Robert Rabbin: 'I try to practice these six principles every day', Marin School - 1998

1998,. Mill Valley, California, USA

Mahatma Gandhi was approached one day by a woman and her young son. She asked, “Mahatma, can you please tell my son to stop eating sugar. It’s not good for him, and he won’t listen to me. He respects you, and I know he will listen to you.” The Mahatma said, “Fine. Come back in a week.” A week later, the woman and her son came back. The Mahatma said, “I’m not quite ready. Please come back in another week.” Another week went by, and the woman came back with her son. The Mahatma was ready, and he said, “Son, you should stop eating sugar. It is not good for you.” The woman was pleased, but also a bit confused. She said, “Why did it take you so long to say such a simple thing.” The Mahatma replied, “When you first came to me, I had not stopped eating sugar myself.”

The moral of the story is clear: Don’t tell people to do things you haven’t done yourself. So, I don’t want to speak about things I haven’t tried and tested myself, and I don’t want to tell you a bunch of nonsense I don’t believe in. I don’t want to tell you all kinds of fancy stuff about the future and your place in it, because I’m not psychic. The fact is, I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, and I don’t know what’s going to happen to you. For all I know, Sarah could become the next Emily Dickinson, and Claudio could become the next Pablo Picasso. Or not. Who knows?

What I can do, though, is to share what I’ve learned about life, in the hope I will say something that will be useful to you. I’m going to talk briefly about six principles that represent what I’ve learned over the past thirty years since I graduated high school, based purely on my own experiments in living. I try to practice these six principles every day, and I like to think these principles are a tree whose fruits are an honorable life, which is what I wish for you.

The first principle is: Live your own life. It would be a shame to get to the end of your life—and who knows when that time will come—only to discover in the last moment that you did not live your life, but the life that someone else wanted you to live. It takes a lot of strength and courage to live your own life, because so many people want you to live their idea of what your life should be. But they are not you, and their values and goals and dreams are theirs, not yours. Only you are you, so find out who you are and how you want to live and what you want to do. Take as much time as you need to do this. Don’t be afraid of changing your mind or of making mistakes, because these are part of the journey of living your own life. Explore different paths, keep learning and growing, and don’t be afraid of wandering off into the unknown, because that wilderness is where great people are born. My older brother and I took different paths after high school. He went to college, got married, had two kids, went to law school and became a lawyer. Following my heart, I traveled around the world and lived in Europe, the Middle East and India. I had a lot of adventures, most of which were X-rated, while he had a lot of adventures that were more PG-rated. To this day, I am not a lawyer and I am not married and I don’t have two kids. I don’t even have a dog. Come to think of it, I don’t even have a house plant. Never mind: different strokes for different folks. However, my brother and I are friends, and we share what we have each learned and thus we enrich each other’s lives. My brother was not wrong, and neither was I. We each followed the true path of our own life. Though our paths and lives are different, we enjoy and share the same passion for authentic living. In a word, we are each happy, which is what I hope you will be. And remember: houses, cars, boats, and big bank accounts are not who you are, they are just things you own. Who you are has more to do with character and integrity, and how you treat people, and whether or not you love what you do.

The second principle is: Be persistent. Keep building your dream, whatever it is. Imagine how many difficulties Noah must have had when he started to build his ark. I’m sure he maxed out his credit cards and borrowed even more money from anyone who would lend him some. He had to work weekends, and vacations were definitely out. People laughed and thought he was crazy. Still, he stuck with it, and history tells us that Noah had the last laugh. You might have heard of Rumi, as Sufi poet who lived in the 13th century. He said, "Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah. It makes absolutely no difference what people think of you." Thomas Edison racked up over 10,000 failed experiments before he invented the light bulb. Be persistent, but also be flexible. Flexibility allows us to learn from our mistakes, and to learn from others. Persistence means to just keep at it, and flexibility means to embrace change when necessary.

The third principle is: Respect other people, especially those people you don’t like or who are so different from you that you are sure they come from another galaxy. A Buddhist version of this principle might be: do no harm. The Buddha used to say this all the time: do no harm. Instead of saying “Hi” or “How are you?” he would say “Do no harm.” You might wonder how I know this. Trust me. Just this once. I know it. Respecting other people invites them to respect you. If you do no harm to others, and others do no harm to you, can you imagine what a lovely planet this would be?

