter.)  He’d get a D.  (Laughter.)  And he’s a senator!  (Laughter.)

Look, I'm not suggesting that cold analysis and hard data are ultimately more important in life than passion, or faith, or love, or loyalty.  I am suggesting that those highest expressions of our humanity can only flourish when our economy functions well, and proposed budgets add up, and our environment is protected.  And to accomplish those things, to make collective decisions on behalf of a common good, we have to use our heads.  We have to agree that facts and evidence matter.  And we got to hold our leaders and ourselves accountable to know what the heck they’re talking about.  (Applause.)    

All right.  I only have two more points.  I know it's getting cold and you guys have to graduate.  (Laughter.)  Point four:  Have faith in democracy.  Look, I know it’s not always pretty.   Really, I know.  (Laughter.)  I've been living it.  But it’s how, bit by bit, generation by generation, we have made progress in this nation.  That's how we banned child labor.  That's how we cleaned up our air and our water.  That's how we passed programs like Social Security and Medicare that lifted millions of seniors out of poverty.  (Applause.)    

None of these changes happened overnight.  They didn’t happen because some charismatic leader got everybody suddenly to agree on everything.  It didn’t happen because some massive political revolution occurred.  It actually happened over the course of years of advocacy, and organizing, and alliance-building, and deal-making, and the changing of public opinion.  It happened because ordinary Americans who cared participated in the political process.   

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Because of you!  (Applause.)  

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, that's nice.  I mean, I helped, but -- (applause.)

Look, if you want to change this country for the better, you better start participating.  I'll give you an example on a lot of people’s minds right now -- and that’s the growing inequality in our economy.  Over much of the last century, we’ve unleashed the strongest economic engine the world has ever seen, but over the past few decades, our economy has become more and more unequal.  The top 10 percent of earners now take in half of all income in the U.S.  In the past, it used to be a top CEO made 20 or 30 times the income of the average worker.  Today, it’s 300 times more.  And wages aren’t rising fast enough for millions of hardworking families.  

Now, if we want to reverse those trends, there are a bunch of policies that would make a real difference.  We can raise the minimum wage.  (Applause.)  We can modernize our infrastructure. We can invest in early childhood education.  We can make college more affordable.  (Applause.)  We can close tax loopholes on hedge fund managers and take that money and give tax breaks to help families with child care or retirement.  And if we did these things, then we’d help to restore the sense that hard work is rewarded and we could build an economy that truly works for everybody.  (Applause.)  

Now, the reason some of these things have not happened, even though the majority of people approve of them, is really simple. It's not because I wasn’t proposing them.  It wasn’t because the facts and the evidence showed they wouldn't work.  It was because a huge chunk of Americans, especially young people, do not vote. 

In 2014, voter turnout was the lowest since World War II.  Fewer than one in five young people showed up to vote -- 2014.  And the four who stayed home determined the course of this country just as much as the single one who voted.  Because apathy has consequences.  It determines who our Congress is.  It determines what policies they prioritize.  It even, for example, determines whether a really highly qualified Supreme Court nominee receives the courtesy of a hearing and a vote in the United States Senate.  (Applause.)    

And, yes, big money in politics is a huge problem.  We've got to reduce its influence.  Yes, special interests and lobbyists have disproportionate access to the corridors of power. But, contrary to what we hear sometimes from both the left as well as the right, the system isn’t as rigged as you think, and it certainly is not as hopeless as you think.  Politicians care about being elected, and they especially care about being reelected.  And if you vote and you elect a majority that represents your views, you will get what you want.  And if you opt out, or stop paying attention, you won’t.  It’s that simple. (Applause.)  It's not that complicated. 

Now, one of the reasons that people don’t vote is because they don’t see the changes they were looking for right away.  Well, guess what -- none of the great strides in our history happened right away.  It took Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP decades to win Brown v. Board of Education; and then another decade after that to secure the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.  (Applause.)  And it took more time after that for it to start working.  It took a proud daughter of New Jersey, Alice Paul, years of organizing marches and hunger strikes and protests, and drafting hundreds of pieces of legislation, and writing letters and giving speeches, and working with congressional leaders before she and other suffragettes finally helped win women the right to vote.  (Applause.)  

Each stage along the way required compromise.  Sometimes you took half a loaf.  You forged allies.  Sometimes you lost on an issue, and then you came back to fight another day.  That’s how democracy works.  So you’ve got to be committed to participating not just if you get immediate gratification, but you got to be a citizen full-time, all the time.    

And if participation means voting, and it means compromise, and organizing and advocacy, it also means listening to those who don’t agree with you.  I know a couple years ago, folks on this campus got upset that Condoleezza Rice was supposed to speak at a commencement.  Now, I don't think it's a secret that I disagree with many of the foreign policies of Dr. Rice and the previous administration.  But the notion that this community or the country would be better served by not hearing from a former Secretary of State, or shutting out what she had to say -- I believe that’s misguided.  (Applause.)  I don't think that's how democracy works best, when we're not even willing to listen to each other.  (Applause.)  I believe that's misguided.  

If you disagree with somebody, bring them in -- (applause) -- and ask them tough questions.  Hold their feet to the fire.  Make them defend their positions.  (Applause.)  If somebody has got a bad or offensive idea, prove it wrong.  Engage it.  Debate it.  Stand up for what you believe in.  (Applause.)  Don't be scared to take somebody on.  Don't feel like you got to shut your ears off because you're too fragile and somebody might offend your sensibilities.  Go at them if they’re not making any sense. Use your logic and reason and words.  And by doing so, you’ll strengthen your own position, and you’ll hone your arguments.  And maybe you’ll learn something and realize you don't know everything.  And you may have a new understanding not only about what your opponents believe but maybe what you believe.  Either way, you win.  And more importantly, our democracy wins.  (Applause.)  

So, anyway, all right.  That's it, Class of 2016 -- (laughter) -- a few suggestions on how you can change the world. Except maybe I've got one last suggestion.  (Applause.)  Just one.  And that is, gear yourself for the long haul.  Whatever path you choose -- business, nonprofits, government, education, health care, the arts -- whatever it is, you're going to have some setbacks.  You will deal occasionally with foolish people.  You will be frustrated.  You’ll have a boss that's not great.  You won’t always get everything you want -- at least not as fast as you want it.  So you have to stick with it.  You have to be persistent.  And success, however small, however incomplete, success is still success.  I always tell my daughters, you know, better is good.  It may not be perfect, it may not be great, but it's good.  That's how progress happens -- in societies and in our own lives.  

So don’t lose hope if sometimes you hit a roadblock.  Don't lose hope in the face of naysayers.  And certainly don’t let resistance make you cynical.  Cynicism is so easy, and cynics don’t accomplish much.  As a friend of mine who happens to be from New Jersey, a guy named Bruce Springsteen, once sang -- (applause) -- “they spend their lives waiting for a moment that just don’t come.”  Don’t let that be you.  Don’t waste your time waiting.  

If you doubt you can make a difference, look at the impact some of your fellow graduates are already making.  Look at what Matthew is doing.  Look at somebody like Yasmin Ramadan, who began organizing anti-bullying assemblies when she was 10 years old to help kids handle bias and discrimination, and here at Rutgers, helped found the Muslim Public Relations Council to work with administrators and police to promote inclusion.  (Applause.)    

Look at somebody like Madison Little, who grew up dealing with some health issues, and started wondering what his care would have been like if he lived someplace else, and so, here at Rutgers, he took charge of a student nonprofit and worked with folks in Australia and Cambodia and Uganda to address the AIDS epidemic.  “Our generation has so much energy to adapt and impact the world,” he said.  “My peers give me a lot of hope that we’ll overcome the obstacles we face in society.”

That's you!  Is it any wonder that I am optimistic?  Throughout our history, a new generation of Americans has reached up and bent the arc of history in the direction of more freedom, and more opportunity, and more justice.  And, Class of 2016, it is your turn now -- (applause) -- to shape our nation’s destiny, as well as your own.  

So get to work.  Make sure the next 250 years are better than the last.  (Applause.)  

Good luck.  God bless you.  God bless this country we love.  Thank you.  (Applause.) 

Russell Baker: 'Whatever you do, do not go forth!', Connecticut College - 1995

27 May 1995, Connecticut College, Connecticut, USA

In a sensible world I would now congratulate the Class of 1995 and sit down without further comment. I am sure the Class of 1995 wishes I would do so. Unfortunately for the Class of 1995 we do not live in a sensible world.

We live in a world far more slavish in its obedience to ancient custom than we like to admit. And ancient commencement-day custom demands that somebody stand up here and harangue the poor graduates until they beg for mercy. The ancient rule has been: make them suffer. I still remember the agony of my own graduation at The John Hopkins University.

They had imported some heat from the Sahara Desert especially for the occasion, and the commencement orator spoke for two and a half days. That was in 1947.

Luckily, the forces of mercy have made big gains since then. The authorities of Connecticut College have suggested that for me to speak longer than 20 minutes would be regarded as cruel and inhuman punishment and that if I go as long as 30 minutes several strong men will mount this platform and forcibly remove me. But if I can finish in 15 minutes - 15 minutes! - they will let me stay for lunch. They know their man, ladies and gentleman. When I smell a free lunch, I go for it.

So if I can do this right, you’ll see the back of me before we get to minute 16. This will not be easy. Condensing a graduation speech into 15 minutes is like trying to squeeze a Wagnerian opera into a telephone booth. To do it I had to strip away all the frills. This means you don’t even get any warm-up jokes. So those of you who came just for the jokes might as well leave now.

All right, let’s plunge right ahead into the dull part. That’s the part where the commencement speaker tells the graduates to go forth into the world, then gives advice on what to do when they get out there. This is a ridiculous waste of time. The graduates never take the advice, as I have learned from long experience. The best advice I can give anybody about going out into the world is this: Don’t do it. I have been out there. It is a mess.

I have been giving graduates this advice ever since 1967 when I spoke to a batch of them over at Bennington. That was 28 years ago. Some of your parent were probably graduating there that day and went on to ignore my advice.

Thanks to the genius of my generation, I told them, it was a pretty good world out there - they went forth into it, they would mess it up. So I urged them not to go.

I might as well have been shouting down a rain barrel. They didn’t listen. They went forth anyhow. And look what happened. Within a year Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were murdered. Then Nixon took us all to The Watergate. Draft riots. Defeat in Vietnam. John Lennon killed. Ronald Reagan and his trillion-dollar deficit.

Over the years I spoke to many graduating classes, always pleading with them: Whatever you do, do not go forth.

Nobody listened. They kept right on going forth anyhow. And look what we have today: Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton.

So I will not waste my breath today pleading with you not to go forth. Instead I limit myself to a simple plea: When you get out there in the world try not to make it any worse than it already is. I thought it might help to give you a list of the hundred most important things you can do to avoid making the world any worse. Since I’m shooting for 15 minutes, however, there is no time to give you all 100. You will have to make do with 10. Short as the public attention span is these days, nobody could remember 100 anyhow. Even 10 may be asking too much.

You remember the old joke about how television news would have reported the story of the Ten Commandments: “God today issued 10 commandments, three of which are…”

He is my list: 10 things to help you avoid making the world worse than it already is.

One: Bend down once in a while and smell a flower.

Two: Don’t go around in clothes that talk. There is already too much talk in the world. We’ve got so many talking people there’s hardly anybody left to listen. With radio and television and telephones we’ve got talking furniture. With bumper stickers we’ve got talking cars. Talking clothes just add to the uproar. If you simply cannot resist being an incompetent klutz, don’t boast about it by wearing a tee shirt that says ‘underachiever and proud of it.’ Being dumb is not the worst thing in the world, but letting your clothes shout it out loud depresses the neighbors and embarrasses your parents.

Point three follows from point two, and it’s this: Listen once in a while. It’s amazing what you can hear. On a hot summer day in the country you can hear the corn growing, the crack of a tin roof buckling under the power of the sun. In a real old-fashioned parlor silence so deep you can hear the dust settling on the velveteen settee, you might hear the footsteps of something sinister gaining on you, or a heart-stoppingly beautiful phrase from Mozart you haven’t heard since childhood, or the voice of somebody - now gone - whom you loved. Or sometime when you’re talking up a storm so brilliant, so charming that you can hardly believe how wonderful you are, pause just a moment and listen to yourself. It’s good for the soul to hear yourself as others hear you, and next time maybe, just maybe, you will not talk so much, so loudly, so brilliantly, so charmingly, so utterly shamefully foolishly.

Point four: Sleep in the nude. In an age when people don’t even get dressed to go to the theater anymore, it’s silly getting dressed up to go to bed. What’s more, now that you can no longer smoke, drink gin or eat bacon and eggs without somebody trying to make you feel ashamed of yourself, sleeping in the nude is one deliciously sinful pleasure you can commit without being caught by the Puritan police squads that patrol the nation.

Point five: Turn off the TV once or twice a month and pick up a book. It will ease your blood pressure. It might even wake up your mind, but if it puts you to sleep you’re still a winner. Better to sleep than have to watch that endless parade of body bags the local news channel marches through your parlor.

Six: Don’t take your gun to town. Don’t even leave it home unless you lock all your bullets in a safe deposit box in a faraway bank. The surest way to get shot is not to drop by the nearest convenience store for a bottle of milk at midnight, but to keep a loaded pistol in you own house. What about your constitutional right to bear arms, you say. I would simply point out that you don’t have to exercise a constitutional right just because you have it. You have the constitutional right to run for president of the United States, abut most people have too much sense to insist on exercising it.

Seven: Learn to fear the automobile. It is not the trillion-dollar deficit that will finally destroy America. It is the automobile. Congressional studies of future highway needs are terrifying. A typical projection shows that when your generation is middle-aged, Interstate 95 between Miami and Fort Lauderdale will have to be 22 lanes wide to avert total paralysis of south Florida. Imagine an entire country covered with asphalt. My grandfather’s generation shot horses. Yours had better learn to shoot automobiles.

Eight: Have some children. Children add texture to your life. They will save you from turning into old fogies before you’re middle-aged. They will teach you humility. When old age overtakes you, as it inevitably will I’m sorry to say, having a few children will provide you with people who will feel guilty when they’re accused of being ungrateful for all you’ve done for them. It’s almost impossible nowadays to find anybody who will feel guilty about anything, including mass murder. When you reach the golden years, your best bet is children, the ingrates.

Nine: Get married. I know you don’t want to hear this, but getting married will give you a lot more satisfaction in the long run than your BMW. It provides a standard set of parent for your children and gives you that second income you will need when it’s time to send those children to Connecticut College. What’s more, without marriage you will have practically no material at all to work with when you decide to write a book or hire a psychiatrist.

When you get married, whatever you do, do not ask a lawyer to draw up a marriage contract spelling out how your lives will be divvied up when you get divorced. It’s hard enough making a marriage work without having a blueprint for its destruction drawn up before you go to the altar. Speaking of lawyers brings me to point nine and a half, which is: Avoid lawyers unless you have nothing to do with the rest of your life but kill time.

And finally, point 10: Smile. You’re one of the luckiest people in the world. You’re living in America. Enjoy it. I feel obliged to give you this banal advice because, although I’ve lived through the Great Depression, World War II, terrible wars in Korea and Vietnam, and half a century of cold war, I have never seen a time when there were so many Americans so angry or so mean-spirited or so sour about the country as there are today.

Anger has become the national habit. You see it on the sullen faces of fashion models scowling out of magazines. it pours out of the radio. Washington television hams snarl and shout at each other on television. Ordinary people abuse politicians and their wives with shockingly coarse insults. Rudeness has become an acceptable way of announcing you are sick and tired of it all and are not going to take it anymore. Vile speech is justified on the same ground and is inescapable.

America is angry at Washington, angry at the press, angry at immigrants, angry at television, angry at traffic, angry at people who are well off and angry at people who are poor, angry at blacks and angry at whites. The old are angry at the young, the young angry at the old. Suburbs are angry at the cities, cities are angry at the suburbs. Rustic America is angry at both whenever urban and suburban invaders threaten the rustic sense of having escaped from God’s angry land. A complete catalog of the varieties of bile poisoning the American soul would fill a library. The question is: why? Why has anger become the common response to the inevitable ups and down of nation life? The question is baffling not just because the American habit even in the worst of times has traditionally been mindless optimism, but also because there is so little for Americans to be angry about nowadays. We are the planet’s undisputed super power. For the first time in 60 years we enjoy something very much like real peace. We are by all odds the wealthiest nation on earth, though admittedly our vast treasure is not evenly shared.

Forgive me the geezer’s sin of talking about “the bad old days,” but the country is still full of people who remember when 35 dollars a week was considered a living wage for a whole family. People whine about being overtaxed, yet in the 1950s the top income-tax rate was 91 percent, universal military service was the law of the land, and racial segregation was legally enforced in large parts of the country.

So what explains the fury and dyspepsia? I suspect it’s the famous American ignorance of history. People who know nothing of even the most recent past are easily gulled by slick operators who prosper by exploiting the ignorant. Among these rascals are our politicians. Politicians flourish by sowing discontent. They triumph by churning discontent into anger. Press, television and radio also have a big financial stake in keeping the county boiling mad.

Good news, as you know, does not sell papers or keep millions glued to radios and TV screens.