The fourth principle is: Express gratitude and appreciation to everyone every day. This is a hard one for me, because I tend to be self-absorbed, and I forget to acknowledge other people. But for anyone here who has experienced the sudden loss of a loved one, you know what I mean. The first thing that comes to our mind is: “I never said ‘I love you.’” Expressing gratitude and appreciation is a form of saying “I love you,” which is a form of respect. It only takes a moment, but it makes all the difference in the world. This is how we create heaven on earth. For example, around you are the teachers who have given their very best effort, day after day, year after year, to help you, to teach you, to care for you. You may never see them again. Wouldn’t it be fun to go to each one and say, “Thank you for all you have done and tried to do to make me a better person. I love you.” I know you would have friends for life, and you would feel great. You could also say this to your parents as you leave home for college, or wherever else you may be heading. I know they would be deeply appreciative.

The fifth principle is: Now is the only time there is. Make now count. It’s fine to plan ahead, to set goals, and to wonder about where you want to be in five or ten years. But life is unpredictable, and in five years you might be worm food. I hope not, but you never know. Even as you look ahead and plan ahead, make sure your feet, head, and heart are planted firmly in now, this minute, because that is all we have. There are no guarantees about tomorrow. This moment is where we live our unique life, where we demonstrate who we are. Be your very best in this moment. Face your fears in this moment. Speak the truth of your heart in this moment. Live from the depths of your soul in this moment. If you do, tomorrow and the day after will exceed your wildest dreams.

The sixth, and final, principle is: Don’t become cynical and selfish. I know there are a lot of things wrong in our world, and that we all face an uncertain future. It may seem that we can’t change things, or that the world is not our business. But the world is our business, and we can change things. Don’t cop out, stay involved, be heard. Stand up for righteousness and justice for all. Take care of yourself and your families, but also make a contribution to others. Find a way to be of service to your community, and to the world in which we live. We should all pitch in and make this Earth a better place for our children, and for their children, and for theirs. Keep a positive outlook, be optimistic, and help those less fortunate than you. And, of course, always, always be kind to children.

So, that’s it. I’ve just given you my best pitch. I know you will develop your own principles of living as the years roll by, but maybe something I’ve said will help you along your way. You should be very proud of yourselves. You have worked hard and you have achieved much. I sincerely applaud each and every one of you, and I wish that you all have magnificent and honorable lives. Thank you, and good luck.

Michelle Obama: ' You have to push yourselves. That's the only thing', Elizabeth Garrett Language College - 2011

25 May 2011, Christ Church, Oxford University, Oxford, United Kingdom

This was not a graduation or commencment speech. The Elizabeth Garrett students were having an 'university immersion experience' at Oxford University.

Well, hello.  How are you all doing?  Good to see you.

     Well, good afternoon, everyone.  I am beyond thrilled to be back in the United Kingdom and to be here with all of you at Oxford University.

     I want to thank Professor Hamilton, the Vice Chancellor of this university, for that very kind introduction and for hosting us all here today.

     And thanks to Professor Hamilton and to the Dean of Christ Church College, The Very Reverend Christopher Lewis also, for hosting us throughout today. 

     I also want to recognize Jo Dibb.  Jo, who has just been so terrific, is such a wonderful example that we just get to (inaudible).  She’s the Head of School at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson -- we’re losing a mic -- for her leadership -- does that work better -- for her leadership and for joining us here today.

     And I want to thank the Oxford students, as well, who’ve served as mentors today.  Thank you for your time, thank you for making all of us feel so welcome, for looking after these beautiful young women.  And thank you for your hard work and effort.

     But most of all, I want to recognize these brilliant young women from the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson School.  My visit to your school two years ago -- and some of you weren’t there when I came, correct -- that was my first solo international event as First Lady.  Truly, that was the first time I went off all by myself as First Lady.  And from the minute that I walked into the door of your school, I knew I had come to a very special place. 

     It was clear to me that you all were so very special.  I was blown away by your talent.  You all put on a performance for me at the drop of a hat, and I understand you didn’t even really know I was coming.  But you put on such a performance.  And I was also impressed with your achievements.  I was inspired by your passion and your energy.  And I felt this strong sense of connection with all of you because in your stories I saw so much of my own story.