So when you get out there in the world, ladies and gentlemen, you’re going to find yourself surrounded by shouting, red-in-the-face, stomping-mad politicians, radio yakmeisters and, yes sad to say, newspaper columnists, telling you ‘you never had it so bad’ and otherwise trying to spoil your day.

When they come at you with that , ladies and gentlemen, give them a wink and a smile and a good view of your departing back. And as you stroll away, bend down to smell a flower.

Now it seems I have run past the 15-minute limit and will have to buy my own lunch. That’s life Class of 1995. No free lunch.

My sermon is done.

Wisnton Churchill: "Never give in - never, never, never, never', Harrow School - 1941

29 October 1941, Harrow School, Harrow, United Kingdom

Almost a year has passed since I came down here at your Head Master's kind invitation in order to cheer myself and cheer the hearts of a few of my friends by singing some of our own songs.

The ten months that have passed have seen very terrible catastrophic events in the world—ups and downs, misfortunes— but can anyone sitting here this afternoon, this October afternoon, not feel deeply thankful for what has happened in the time that has passed and for the very great improvement in the position of our country and of our home?

Why, when I was here last time we were quite alone, desperately alone, and we had been so for five or six months. We were poorly armed. We are not so poorly armed today; but then we were very poorly armed. We had the unmeasured menace of the enemy and their air attack still beating upon us, and you yourselves had had experience of this attack; and I expect you are beginning to feel impatient that there has been this long lull with nothing particular turning up!

But we must learn to be equally good at what is short and sharp and what is long and tough. It is generally said that the British are often better at the last. They do not expect to move from crisis to crisis; they do not always expect that each day will bring up some noble chance of war; but when they very slowly make up their minds that the thing has to be done and the job put through and finished, then, even if it takes months—if it takes years—they do it.

Another lesson I think we may take, just throwing our minds back to our meeting here ten months ago and now, is that appearances are often very deceptive, and as Kipling well says, we must "...meet with Triumph and Disaster. And treat those two impostors just the same."

You cannot tell from appearances how things will go. Sometimes imagination makes things out far worse than they are; yet without imagination not much can be done. Those people who are imaginative see many more dangers than perhaps exist; certainly many more than will happen; but then they must also pray to be given that extra courage to carry this far-reaching imagination.

But for everyone, surely, what we have gone through in this period—I am addressing myself to the School—surely from this period of ten months, this is the lesson:

Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

We stood all alone a year ago, and to many countries it seemed that our account was closed, we were finished. All this tradition of ours, our songs, our School history, this part of the history of this country, were gone and finished and liquidated.

Very different is the mood today. Britain, other nations thought, had drawn a sponge across her slate. But instead our country stood in the gap. There was no flinching and no thought of giving in; and by what seemed almost a miracle to those outside these Islands, though we ourselves never doubted it, we now find ourselves in a position where I say that we can be sure that we have only to persevere to conquer.

You sang here a verse of a School Song: you sang that extra verse written in my honor, which I was very greatly complimented by and which you have repeated today. But there is one word in it I want to alter—I wanted to do so last year, but I did not venture to. It is the line: "Not less we praise in darker days."

I have obtained the Head Master's permission to alter darker to sterner. "Not less we praise in sterner days."

Do not let us speak of darker days: let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days; these are great days—the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race.

George Marshall: 'The difficulties I have outlined can and will be overcome', Harvard University - 1947

5 June 1947, Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

[WELCOME]

I need not tell you that the world situation is very serious. That must be apparent to all intelligent people. I think one difficulty is that the problem is one of such enormous complexity that the very mass of facts presented to the public by press and radio make it exceedingly difficult for the man in the street to reach a clear appraisement of the situation. Furthermore, the people of this country are distant from the troubled areas of the earth and it is hard for them to comprehend the plight and consequent reactions of the long-suffering peoples, and the effect of those reactions on their governments in connection with our efforts to promote peace in the world.

In considering the requirements for the rehabilitation of Europe, the physical loss of life, the visible destruction of cities, factories, mines, and railroads was correctly estimated, but it has become obvious during recent months that this visible destruction was probably less serious than the dislocation of the entire fabric of European economy. For the past 10 years conditions have been highly abnormal. The feverish preparation for war and the more feverish maintenance of the war effort engulfed all aspects of national economies. Machinery has fallen into disrepair or is entirely obsolete. Under the arbitrary and destructive Nazi rule, virtually every possible enterprise was geared into the German war machine. Long-standing commercial ties, private institutions, banks, insurance companies, and shipping companies disappeared, through loss of capital, absorption through nationalization, or by simple destruction. In many countries, confidence in the local currency has been severely shaken. The breakdown of the business structure of Europe during the war was complete. Recovery has been seriously retarded by the fact that two years after the close of hostilities a peace settlement with Germany and Austria has not been agreed upon. But even given a more prompt solution of these difficult problems, the rehabilitation of the economic structure of Europe quite evidently will require a much longer time and greater effort than bad been foreseen.

There is a phase of this matter which is both interesting and serious. The farmer has always produced the foodstuffs to exchange with the city dweller for the other necessities of life. This division of labor is the basis of modern civilization. At the present time it is threatened with breakdown. The town and city industries are not producing adequate goods to exchange with the food-producing farmer. Raw materials and fuel are in short supply. Machinery is lacking or worn out. The farmer or the peasant cannot find the goods for sale which he desires to purchase. So the sale of his farm produce for money which lie cannot use seems to him an unprofitable transaction. He, therefore, has withdrawn many fields from crop cultivation and is using them for grazing. He feeds more grain to stock and finds for himself and his family an ample supply of food, however short he may be on clothing and the other ordinary gadgets of civilization. Meanwhile people in the cities are short of food and fuel. So the governments are forced to use their foreign money and credits to procure these necessities abroad. This process exhausts funds which arc urgently needed for , reconstruction. Thus a very serious situation is rapidly developing which bodes no good for the world. The modern system of the division of labor upon which the exchange of products is based is in danger of breaking down.

The truth of the matter is that Europe's requirements for the next three or four years of foreign food and other essential products-principally from America-are so much greater than her present ability to pay that she must have substantial additional help or face economic, social, and political deterioration of a very grave character.

The remedy lies in breaking the vicious circle and restoring the confidence of the European people. In the economic future of their own countries and of Europe as a whole. The manufacturer and the farmer throughout wide areas must be able and willing to exchange their products for currencies the continuing value of which is not open to question.

Aside from the demoralizing effect on the world at large and the possibilities of disturbances arising as a result of the desperation of the people concerned, the consequences to the economy of the United States should be apparent to all. It is logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace. Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist. Such assistance, I am convinced, must not be on a piecemeal basis as various crises develop. Any assistance that this Government may render in the future should provide a cure rather than a mere palliative. Any government that is willing to assist in the task of recovery will find full cooperation, I am sure, on the part of the United States Government. Any government which maneuvers to block the recovery of other countries cannot expect help from us. Furthermore, governments, political parties, or groups which seek to perpetuate human misery in order to profit therefrom politically or otherwise will encounter the opposition of the United States.

It is already evident that, before the United States Government can proceed much further in its efforts to alleviate the situation and help start the European world on its way to recovery, there must be some agreement among the countries of Europe as to the requirements of the situation and the part those countries themselves will take in order to give proper effect to whatever action might be undertaken by this Government. It would be neither fitting nor efficacious for this Government to undertake to draw up unilaterally a program designed to place Europe on its feet economically. This is the business of the Europeans. The initiative, I think, must come from Europe. The role of this country should consist of friendly aid in the drafting of a European program and of later support of such a program so far as it may be practical for us to do so. The program should be a joint one, agreed to by a number, if not all, European nations.

An essential part of any successful action on the part of the United States is an understanding on the part of the people of America of the character of the problem and the remedies to be applied. Political passion and prejudice should have no part. With foresight, and a willingness on the part of our people to face up to the vast responsibility which history has clearly placed upon our country, the difficulties I have outlined can and will be overcome.

Stephen Colbert: 'So, say yes. In fact, say yes as often as you can', Knox College - 2006

3 June 2006, Knox University, USA

[Pours water into a glass at the podium, splashes face and back of neck]

Thank you. Thank you very much. First of all, I'm facing a little bit of a conundrum here. My name is Stephen Colbert, but I actually play someone on television named Stephen Colbert, who looks like me, and who talks like me, but who says things with a straight face he doesn't mean. And I'm not sure which one of us you invited to speak here today. So, with your indulgence, I'm just going to talk and I'm going to let you figure it out.

I wanted to say something about the Umberto Eco quote that was used earlier from The Name of the Rose. That book fascinated me because in it these people are killed for trying to get out of this library a book about comedy, Aristotle's Commentary on Comedy. And what's interesting to me is one of the arguments they have in the book is that comedy is bad because nowhere in the New Testament does it say that Jesus laughed. It says Jesus wept, but never did he laugh.

But, I don't think you actually have to say it for us to imagine Jesus laughing. In the famous episode where there's a storm on the lake, and the fishermen are out there. And they see Jesus on the shore, and Jesus walks across the stormy waters to the boat. And St. Peter thinks, "I can do this. I can do this. He keeps telling us to have faith and we can do anything. I can do this." So he steps out of the boat and he walks for—I don't know, it doesn't say—a few feet, without sinking into the waves. But then he looks down, and he sees how stormy the seas are. He loses his faith and he begins to sink. And Jesus hot-foots it over and pulls him from the waves and says, "Oh you of little faith." I can't imagine Jesus wasn't suppressing a laugh. How hilarious must it have been to watch Peter—like Wile E. Coyote—take three steps on the water and then sink into the waves.
 
Well it's an honor to be giving your Commencement address here today at Knox College. I want to thank Mr. Podesta for asking me two, two and a half years ago, was it? Something like that? We were in Aspen. You know—being people who go to Aspen. He asked me if I would give a speech at Knox College, and I think it was the altitude, but I said yes. I'm very glad that I did.

On a beautiful day like this I'm reminded of my own graduation 20 years ago, atNorthwestern University. I didn't start there, I finished there. On the graduation day, a beautiful day like this. We're all in our gowns. I go up on the podium to get my leather folder with my diploma in it. And as I get it from the Dean, she leans in close to me and she smiles, and she says—[train whistle] that's my ride, actually. I have got to get on that train, I'm sorry. [Heads off stage.] Evidently that happens a lot here.—So, I'm getting my folder, and the Dean leans into me, shakes my hand and says, "I'm sorry."  I have no idea what she means. So I go back to my seat and I open it up. And, instead of having a diploma inside, there's a scrap—a torn scrap of paper—that has scrawled on it, "See me." I kid you not.

Evidently I had an incomplete in an independent study that I had failed to complete. And I did not have enough credits. And, let me tell you, when your whole family shows up and you get to have your picture taken with them—and instead of holding up your diploma, you hold the torn corner of a yellow legal pad—that is a humbling experience. But eventually, I finished. I got my credits and next year at Christmas time, they have mid-year graduation. And I went there to get my diploma then. They said that I had an overdue library fine and they wouldn't give it to me again. And they eventually mailed it to me...I think. I'm pretty sure I graduated from college.

But I guess the question is, why have a two-time commencement loser like me speak to you today?  Well, one of the reasons they already mentioned—I recovered from that slow start. And I was recently named by Time magazine one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World! Yeah! Give it up for me! Basic cable—THE WORLD! I guess I have more fans in Sub-Saharan Africa than I thought. I'm right here on the cover between Katie Couric and Bono. That's my little picture—a sexy little sandwich between those two.

But if you do the math, there are 100 Most Influential People in the World. There are 6.5 billion people in the world. That means that today I am here representing 65 million people. That's as big as some countries. What country has about 65 million people? Iran? Iran has 65 million people. So, for all intents and purposes, I'm here representing Iran today. Don't shoot.

But the best reason for me to come to speak at Knox College is that I attended Knox College. This is part of my personal history that you will rarely see reported. Partly because the press doesn't do the proper research. But mostly because—it is not true! I just made it up, so this moment would be more poignant for all of us. How great would it be if I could actually come back here—if I was coming back to my alma mater to be honored like this. I could share with you all my happy memories that I spent here in...Galesburg, Illinois. Hanging out at the Seymour Hall, right? Seymour Hall? You know, all of us alumni, we remember being at Seymour Hall, playing those drinking games. We played a drinking game called Lincoln-Douglas. Great game. What you do is, you act out the Lincoln-Douglas debate and any time one of the guys mentions the Dred Scott decision you have to chug a beer. Well, technically 3/5 of a beer. [groans from audience]

You DO have a good education! I wasn't sure if anybody was going to get that joke.

I soon learned that a frat house—oops—divided against itself cannot stand.

How can I forget cheering on the team—the Knox College Knockers? The Prairie Fire. Seriously, the Prairie Fire. Your team is named after something that can get you federal disaster relief. I assume the "Flash Floods" was taken.

Oh, yes, the memories are so fresh. It was as if it was just yesterday I made them up. And the history, you don't have to tell me the history of Knox College. No, your Web site is very thorough. The college itself has long been known for its diversity. I am myself a supporter of diversity. I myself have an interracial marriage. I am Irish and my wife is Scottish. But we work it out. And it is fitting, most fitting, that I should speak at Knox College today because it was founded by abolitionists. And I gotta say—I'm going to go out on the limb here—I believe slavery was wrong. No, I don't care who that upsets. I just hope the mainstream media give me the credit for the courage it took to say that today. I know the blogosphere is just going to explode tomorrow. But enough about me—if there can be enough about me.

Today is about you—you who have worked so hard to pack your heads with learning until your skulls are all plump like—sausage of knowledge. It's an apt metaphor, don't question it. But now your time at college is at an end. Now you are leaving here. And this leads me to a question that just isn't asked enough at commencements. Why are you leaving here?

This seems like a very nice place. They have a lovely Web site. Besides, have you seen the world outside lately? They are playing for KEEPS out there, folks. My God, I couldn't wait to get here today just so I could take a breather from the real world. I don't know if they told you what's happened while you've matriculated here for the past four years. The world is waiting for you people with a club. Unprecedented changes happening in the last four years. Like globalization. We now live in a hyperconnected, global economic, outsourced society. Now there are positives and minuses here. And a positive is that globalization helps us understand and learn from otherwise foreign cultures. For example, I now know how to ask for a Happy Meal in five different languages. In Paris, I'd like a "Repas Heureux" In Madrid a "Comida Feliz" In Calcutta, a "Kushkana, hold the beef."  In Tokyo, a "Happi- Shokuji " And in Berlin, I can order what is perhaps the least happy-sounding Happy Meal, a "Glückselig Mahlzeit."

Also globalization, e-mail, cell phones interconnect our nations like never before. It is possible for even the most insulated American to have friends from all over the world. For instance, I recently received an e-mail asking me to help a deposed Nigerian prince who is looking for a business partner to recuperate his fortune. Thanks to the flexibility of global banking, a Swiss bank account is ready and waiting for my share of his money. I know, because I just e-mailed him my Social Security number.

Unfortunately for you job seekers, corporations searching for a better bottom line have moved many of their operations overseas, whether it's a customer service operator, a power factory foreman, or an American flag manufacturer. They're just as likely to be found in Shanghai as Omaha. In fact, outsourcing is so easy that I had this speech today written by a young man named Panjeeb from Bangalore.

If you don't like the jokes, I assure you they were much funnier in Urdu...

And when you enter the workforce, you will find competition from those crossing our all-too-porous borders. Now I know you're all going to say, "Stephen, Stephen, immigrants built America." Yes, but here's the thing—it's built now. I think it was finished in the mid-70s sometime. At this point it's a touch-up and repair job. But thankfully Congress is acting and soon English will be the official language of America. Because if we surrender the national anthem to Spanish, the next thing you know, they'll be translating the Bible. God wrote it in English for a reason! So it could be taught in our public schools.

So we must build walls. A wall obviously across the entire southern border. That's the answer. That may not be enough—maybe a moat in front of it, or a fire-pit. Maybe a flaming moat, filled with fire-proof crocodiles. And we should probably wall off the northern border as well. Keep those Canadians with their socialized medicine and their skunky beer out. And because immigrants can swim, we'll probably want to wall off the coasts as well. And while we're at it, we need to put up a dome, in case they have catapults. And we'll punch some holes in it so we can breathe. Breathe free. It's time for illegal immigrants to go—right after they finish building those walls. Yes, yes, I agree with me.

There are so many challenges facing this next generation, and as they said earlier, you are up for these challenges. And I agree, except that I don't think you are. I don't know if you're tough enough to handle this. You are the most cuddled generation in history. I belong to the last generation that did not have to be in a car seat. You had to be in car seats. I did not have to wear a helmet when I rode my bike. You do. You have to wear helmets when you go swimming, right? In case you bump your head against the side of the pool. Oh, by the way, I should have said, my speech today may contain some peanut products.

My mother had 11 children: Jimmy, Eddie, Mary, Billy, Morgan, Tommy, Jay, Lou, Paul, Peter, Stephen. You may applaud my mother's womb. Thank you, I'll let her know. She could never protect us the way you all have been protected. She couldn't fit 11 car seats. She would just open the back of her Town & Country—stack us like cord wood: four this way, four that way. And she put crushed glass in the empty spaces to keep it steady. Then she would roll up all the windows in the winter time and light up a cigarette. When I die I will not need to be embalmed, because as a child my mother hickory-smoked me.