     So I knew that the next time I came to the United Kingdom, I wanted to visit with all of the students again. And I knew that I wanted to visit with all of you in a place like this.  Look around.  I mean, just look at this, a renowned university that has trained so many of the world’s brightest minds and greatest leaders.

     And I’m not the only one who’s excited to see you all here today.  Students and faculty at this university were eager to visit with you all, as well. 

     And there’s a reason for that.  It’s because all of us -- and it’s important for you to know that -- all of us believe that you belong here; that this is a place for you, as well.  We passionately believe that you have the talent within you, you have the drive, you have the experience to succeed here at Oxford and at universities just like it across the country and across the world, because you attend a school that has been labeled “outstanding,” a school that’s preparing you for whatever course of study that you might choose.

     I know that you spend each day with girls from many different countries, who speak 59 different languages in your school.  So you’re already learning how to fit into a university like Oxford, which has students from more than 140 different countries.

     And finally, by overcoming challenges in your lives –- by adjusting to a new culture, and learning a new language, many of you enduring hardships in your own families -– through those experiences, you have gained strength, courage and maturity that is far beyond your years.

     And those qualities will help you succeed in school and in life.  So in other words, all of us who brought you here today don’t just think that universities have a lot to offer you.  We believe that you all have a lot to offer these universities –- your talent, your passion, your unique life experiences.  And we very much want you to believe that’s true, as well.

     And I know that from my own experience, that can be hard sometimes.  And I remember back when I was your age, trying to decide which schools that I would apply to.  And I remember how well meaning but misguided people sometimes questioned whether someone with my background could succeed at an elite university. 

     And when I was accepted at one of those universities, I had all kinds of worries and fears and doubts before I entered.  I worried that I wouldn’t be as well prepared as students who had come from more privileged families.  I worried that I wouldn’t fit in somewhere so different from where I’d grown up, or with people whose backgrounds were so different from mine.

     But after a few months in college, away from home on my own, I realized that I was just as capable and I had just as much to offer any of my classmates.  I realized that if I worked hard enough, I could do just as well as anyone else.  I realized that success is not about the background you’re from.  It’s about the confidence that you have and the effort you’re willing to invest.

     Clarissa here knows that, as well.  She’s one of our mentors here today.  Where’s Clarissa?  There she is.  And she’s also a graduate of the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson School.  And she’s going to be sharing a story in a minute, but I want to give you a little preview, because I worry that she’ll be too modest to tell you about all her achievements.

     Clarissa, I understand, was a star student at Elizabeth Garrett Anderson with outstanding test scores, and she’s now Reading English Language and Literature here at Oxford.  She also somehow finds time here to be an award-winning poet.  She serves as President of the Oxford Poetry Society.  And she’s one of only seven young editors currently working for a major international publishing company.

     So if any of you ever start to doubt yourselves, I want you to remember Clarissa’s story, if mine somehow doesn’t resonate.  I want you to remember that she started out just like all of you.

     And I want you to know that you have everything you need to succeed at a place like this.  You just have to work hard.  That's it.  You have to push yourselves.  That's the only thing.  This does not come easy for anyone.  Everyone here, regardless of their background, got here because they worked hard.  And you stay here because you work hard.  But more importantly, you have to believe in yourself.  You have to mentally believe that you can be here.  You have to paint that picture for yourself. 

     And most of all, when you eventually get to a place like Oxford, I want every last one of you to reach back and to help others get here, too. 

     That's one of the reasons why I’m here, reaching back, even as First Lady of the United States, making sure that other young girls get the same opportunities that I have.  Maybe that means mentoring or tutoring young people in your community.  Or maybe it means keeping in touch with students at Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and helping them with their university applications, because many kids don't have the experience to even apply.

     And the one thing is that you don’t have to wait until you’ve made it yourself.  You don't have to wait until you’re big time.  You can start the minute that you get back to school, because for every one of you here, there's someone else from your school who could be here, who won’t have this opportunity.  So I want you to tell your classmates about the people that you met here today, about the classes you attended here.  And I want you to get them all inspired and excited about what you’ve seen here today.  You all have so much to offer.  You have to believe that.  And I look forward to seeing all of you fulfill whatever dreams you have, and I know they’re big.  So I want to see you all in the future, visiting me somewhere around the world, doing great things.

     So with that, I’m eager to hear from you all about what you saw and learned today.  And then we can talk and talk and talk until they yank me out of here.  So with that, I’m going to turn it over to Jo Dibb, who’s going to take us through.  So congratulations, you all.  We’re very proud.  (Applause.)