I mean even these ceremonies are too safe. I mean this mortarboard...look, it's padded. It's padded everywhere. When I graduated from college, we had the edges sharpened. When we threw ours up in the air, we knew some of us weren't coming home.

But you have one thing that may save you, and that is your youth. This is your great strength. It is also why I hate and fear you. Hear me out. It has been said that children are our future. But does that not also mean that we are their past? You are here to replace us. I don't understand why we're here helping and honoring them. You do not see union workers holding benefits for robots.

But you seem nice enough, so I'll try to give you some advice. First of all, when you go to apply for your first job, don't wear these robes. Medieval garb does not instill confidence in future employers—unless you're applying to be a scrivener. And if someone does offer you a job, say yes. You can always quit later. Then at least you'll be one of the unemployed as opposed to one of the never-employed. Nothing looks worse on a resume than nothing.

So, say "yes." In fact, say "yes" as often as you can. When I was starting out in Chicago, doing improvisational theatre with Second City and other places, there was really only one rule I was taught about improv. That was, "yes-and." In this case, "yes-and" is a verb. To "yes-and." I yes-and, you yes-and, he, she or it yes-ands. And yes-anding means that when you go onstage to improvise a scene with no script, you have no idea what's going to happen, maybe with someone you've never met before. To build a scene, you have to accept. To build anything onstage, you have to accept what the other improviser initiates on stage. They say you're doctors—you're doctors. And then, you add to that: We're doctors and we're trapped in an ice cave. That's the "-and." And then hopefully they "yes-and" you back. You have to keep your eyes open when you do this. You have to be aware of what the other performer is offering you, so that you can agree and add to it. And through these agreements, you can improvise a scene or a one-act play. And because, by following each other's lead, neither of you are really in control. It's more of a mutual discovery than a solo adventure. What happens in a scene is often as much a surprise to you as it is to the audience.

Well, you are about to start the greatest improvisation of all. With no script. No idea what's going to happen, often with people and places you have never seen before. And you are not in control. So say "yes." And if you're lucky, you'll find people who will say "yes" back.

Now will saying "yes" get you in trouble at times? Will saying "yes" lead you to doing some foolish things? Yes it will. But don't be afraid to be a fool. Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don't learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no. But saying "yes" begins things. Saying "yes" is how things grow. Saying "yes" leads to knowledge. "Yes" is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to, say "yes."

And that's The Word.

I have two last pieces of advice. First, being pre-approved for a credit card does not mean you have to apply for it. And lastly, the best career advice I can give you is to get your own TV show. It pays well, the hours are good, and you are famous. And eventually some very nice people will give you a doctorate in fine arts for doing jack squat.

Congratulations to the class of 2006. Thank you for the honor of addressing you.

Bradley Whitford: 'The most difficult chains to break are inside us,' UW Madison - 2004

15 May 2004, Kohl Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA

What’s up, Mad City?!

It’s great to be back in my hometown. On behalf of the acting president of the United States, I want to congratulate you all on your tremendous achievement.

A commencement address is what we call in show business a tough gig. You’ve got a huge room, you’ve got a big, distracted crowd that thinks they know everything about everything – and probably stayed out a little too late last night celebrating. I heard you at the hotel, by the way. And you’ve got a bunch of family members of various ages who you have to worry about offending if you happen to get a little too honest.

Somebody once said it’s like being the body at a wake. They stick you in the middle of the room, but deep down they really don’t want to hear a lot out of you.

The sad truth is, I don’t even remember who the speaker was at my graduation. I remember squinting a lot and a vague sense that I would never again be around so many attractive, available young people in my life. It is my solemn duty to inform you that that fear is entirely well founded. This is coming from a guy who works in Hollywood, by the way.

So I begin this address not only with the full expectation that I will soon be forgotten, but with the additional humiliation that there will probably be no one there to remind you of who I was.

I just want to take a moment to note that the commencement speaker at Concordia College this year was the president of the United States, George W. Bush. Concordia has about 5,000 students. The University of Wisconsin has about 40,000. Yes, my friends, the question hangs over this beautiful Kohl Center like a foul stench. Why couldn’t you get a more significant speaker?

Why would the University of Wisconsin, a school with a reputation and the stature to attract a genuine world leader – at least some uncelebrated public servant – the guy who runs the dog pound in Baraboo – somebody, for God’s sake! Why would you opt instead for a glorified circus clown from a television show? I can’t answer that question, my friends. This is uncomfortable for all of us. I feel your shame.

One thing I can tell you is that Concordia College is getting ripped off. George Bush did not write that speech. No way! A bunch of invisible White House lackeys, otherwise known as speechwriters, wrote it for him. And he just strutted up to the podium, he read it, and then he rode off into the sunset in his little taxpayer-funded 747.

Now, you may think that I am inappropriately taking this opportunity to attack the president on a meaningless issue because of my particular political persuasion — and you would be correct. But I hereby challenge the leader of the free world to swear under oath that he wrote every word of the commencement address that he delivered. It is not gonna happen.

Yes, friends, take solace in the fact that if you had actually paid me anything to come here today, you would be about to get your money’s worth. For better or for worse, this horribly disappointing choice of a commencement speaker had to write his own speech.

The first problem I faced when confronted with this grim task was that, as my wife and children will attest, aside from drinking coffee, I have only two areas of expertise – reproduction and acting. Let me begin with the one that I don’t mind blabbing about to a room full of strangers — acting.

You know, I get it. I know that it’s not the most respectable way to make a living. I am perpetually assaulted by examples of children, quadrupeds and a wide variety of insufferable idiots who are, on occasion, capable of acting beautifully. This fills my life with bitterness.

The good news is that if you keep at it long enough and you actually get to make a living at this glorified high school extracurricular activity, you not only get a little better at it — given enough chances, even a chimpanzee may type a dictionary — but you begin to see that the process of acting has the potential to show us a little bit about how we might act a little better in our real lives. It comes down to about six basic principles. I call them "Everything I Need to Know in Life I Learned on My Way to a Humiliating Audition," and they go like this:

Number One: Fall in love with the process and the results will follow. You’ve got to want to act more than you want to be an actor. You’ve got to want to do whatever you want to do more than you want to be whatever you want to be, want to write more than you want to be a writer, want to heal more than you want to be a doctor, want to teach more than you want to be a teacher, want to serve more than you want to be a politician. Life is too challenging for external rewards to sustain us. The joy is in the journey.

Number Two: Very obvious – do your work. When faced with the terror of an opening night on Broadway, you can either dissolve in a puddle of fear or you can get yourself ready. Drown out your inevitable self-doubt with the work that needs to be done. Find joy in the process of preparation.

Number Three: Once you’re prepared, throw your preparation in the trash. The most interesting acting and the most interesting living in this world has the element of surprise and of genuine, honest discovery. Be open to that. You’ve all spent the majority of your lives in school, where your work is assigned to you and you’re supposed to please your teachers.

The pressure to get into wonderful institutions like this is threatening to create a generation of what I call hiney-kissing requirement-fulfillers. You are all so much more than that. You’ve reached the wonderful and terrifying moment where you must be your own guide. Listen to the whispers inside you. We have a lot of problems in this world and we’re going to need you to think outside the box.

Number Four: You are capable of more than you think. If you’ve ever smashed a mosquito on your arm, there is a murderous Richard III inside you. If you’ve ever caught your breath at the sight of someone dipping their toes into Lake Mendota in the late afternoon sun over at the Union, you, too, have Romeo’s fluttering heart.

Now, I’m not advocating that you all go out and bleach your hair so that you can play the jerk in a really stupid Adam Sandler movie. I don’t know what kind of an idiot would think that is a worthwhile way to spend their life. But don’t limit yourselves. Take it from the professional extrovert – the most gregarious among us are far more insecure than we would ever admit. We all go through life bristling at our external limitations, but the most difficult chains to break are inside us.

One of the few graduation speakers who will never be forgotten, Nelson Mandela, put it this way:

"Our worst fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world."

Let’s just take a moment to hope that Nelson Mandela and Adam Sandler never again share a paragraph.

Number Five: Listen. It is the most difficult thing an actor can do and it is the most riveting. You can’t afford to spend your life like a bad actor stumbling through a predetermined performance that is oblivious to the world around you. We can’t afford it either. Listening isn’t passive. It is an act of liberation that will connect you to the world with compassion and be your best guide as you navigate the choppy waters of love, work and citizenship.

And finally, Number Six: Take action. Every story you’ve ever connected with, every leader you’ve ever admired, every puny little thing that you’ve ever accomplished is the result of taking action. You have a choice. You can either be a passive victim of circumstance or you can be the active hero of your own life. Action is the antidote to apathy and cynicism and despair. You will inevitably make mistakes. Learn what you can and move on. At the end of your days, you will be judged by your gallop, not by your stumble.

Many of you started here in the fall of 2000. You go out into a world we could not have imagined four years ago. Ominous threats seek to distract us from achieving our spectacular potential as individuals, as a nation and as a delicate, shrinking planet. We need you.

Come as you are, armed with nothing more than the tools of a mediocre television actor. All we need is for you to find joy in your journey, to find satisfaction in hard work, to be aware of what is happening around you, to free yourself from your imagined limitations, to listen, and finally, to act – not to play make believe. This isn’t a television show. The choices are difficult and the consequences are real.

No matter where you stand politically, we need you to participate in an urgent discussion about the future that we will all share. Some will question your qualifications to participate. We get a lot of that in Hollywood. I like to tell those people that there is nothing less American than telling another American to shut up – so they should shut up.

This is especially true when the stakes are so high. In the words of the great World War II hero and former U.S. Senator George McGovern, "The highest patriotism is not blind allegiance to official policy, but a love of one’s country deep enough to hold her to a higher standard."

It has always been up to the people to hold this country up to its spectacular promise. Make no mistake about it – if you choose not to participate at the ballot box or in the urgent discussion about the world that we will one day pass on to the next generation, you no longer live in a democracy. You have sentenced yourself to a civic gulag dictated by the whims of those who choose to participate.

In short, my obnoxiously young friends, you don’t just get democracy – you have to make it happen. I urge you to extend that call to action to every aspect of your lives.

Let me be clear – I want you all to stay the hell out of show business. The last thing I need is a bunch of young people invading my job market.

But I do want you to be an actor in your own life. Infuse your life with action. Don’t wait for it to happen. Make it happen. Make your own future. Make your own hope. Make your own love. And whatever your beliefs, honor your creator, not by passively waiting for grace to come down from upon high, but by doing what you can to make grace happen — yourself, right now, right down here on Earth.

I will leave you with something I have learned from my only other area of expertise, besides the coffee — being a father. We sit in the shade of trees planted long ago. We have all arrived at this wonderful moment together because of countless gestures of hope made by generations that have preceded us — the baby born, the family begun, the university founded, the care and nurturing of our schools, our communities, a wonderful variety of faiths and, of course, our families and their families before them.

The line of fire racing across time that we call life is burning brightly in all of you at this moment. We celebrate the joy of your achievement, but we must give thanks for all that brought us here. And we must be keenly aware that our stupendous good fortune carries with it an obligation to keep that flame burning brightly into the future for every living thing that is and is yet to be.

Congratulations, Class of 2004. Go out and plant some trees! Thank you.

- See more at: http://news.wisc.edu/spring-commencement-transcript-of-address-by-bradley-whitford/#sthash.sEyBk6eF.dpuf

Barack Obama: 'Be confident in your blackness', Howard University - 2016

5 May 2016, Howard University, Washington DC, USA

Thank you! Hello, Howard! (Applause.) H-U!

AUDIENCE: You know!

OBAMA: H-U!

AUDIENCE: You know!

OBAMA: (Laughter.) Thank you so much, everybody. Please, please, have a seat. Oh, I feel important now. Got a degree from Howard. Cicely Tyson said something nice about me. (Laughter.)

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I love you, President!

OBAMA: I love you back.

To President Frederick, the Board of Trustees, faculty and staff, fellow recipients of honorary degrees, thank you for the honor of spending this day with you. And congratulations to the Class of 2016! (Applause.) Four years ago, back when you were just freshmen, I understand many of you came by my house the night I was reelected. (Laughter.) So I decided to return the favor and come by yours.

To the parents, the grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, all the family and friends who stood by this class, cheered them on, helped them get here today -- this is your day, as well. Let’s give them a big round of applause, as well. (Applause.)

I’m not trying to stir up any rivalries here; I just want to see who’s in the house. We got Quad? (Applause.) Annex. (Applause.) Drew. Carver. Slow. Towers. And Meridian. (Applause.) Rest in peace, Meridian. (Laughter.) Rest in peace.

I know you’re all excited today. You might be a little tired, as well. Some of you were up all night making sure your credits were in order. (Laughter.) Some of you stayed up too late, ended up at HoChi at 2:00 a.m. (Laughter.) Got some mambo sauce on your fingers. (Laughter.)

But you got here. And you've all worked hard to reach this day. You’ve shuttled between challenging classes and Greek life. You've led clubs, played an instrument or a sport. You volunteered, you interned. You held down one, two, maybe three jobs. You've made lifelong friends and discovered exactly what you’re made of. The “Howard Hustle” has strengthened your sense of purpose and ambition.

Which means you're part of a long line of Howard graduates. Some are on this stage today. Some are in the audience. That spirit of achievement and special responsibility has defined this campus ever since the Freedman’s Bureau established Howard just four years after the Emancipation Proclamation; just two years after the Civil War came to an end. They created this university with a vision -- a vision of uplift; a vision for an America where our fates would be determined not by our race, gender, religion or creed, but where we would be free -- in every sense -- to pursue our individual and collective dreams.

It is that spirit that's made Howard a centerpiece of African-American intellectual life and a central part of our larger American story. This institution has been the home of many firsts: The first black Nobel Peace Prize winner. The first black Supreme Court justice. But its mission has been to ensure those firsts were not the last. Countless scholars, professionals, artists, and leaders from every field received their training here. The generations of men and women who walked through this yard helped reform our government, cure disease, grow a black middle class, advance civil rights, shape our culture. The seeds of change -- for all Americans -- were sown here. And that’s what I want to talk about today.

As I was preparing these remarks, I realized that when I was first elected President, most of you -- the Class of 2016 -- were just starting high school. Today, you’re graduating college. I used to joke about being old. Now I realize I'm old. (Laughter.) It's not a joke anymore. (Laughter.)

But seeing all of you here gives me some perspective. It makes me reflect on the changes that I’ve seen over my own lifetime. So let me begin with what may sound like a controversial statement -- a hot take.

Given the current state of our political rhetoric and debate, let me say something that may be controversial, and that is this: America is a better place today than it was when I graduated from college. (Applause.) Let me repeat: America is by almost every measure better than it was when I graduated from college. It also happens to be better off than when I took office -- (laughter) -- but that's a longer story. (Applause.) That's a different discussion for another speech.

But think about it. I graduated in 1983. New York City, America’s largest city, where I lived at the time, had endured a decade marked by crime and deterioration and near bankruptcy. And many cities were in similar shape. Our nation had gone through years of economic stagnation, the stranglehold of foreign oil, a recession where unemployment nearly scraped 11 percent. The auto industry was getting its clock cleaned by foreign competition. And don’t even get me started on the clothes and the hairstyles. I've tried to eliminate all photos of me from this period. I thought I looked good. (Laughter.) I was wrong.

Since that year -- since the year I graduated -- the poverty rate is down. Americans with college degrees, that rate is up. Crime rates are down. America’s cities have undergone a renaissance. There are more women in the workforce. They’re earning more money. We’ve cut teen pregnancy in half. We've slashed the African American dropout rate by almost 60 percent, and all of you have a computer in your pocket that gives you the world at the touch of a button. In 1983, I was part of fewer than 10 percent of African Americans who graduated with a bachelor’s degree. Today, you’re part of the more than 20 percent who will. And more than half of blacks say we’re better off than our parents were at our age -- and that our kids will be better off, too.

So America is better. And the world is better, too. A wall came down in Berlin. An Iron Curtain was torn asunder. The obscenity of apartheid came to an end. A young generation in Belfast and London have grown up without ever having to think about IRA bombings. In just the past 16 years, we’ve come from a world without marriage equality to one where it’s a reality in nearly two dozen countries. Around the world, more people live in democracies. We’ve lifted more than 1 billion people from extreme poverty. We’ve cut the child mortality rate worldwide by more than half.

America is better. The world is better. And stay with me now -- race relations are better since I graduated. That’s the truth. No, my election did not create a post-racial society. I don’t know who was propagating that notion. That was not mine. But the election itself -- and the subsequent one -- because the first one, folks might have made a mistake. (Laughter.) The second one, they knew what they were getting. The election itself was just one indicator of how attitudes had changed.