     (Clarissa Pabi and Silan Fidan share their stories.)

     MS. DIBB:  Thank you, Silan.  Do you have your question handy?

     Q    Yes.

     MS. DIBB:  Do you have your question handy?

     Q    Yes.

     MS. DIBB:  Would you like to ask your question while everybody else is looking for theirs?

     Q    Okay.  We waited too many years for the first black President.  Considering how far women have come, how long do you think it will be -- take before we have the first female President?

     MRS. OBAMA:  Excellent question.  I think we’re there.  I think that the United States, I think many countries around the world are ready.  So now the challenge is our preparation as women and our desire and willingness to step up and grab that ring, because we’re at a time when so many people just want good leadership.  They want people, number one, who have good character, who are open, who are -- especially young people, because you all see the world in such broader terms, particularly students at Oxford, students who get to travel and experience the world.  Their limits just continue to expand.

     So our job as women is to envision ourselves as leaders, and then to prepare and be ready for a good fight and a good battle, because one thing about our success is that no one feels sorry, is going to take it easy on us, right?

     Hillary Clinton is a fabulous leader.  My husband had a formidable opponent in her in the primaries.  She is a phenomenal Secretary of State.  We have examples of outstanding women like her in leadership all over the world. 

     So it’s completely there.  The question is, are we ready?  Are we, as young women, are we ready to take that responsibility on and go after it and take the risk that go with stepping out there and being judged?  And I think sometimes as women we can step back, but we can start pushing ourselves now, so --

     Q    Thank you.

     MS. DIBB:  You have the next question from Kristina.

     Q    Yeah, my name is Kristina, and I’m 13 years old, and I’m from London.  And my question is, how is it different in raising your children now in the White House than before?

     MRS. OBAMA:  Oh, that's a good question.  A lot more cameras.  (Laughter.) 

     You know, my philosophy about mothering and how I feel about being a mother hasn’t changed.  That doesn’t change with the house you live in and the job that you have. 

     And truly I call myself Mom-in-Chief.  It’s not because I don't value a career or my education.  I am glad that I had the education that I do.  I’m glad I have the accomplishments that I have.  But truly the most important thing to me is raising strong women and raising my daughters well, probably because that's what my mother did for me.  So I think that is the most important job that I will ever have.  And it doesn’t really matter where we live.

     But my husband and I, the President, we’re very protective to make sure they get privacy and normalcy.  But we push them just as we would at any time.  Our girls have responsibilities.  We want to make sure they don't take anything for granted; that they’re grateful.

     The things I tell my girls are the same things I tell all of you.  Don't be afraid to fail.  Don't be afraid to take risks.  Learn to use your voice now.  Ask questions.  Ask stupid questions.  Be laughed at.  Get it wrong.  Trip, fall, and then get back up.  Do your homework.  Do chores.  Have responsibilities, because what I tell my kids -- you have to practice who you want to be.  You know, you don't wake up one morning and you’re suddenly who you think you want to be.  You have to put some energy into it.

     So if you want to be an honest person, you have to be an honest person every day, even starting at three and four and five, right?  If you’re going to be a hard worker, hard work doesn’t just appear.  You have to practice hard work.  You have to practice effort. 

     And I also encourage them and try to help them understand that good things don't come easy.  With that effort, that's where you grow, that's where growth is.  Some of the best times in my life, when I’ve grown, it’s when I’ve done something hard, when I’ve overcome a fear.  You won’t realize that when you’re doing it, but when you come out on the other side, you realize, wow, I’ve really stepped up.

     So I push my girls.  And -- but more importantly, I love them a lot.  And that's what I feel for all of you.  I want you guys to feel that in your lives so that you can be excellent, okay?

     So it’s no different.  Right? 

     MS. DIBB:  Should we have the next question from Yasmin?

     Q    Hi, my name is Yasmin, I’m 14, I'm from London.  My question is, as the First Lady of America, how do you feel -- how do you help others around the world?

     MRS. OBAMA:  Say the last part?

     Q    How do you help others around the world? 

     MRS. OBAMA:  How do I help others around the world?  Well.  I think sessions like this -- I’m hoping that it helps others around the world.  I mean, mentoring young people around the world, not just in the United States, is a significant part of what my husband and I believe we should be doing -- giving all kids a chance to have some level of excellence and opportunity in their lives. 