In my inaugural address, I remarked that just 60 years earlier, my father might not have been served in a D.C. restaurant -- at least not certain of them. There were no black CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Very few black judges. Shoot, as Larry Wilmore pointed out last week, a lot of folks didn’t even think blacks had the tools to be a quarterback. Today, former Bull Michael Jordan isn’t just the greatest basketball player of all time -- he owns the team. (Laughter.) When I was graduating, the main black hero on TV was Mr. T. (Laughter.) Rap and hip hop were counterculture, underground. Now, Shonda Rhimes owns Thursday night, and Beyoncé runs the world. (Laughter.) We’re no longer only entertainers, we're producers, studio executives. No longer small business owners -- we're CEOs, we’re mayors, representatives, Presidents of the United States. (Applause.)

I am not saying gaps do not persist. Obviously, they do. Racism persists. Inequality persists. Don’t worry -- I’m going to get to that. But I wanted to start, Class of 2016, by opening your eyes to the moment that you are in. If you had to choose one moment in history in which you could be born, and you didn’t know ahead of time who you were going to be -- what nationality, what gender, what race, whether you’d be rich or poor, gay or straight, what faith you'd be born into -- you wouldn’t choose 100 years ago. You wouldn’t choose the fifties, or the sixties, or the seventies. You’d choose right now. If you had to choose a time to be, in the words of Lorraine Hansberry, “young, gifted, and black” in America, you would choose right now. (Applause.)

I tell you all this because it's important to note progress. Because to deny how far we’ve come would do a disservice to the cause of justice, to the legions of foot soldiers; to not only the incredibly accomplished individuals who have already been mentioned, but your mothers and your dads, and grandparents and great grandparents, who marched and toiled and suffered and overcame to make this day possible. I tell you this not to lull you into complacency, but to spur you into action -- because there’s still so much more work to do, so many more miles to travel. And America needs you to gladly, happily take up that work. You all have some work to do. So enjoy the party, because you're going to be busy. (Laughter.)

Yes, our economy has recovered from crisis stronger than almost any other in the world. But there are folks of all races who are still hurting -- who still can’t find work that pays enough to keep the lights on, who still can’t save for retirement. We’ve still got a big racial gap in economic opportunity. The overall unemployment rate is 5 percent, but the black unemployment rate is almost nine. We’ve still got an achievement gap when black boys and girls graduate high school and college at lower rates than white boys and white girls. Harriet Tubman may be going on the twenty, but we’ve still got a gender gap when a black woman working full-time still earns just 66 percent of what a white man gets paid. (Applause.)

We’ve got a justice gap when too many black boys and girls pass through a pipeline from underfunded schools to overcrowded jails. This is one area where things have gotten worse. When I was in college, about half a million people in America were behind bars. Today, there are about 2.2 million. Black men are about six times likelier to be in prison right now than white men.

Around the world, we’ve still got challenges to solve that threaten everybody in the 21st century -- old scourges like disease and conflict, but also new challenges, from terrorism and climate change.

So make no mistake, Class of 2016 -- you’ve got plenty of work to do. But as complicated and sometimes intractable as these challenges may seem, the truth is that your generation is better positioned than any before you to meet those challenges, to flip the script.

Now, how you do that, how you meet these challenges, how you bring about change will ultimately be up to you. My generation, like all generations, is too confined by our own experience, too invested in our own biases, too stuck in our ways to provide much of the new thinking that will be required. But us old-heads have learned a few things that might be useful in your journey. So with the rest of my time, I’d like to offer some suggestions for how young leaders like you can fulfill your destiny and shape our collective future -- bend it in the direction of justice and equality and freedom.

First of all -- and this should not be a problem for this group -- be confident in your heritage. (Applause.) Be confident in your blackness. One of the great changes that’s occurred in our country since I was your age is the realization there's no one way to be black. Take it from somebody who’s seen both sides of debate about whether I'm black enough. (Laughter.) In the past couple months, I’ve had lunch with the Queen of England and hosted Kendrick Lamar in the Oval Office. There’s no straitjacket, there's no constraints, there's no litmus test for authenticity.

Look at Howard. One thing most folks don’t know about Howard is how diverse it is. When you arrived here, some of you were like, oh, they've got black people in Iowa? (Laughter.) But it’s true -- this class comes from big cities and rural communities, and some of you crossed oceans to study here. You shatter stereotypes. Some of you come from a long line of Bison. Some of you are the first in your family to graduate from college. (Applause.) You all talk different, you all dress different. You’re Lakers fans, Celtics fans, maybe even some hockey fans. (Laughter.)

And because of those who've come before you, you have models to follow. You can work for a company, or start your own. You can go into politics, or run an organization that holds politicians accountable. You can write a book that wins the National Book Award, or you can write the new run of “Black Panther.” Or, like one of your alumni, Ta-Nehisi Coates, you can go ahead and just do both. You can create your own style, set your own standard of beauty, embrace your own sexuality. Think about an icon we just lost -- Prince. He blew up categories. People didn’t know what Prince was doing. (Laughter.) And folks loved him for it.

You need to have the same confidence. Or as my daughters tell me all the time, “You be you, Daddy.” (Laughter.) Sometimes Sasha puts a variation on it -- "You do you, Daddy." (Laughter.) And because you’re a black person doing whatever it is that you're doing, that makes it a black thing. Feel confident.

Second, even as we each embrace our own beautiful, unique, and valid versions of our blackness, remember the tie that does bind us as African Americans -- and that is our particular awareness of injustice and unfairness and struggle. That means we cannot sleepwalk through life. We cannot be ignorant of history. (Applause.) We can’t meet the world with a sense of entitlement. We can’t walk by a homeless man without asking why a society as wealthy as ours allows that state of affairs to occur. We can’t just lock up a low-level dealer without asking why this boy, barely out of childhood, felt he had no other options. We have cousins and uncles and brothers and sisters who we remember were just as smart and just as talented as we were, but somehow got ground down by structures that are unfair and unjust.

And that means we have to not only question the world as it is, and stand up for those African Americans who haven’t been so lucky -- because, yes, you've worked hard, but you've also been lucky. That's a pet peeve of mine: People who have been successful and don’t realize they've been lucky. That God may have blessed them; it wasn’t nothing you did. So don’t have an attitude. But we must expand our moral imaginations to understand and empathize with all people who are struggling, not just black folks who are struggling -- the refugee, the immigrant, the rural poor, the transgender person, and yes, the middle-aged white guy who you may think has all the advantages, but over the last several decades has seen his world upended by economic and cultural and technological change, and feels powerless to stop it. You got to get in his head, too.

Number three: You have to go through life with more than just passion for change; you need a strategy. I'll repeat that. I want you to have passion, but you have to have a strategy. Not just awareness, but action. Not just hashtags, but votes.

You see, change requires more than righteous anger. It requires a program, and it requires organizing. At the 1964 Democratic Convention, Fannie Lou Hamer -- all five-feet-four-inches tall -- gave a fiery speech on the national stage. But then she went back home to Mississippi and organized cotton pickers. And she didn't have the tools and technology where you can whip up a movement in minutes. She had to go door to door. And I’m so proud of the new guard of black civil rights leaders who understand this. It’s thanks in large part to the activism of young people like many of you, from Black Twitter to Black Lives Matter, that America’s eyes have been opened -- white, black, Democrat, Republican -- to the real problems, for example, in our criminal justice system.

But to bring about structural change, lasting change, awareness is not enough. It requires changes in law, changes in custom. If you care about mass incarceration, let me ask you: How are you pressuring members of Congress to pass the criminal justice reform bill now pending before them? (Applause.) If you care about better policing, do you know who your district attorney is? Do you know who your state’s attorney general is? Do you know the difference? Do you know who appoints the police chief and who writes the police training manual? Find out who they are, what their responsibilities are. Mobilize the community, present them with a plan, work with them to bring about change, hold them accountable if they do not deliver. Passion is vital, but you've got to have a strategy.

And your plan better include voting -- not just some of the time, but all the time. (Applause.) It is absolutely true that 50 years after the Voting Rights Act, there are still too many barriers in this country to vote. There are too many people trying to erect new barriers to voting. This is the only advanced democracy on Earth that goes out of its way to make it difficult for people to vote. And there's a reason for that. There's a legacy to that.

But let me say this: Even if we dismantled every barrier to voting, that alone would not change the fact that America has some of the lowest voting rates in the free world. In 2014, only 36 percent of Americans turned out to vote in the midterms -- the secondlowest participation rate on record. Youth turnout -- that would be you -- was less than 20 percent. Less than 20 percent. Four out of five did not vote. In 2012, nearly two in three African Americans turned out. And then, in 2014, only two in five turned out. You don’t think that made a difference in terms of the Congress I've got to deal with? And then people are wondering, well, how come Obama hasn’t gotten this done? How come he didn’t get that done? You don’t think that made a difference? What would have happened if you had turned out at 50, 60, 70 percent, all across this country? People try to make this political thing really complicated. Like, what kind of reforms do we need? And how do we need to do that? You know what, just vote. It's math. If you have more votes than the other guy, you get to do what you want. (Laughter.) It's not that complicated.