     And we’ve started doing mentoring.  One of the things I mentioned in my remarks is that it is so important, no matter where you are in your life, to think about how you’re helping those behind you, those younger than you, come up.  And that's not just an American notion.  That's what we need to be doing around the world.  So mentoring is a big part of what gives us joy and pleasure and makes us feel accomplished, because it’s not enough for us to just sit in our success and advantage if we’re not doing everything we can as often as possible to bring others up, and I believe that's especially true for women around the world, women and young girls.

     So these messages of hope and possibility and education and leadership and service and talking about that and shining these bright lights on models of that -- you know, I want the world to see you all, because there's going to be a set of girls looking at this, reading about this day.  And even if they didn't get to be here, there's somewhere, maybe in a small village or in a city somewhere, they’re going to see you, and they’re going to feel some sense of possibility, even if they’re struggling or they’re challenged.  My hope is that your stories resonate, because they can.  Don't believe that this experience doesn’t matter to somebody beyond yourself.  It can resonate here, in the U.K., and it can resonate around the world.

     So that's a part of what we’re trying to do.  But we need your help.  So we need you to be ready.  We need more mentoring.  We need more young women pushing these doors open and getting into schools like this and other places.

     I mean, Oxford is one of the most renowned universities, but there are outstanding universities and colleges that people haven’t even heard of that provide an excellent education. 

     So we’re pushing you to dream big because if you can see yourself here in Oxford, then you can see yourself anywhere, right?  But, you know, don't feel like this is the only place to go.  You have to get an education.  You must get an education.  You must be smart.  You must be prepared.  And that can happen anywhere.  That can happen in community colleges, in small universities, in small cities.  So that can happen anywhere.

     So those are some of the messages that we’re trying to push for on an international scale.  But we need you guys to be ready.  All right?  You’re going to be ready?  Okay.

     MS. DIBB:  Thank you.  Seren, are you ready to ask your question?

     Q    I’m Seren, I’m 13 years old, and my question is, when you first met the President, did you think that he would go on to achieve such great things?

     MRS. OBAMA:  Absolutely not.  (Laughter.)  No, I’m just kidding.  You know, that's the thing about visioning.  So, honestly, when I met him, I knew he was special.  And I wish -- I’m sharing secrets now, so we have to pretend like none of these people are here, because they’re writing it all down.  (Laughter.) 

     I knew he was a special person.  And it had nothing to do with his education.  It had nothing to do with his potential.  And I say this to young women:  Don’t check off -- there are a lot of women who have the boxes.  Did he go to the right school?  What is his income?

     It was none of that.  It was how he felt about his mother; the love that he felt for his mother; his relationship to women; his work ethic.  We worked together in a firm.  He did his work, and he was good, and he was smart, and I liked that.  And he was low-key.  And he wasn’t impressed with himself.  And he was funny.  And we joked a lot.  And he loved his little sister.

     Those were the things -- and he was a community organizer.  I really respected that.  Here we are in a big law firm, right?  And everybody was pushing to make money.  He was one of the smartest students at Harvard Law School, one of the smartest associates in our firm.  He had the chance to clerk for the Supreme Court.  And I thought, well, you’re definitely going to do that, right?  Only a few people even have the chance to do that.  And he was like, I mean, not really; I think I can do more work working with folks in churches.  And I was like, whoa, that's different.  And he meant it.  It wasn’t a line.  He wasn’t trying to impress me.

     It was those kind of values that made me think you don't meet people like that often.  And when you couple that with talent, and he’s cute -- (laughter) -- you know, I always thought he would be useful.  (Laughter.) 

     But I had no idea he would be President.  I didn’t think he was going to be President until the night we were standing on the stage and he actually won.  I was like, gosh, look, you won.  (Laughter.)

     But the lesson, particularly I think for women, in this is, reach for partners that make you better, you know?  Do not bring people in your life who weigh you down.  And trust your instincts. 

     You know, good relationships feel good.  They feel right.  They don't hurt.  They’re not painful.  That's not just with somebody you want to marry, but it’s with the friends that you choose.  It’s with the people you surround yourselves with.  And that's just as important as the school that you choose.  Who’s in your life, and do you respect them, and do they respect you?  And are you respecting them.  Right? 