And you don’t have excuses. You don’t have to guess the number of jellybeans in a jar or bubbles on a bar of soap to register to vote. You don’t have to risk your life to cast a ballot. Other people already did that for you. (Applause.) Your grandparents, your great grandparents might be here today if they were working on it. What's your excuse? When we don’t vote, we give away our power, disenfranchise ourselves -- right when we need to use the power that we have; right when we need your power to stop others from taking away the vote and rights of those more vulnerable than you are -- the elderly and the poor, the formerly incarcerated trying to earn their second chance.

So you got to vote all the time, not just when it’s cool, not just when it's time to elect a President, not just when you’re inspired. It's your duty. When it’s time to elect a member of Congress or a city councilman, or a school board member, or a sheriff. That’s how we change our politics -- by electing people at every level who are representative of and accountable to us. It is not that complicated. Don’t make it complicated.

And finally, change requires more than just speaking out -- it requires listening, as well. In particular, it requires listening to those with whom you disagree, and being prepared to compromise. When I was a state senator, I helped pass Illinois’s first racial profiling law, and one of the first laws in the nation requiring the videotaping of confessions in capital cases. And we were successful because, early on, I engaged law enforcement. I didn’t say to them, oh, you guys are so racist, you need to do something. I understood, as many of you do, that the overwhelming majority of police officers are good, and honest, and courageous, and fair, and love the communities they serve.

And we knew there were some bad apples, and that even the good cops with the best of intentions -- including, by the way, African American police officers -- might have unconscious biases, as we all do. So we engaged and we listened, and we kept working until we built consensus. And because we took the time to listen, we crafted legislation that was good for the police -- because it improved the trust and cooperation of the community -- and it was good for the communities, who were less likely to be treated unfairly. And I can say this unequivocally: Without at least the acceptance of the police organizations in Illinois, I could never have gotten those bills passed. Very simple. They would have blocked them.

The point is, you need allies in a democracy. That's just the way it is. It can be frustrating and it can be slow. But history teaches us that the alternative to democracy is always worse. That's not just true in this country. It’s not a black or white thing. Go to any country where the give and take of democracy has been repealed by one-party rule, and I will show you a country that does not work.

And democracy requires compromise, even when you are 100 percent right. This is hard to explain sometimes. You can be completely right, and you still are going to have to engage folks who disagree with you. If you think that the only way forward is to be as uncompromising as possible, you will feel good about yourself, you will enjoy a certain moral purity, but you’re not going to get what you want. And if you don’t get what you want long enough, you will eventually think the whole system is rigged. And that will lead to more cynicism, and less participation, and a downward spiral of more injustice and more anger and more despair. And that's never been the source of our progress. That's how we cheat ourselves of progress.

We remember Dr. King’s soaring oratory, the power of his letter from a Birmingham jail, the marches he led. But he also sat down with President Johnson in the Oval Office to try and get a Civil Rights Act and a Voting Rights Act passed. And those two seminal bills were not perfect -- just like the Emancipation Proclamation was a war document as much as it was some clarion call for freedom. Those mileposts of our progress were not perfect. They did not make up for centuries of slavery or Jim Crow or eliminate racism or provide for 40 acres and a mule. But they made things better. And you know what, I will take better every time. I always tell my staff -- better is good, because you consolidate your gains and then you move on to the next fight from a stronger position.

Brittany Packnett, a member of the Black Lives Matter movement and Campaign Zero, one of the Ferguson protest organizers, she joined our Task Force on 21st Century Policing. Some of her fellow activists questioned whether she should participate. She rolled up her sleeves and sat at the same table with big city police chiefs and prosecutors. And because she did, she ended up shaping many of the recommendations of that task force. And those recommendations are now being adopted across the country -- changes that many of the protesters called for. If young activists like Brittany had refused to participate out of some sense of ideological purity, then those great ideas would have just remained ideas. But she did participate. And that’s how change happens.

America is big and it is boisterous and it is more diverse than ever. The president told me that we've got a significant Nepalese contingent here at Howard. I would not have guessed that. Right on. But it just tells you how interconnected we're becoming. And with so many folks from so many places, converging, we are not always going to agree with each other.

Another Howard alum, Zora Neale Hurston, once said -- this is a good quote here: “Nothing that God ever made is the same thing to more than one person.” Think about that. That’s why our democracy gives us a process designed for us to settle our disputes with argument and ideas and votes instead of violence and simple majority rule.

So don’t try to shut folks out, don’t try to shut them down, no matter how much you might disagree with them. There's been a trend around the country of trying to get colleges to disinvite speakers with a different point of view, or disrupt a politician’s rally. Don’t do that -- no matter how ridiculous or offensive you might find the things that come out of their mouths. Because as my grandmother used to tell me, every time a fool speaks, they are just advertising their own ignorance. Let them talk. Let them talk. If you don’t, you just make them a victim, and then they can avoid accountability.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t challenge them. Have the confidence to challenge them, the confidence in the rightness of your position. There will be times when you shouldn’t compromise your core values, your integrity, and you will have the responsibility to speak up in the face of injustice. But listen. Engage. If the other side has a point, learn from them. If they’re wrong, rebut them. Teach them. Beat them on the battlefield of ideas. And you might as well start practicing now, because one thing I can guarantee you -- you will have to deal with ignorance, hatred, racism, foolishness, trifling folks. (Laughter.) I promise you, you will have to deal with all that at every stage of your life. That may not seem fair, but life has never been completely fair. Nobody promised you a crystal stair. And if you want to make life fair, then you've got to start with the world as it is.

So that’s my advice. That’s how you change things. Change isn’t something that happens every four years or eight years; change is not placing your faith in any particular politician and then just putting your feet up and saying, okay, go. Change is the effort of committed citizens who hitch their wagons to something bigger than themselves and fight for it every single day.

That’s what Thurgood Marshall understood -- a man who once walked this year, graduated from Howard Law; went home to Baltimore, started his own law practice. He and his mentor, Charles Hamilton Houston, rolled up their sleeves and they set out to overturn segregation. They worked through the NAACP. Filed dozens of lawsuits, fought dozens of cases. And after nearly 20 years of effort -- 20 years -- Thurgood Marshall ultimately succeeded in bringing his righteous cause before the Supreme Court, and securing the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that separate could never be equal. (Applause.) Twenty years.

Marshall, Houston -- they knew it would not be easy. They knew it would not be quick. They knew all sorts of obstacles would stand in their way. They knew that even if they won, that would just be the beginning of a longer march to equality. But they had discipline. They had persistence. They had faith -- and a sense of humor. And they made life better for all Americans.

And I know you graduates share those qualities. I know it because I've learned about some of the young people graduating here today. There's a young woman named Ciearra Jefferson, who’s graduating with you. And I'm just going to use her as an example. I hope you don’t mind, Ciearra. Ciearra grew up in Detroit and was raised by a poor single mom who worked seven days a week in an auto plant. And for a time, her family found themselves without a place to call home. They bounced around between friends and family who might take them in. By her senior year, Ciearra was up at 5:00 am every day, juggling homework, extracurricular activities, volunteering, all while taking care of her little sister. But she knew that education was her ticket to a better life. So she never gave up. Pushed herself to excel. This daughter of a single mom who works on the assembly line turned down a full scholarship to Harvard to come to Howard. (Applause.)

And today, like many of you, Ciearra is the first in her family to graduate from college. And then, she says, she’s going to go back to her hometown, just like Thurgood Marshall did, to make sure all the working folks she grew up with have access to the health care they need and deserve. As she puts it, she’s going to be a “change agent.” She’s going to reach back and help folks like her succeed.

And people like Ciearra are why I remain optimistic about America. (Applause.) Young people like you are why I never give in to despair.

James Baldwin once wrote, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

Graduates, each of us is only here because someone else faced down challenges for us. We are only who we are because someone else struggled and sacrificed for us. That's not just Thurgood Marshall’s story, or Ciearra’s story, or my story, or your story -- that is the story of America. A story whispered by slaves in the cotton fields, the song of marchers in Selma, the dream of a King in the shadow of Lincoln. The prayer of immigrants who set out for a new world. The roar of women demanding the vote. The rallying cry of workers who built America. And the GIs who bled overseas for our freedom.

Now it’s your turn. And the good news is, you’re ready. And when your journey seems too hard, and when you run into a chorus of cynics who tell you that you’re being foolish to keep believing or that you can’t do something, or that you should just give up, or you should just settle -- you might say to yourself a little phrase that I’ve found handy these last eight years: Yes, we can.

Congratulations, Class of 2016! (Applause.) Good luck! God bless you. God bless the United States of America. I'm proud of you.