     And we as women in particular -- and this is such an important message -- starting today, you all have to be supportive of each other.  You can’t be jealous, and push and trip, you know?  It’s hard enough.  So in your lives now, whether you like somebody because of what -- be kind to each other.  Support each other.  There's room for everyone to succeed.  And that has to start in your lives now.  Right?

     So that's -- I think that's a key message for us as women.  And if we do it to one another, then we’ll do it in the rest of the world -- is draw goodness to you, and that will help propel you.  And I was fortunate to choose a good husband.  But that goes for friendships, as well.  Does that make sense?  Okay.

     MS. DIBB:  Thank you.  Mary, are you ready?

     MRS. OBAMA:  There we go, right behind you.

     Q    Hello.  My name is Mary and I’m 14 years old.  And my question is, during your studies, did you ever suffer from low self-esteem?  And if so -- that you weren’t the First Lady -- who helped you the most?

     MRS. OBAMA:  What helped me the most?

     Q    Who helped you?

     MRS. OBAMA:  Low self-esteem, doubt -- yeah, I talked about that, because I -- you know, I wasn’t sure, because other people told me that I might not be able to do well in school, for whatever reason.  I was always a good student, I worked hard, but I thought there was some magic that happened that made you really -- you know, I didn’t know that it was just plain old hard work. 

     So there were periods of doubt, for sure, and I think we all -- I have doubts today.  Doubts don't go away.  You just learn how to deal with them.  You start knowing yourself and you become more confident the more successes you have, the more chances you take.  You don't let the failures or the stumbles define you. 

     Everybody falls every now and then.  Some people fall a lot.  And what I realize is that we have long lives, if we’re healthy and we do what we’re supposed to.  I’m 47 years old.  So think about it.  Whatever mistake I made when I was 13, who cares?  So think about life as a long trajectory. 

     But at the same time, you don't want to make huge mistakes, because when you’re young, making big, big mistakes can last forever, right?  So you want to choose wisely. 

     But the stumbles, the lessons learned, that's part of life.  That makes you grow.  But I came to know that.  I didn’t know that when I was your again. I thought every mistake was the end of the world.  “I'll never be able to…I'll never get into school, never be…” -- you know, of course, we all feel that way.  But just continue to work.  Put the effort in.

     And I think that has been some of what's helped me being First Lady.  First of all, it’s knowing who you are and being confident in yourself, because there will be -- Clarissa worded it -- said, pushing beyond other people’s labels of you, right?  That's a big part.  That's what we do to each other all the time.  We don't even know each other, and we already determine from one glance, meeting, one line, one word, one phrase, this is who you are. 

     So you have to know who you are before that.  And you live that reality.  And you keep living it out no matter what.  And if you’re a good -- have good character and good intentions, that that ultimately shines through.

     But in the end, it’s hard work.  And I like to work hard.  And I like to do good things.  And you practice that now.  And believe it or not -- I didn’t know it -- it prepared me to be the First Lady of the United States.  I didn’t know.  I guess I’m doing okay.

     But you know what?  Every day we just get up and keep doing what we think is the right thing.  Right?  Thanks.

     MS. DIBB:  should we have Aneesah next?

     Q    Well, thank you.  Hello, my name is Aneesah Siddiqi.  What do your children want to be when they grow up?  Because I know that you are the First Lady.  Do they aspire to be as high as that?

     MRS. OBAMA:  The one thing about your children is they never want to be like you.  (Laughter.)  They want to be the opposite of you.

     But the truth is they now know that they have no idea what they want to be.  I think Malia tried to -- somebody asked her that question, and she started to answer, she had five answers -- this is when she was 11 -- and then she finally said, “I don't know.  I’m 11.”  (Laughter.)

     And you might say that for a very long time.  But fortunately they understand they don't know what they want to be.  But they know they aspire to go to great schools.  That's what they’re starting to do now. 

     I don't think they understand -- Malia understands a little bit more than Sasha, but, again, my kids see the possibilities, so they aspire to the best, right?  That's what we want you all to do, because they’re no different from you.  It’s just they’ve set their bar really high already.  But what they do know is that with that high bar, you’ve got -- that means you’ve got to work even harder, and you’ve got to be okay with working harder.  And that means you’re going to stumble a little bit.  If there's one thing I have to convince one of my children of is, you know, it’s not about getting the A, you know?   It’s not always about getting the A. 

     It’s about learning, and it’s about loving learning.  And sometimes the A won’t come because you take a course that pushes you, right, and it’s going to be hard, and you’re going to, again, stumble a little bit.  But if you always just go for the grade, sometimes you’ll bypass what's interesting because you might not get a good grade in it, right?  And I don't want you all to start doing that.  It’s too early. 

     Read, write, read, read.  If the President were here -- one of his greatest strengths is reading.  That's one of the reasons why he’s a good communicator, why he’s such a good writer.  He’s a voracious reader.  So we’re trying to get our girls, no matter what, to just be -- to love reading and to challenge themselves with what they read, and not just read the gossip books but to push themselves beyond and do things that maybe they wouldn’t do.  So I would encourage you all to read, read, read.  Just keep reading.

     And writing is another skill.  It’s practice.  It’s practice.  The more you write, the better you get.  Drafts -- our kids are learning the first draft means nothing.  You’re going to do seven, 10 drafts.  That's writing, it’s not failure, it’s not the teacher not liking you because it’s all marked up in red.  When you get to be a good writer, you mark your own stuff in red, and you rewrite, and you rewrite, and you rewrite.  That's what writing is.

     And if you come out with those skills, and then you’re confident, and you can articulate, and you can stand up straight and look anybody in the eye and say, “This is who I am.  It’s a pleasure to meet you” -- that's one of the things we try to do with our mentoring program with young girls.

     My message to them is if you can walk into the White House and meet the First Lady and say, “My name is…how are you?” and look me in the eye, then there's nothing you can’t do.  That's why it’s important -- if you guys walked here, are sitting here in front of all these people, standing tall, asking questions, using your voice -- you have to practice that.  (Inaudible) just show up again and again, and you need to just get used to it.  The nerves go away, and you start relaxing into your own abilities.  But it’s practice.

     That make sense?  So that's what my girls -- we’re working on that.  That's baseline stuff.  They get that stuff down, and then whatever they want to be, it really doesn’t matter.  They’ll just be good at it, right?  Whatever they do, they’ll be passionate about it and they’ll be good at it.

     MS. DIBB:  I think we’ve got time for just one more question and a very quick answer, I believe.  So have we got Bisi?

     Q    Hi, I’m Bisi.  One question I really want to know is what’s life like on a daily basis?

     MRS. OBAMA:  Life on a daily basis.  You know, sometimes it -- look, I’m here.  And yesterday we slept in Buckingham Palace.  We had a State Dinner with the Queen.  Friday I'll go home and go to soccer.  (Laughter.)  And go over homework.

     You know, it can range from very mundane and normal to oh, my god, who could have ever have dreamed?  That's what life is like in the White House. 

     But it is exciting and it is a privilege, mostly because I get to meet you guys, and I do want you to understand that for people like us, leading you all to a better place is the only reason we do this.  The dresses, the cars, the horses, the carriages, you know, I can watch that on TV.  But moving you guys and pushing you to see more for yourselves is all that matters. 

     So if the White House lets me do that, and we can use and we can open it up and invite kids in -- and we had a poetry session and we invited young kids in, just last week, from all over the country, and they talked to some of the most outstanding poets, and they wrote their poetry in the State Room, and then we had a poetry night, and Common was there.  He’s very cute.

     But everybody from poet laureates to hip-hop folks, right -- it’s been -- being able to mix up the world in that interesting way -- the White House allows you to do that.  And it’s fun to watch and it’s fun to have the opportunity to do that.

     So otherwise, it’s kind of cool.  (Laughter.)

Douglas MacArthur: 'The shadows are lengthening for me', Duty, Honour, Country, West Point - 1962

12 May 1962, West Point Military Academy, New York, USA

General MacArthur was accepting the Sylvanus Thayer Award at West Point Military Academy

General Westmoreland, General Grove, distinguished guests, and gentlemen of the Corps!

As I was leaving the hotel this morning, a doorman asked me, "Where are you bound for, General?" And when I replied, "West Point," he remarked, "Beautiful place. Have you ever been there before?"

No human being could fail to be deeply moved by such a tribute as this [Thayer Award]. Coming from a profession I have served so long, and a people I have loved so well, it fills me with an emotion I cannot express. But this award is not intended primarily to honor a personality, but to symbolize a great moral code -- the code of conduct and chivalry of those who guard this beloved land of culture and ancient descent. That is the animation of this medallion. For all eyes and for all time, it is an expression of the ethics of the American soldier. That I should be integrated in this way with so noble an ideal arouses a sense of pride and yet of humility which will be with me always

Duty, Honor, Country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.

Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean.

The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule.

But these are some of the things they do: They build your basic character. They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the nation's defense. They make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid. They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for actions, not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future yet never neglect the past; to be serious yet never to take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength. They give you a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of an appetite for adventure over love of ease. They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman.

And what sort of soldiers are those you are to lead? Are they reliable? Are they brave? Are they capable of victory? Their story is known to all of you. It is the story of the American man-at-arms. My estimate of him was formed on the battlefield many, many years ago, and has never changed. I regarded him then as I regard him now -- as one of the world's noblest figures, not only as one of the finest military characters, but also as one of the most stainless. His name and fame are the birthright of every American citizen. In his youth and strength, his love and loyalty, he gave all that mortality can give.

He needs no eulogy from me or from any other man. He has written his own history and written it in red on his enemy's breast. But when I think of his patience under adversity, of his courage under fire, and of his modesty in victory, I am filled with an emotion of admiration I cannot put into words. He belongs to history as furnishing one of the greatest examples of successful patriotism. He belongs to posterity as the instructor of future generations in the principles of liberty and freedom. He belongs to the present, to us, by his virtues and by his achievements. In 20 campaigns, on a hundred battlefields, around a thousand campfires, I have witnessed that enduring fortitude, that patriotic self-abnegation, and that invincible determination which have carved his statue in the hearts of his people. From one end of the world to the other he has drained deep the chalice of courage.

As I listened to those songs [of the glee club], in memory's eye I could see those staggering columns of the First World War, bending under soggy packs, on many a weary march from dripping dusk to drizzling dawn, slogging ankle-deep through the mire of shell-shocked roads, to form grimly for the attack, blue-lipped, covered with sludge and mud, chilled by the wind and rain, driving home to their objective, and for many, to the judgment seat ofGod.

I do not know the dignity of their birth, but I do know the glory of their death. They died unquestioning, uncomplaining, with faith in their hearts, and on their lips the hope that we would go on to victory. Always, for them: Duty, Honor, Country; always their blood and sweat and tears, as we sought the way and the light and the truth.

And 20 years after, on the other side of the globe, again the filth of murky foxholes, the stench of ghostly trenches, the slime of dripping dugouts; those boiling suns of relentless heat, those torrential rains of devastating storms; the loneliness and utter desolation of jungle trails; the bitterness of long separation from those they loved and cherished; the deadly pestilence of tropical disease; the horror of stricken areas of war; their resolute and determined defense, their swift and sure attack, their indomitable purpose, their complete and decisive victory -- always victory. Always through the bloody haze of their last reverberating shot, the vision of gaunt, ghastly men reverently following your password of: Duty, Honor, Country.

The code which those words perpetuate embraces the highest moral laws and will stand the test of any ethics or philosophies ever promulgated for the uplift of mankind. Its requirements are for the things that are right, and its restraints are from the things that are wrong.

The soldier, above all other men, is required to practice the greatest act of religious training -- sacrifice.

In battle and in the face of danger and death, he discloses those divine attributes which his Maker gave when he created man in his own image. No physical courage and no brute instinct can take the place of the Divine help which alone can sustain him.

However horrible the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is called upon to offer and to give his life for his country is the noblest development of mankind.

You now face a new world -- a world of change. The thrust into outer space of the satellite, spheres, and missiles mark the beginning of another epoch in the long story of mankind. In the five or more billions of years the scientists tell us it has taken to form the earth, in the three or more billion years of development of the human race, there has never been a more abrupt or staggering evolution. We deal now not with things of this world alone, but with the illimitable distances and as yet unfathomed mysteries of the universe. We are reaching out for a new and boundless frontier.

We speak in strange terms: of harnessing the cosmic energy; of making winds and tides work for us; of creating unheard synthetic materials to supplement or even replace our old standard basics; to purify sea water for our drink; of mining ocean floors for new fields of wealth and food; of disease preventatives to expand life into the hundreds of years; of controlling the weather for a more equitable distribution of heat and cold, of rain and shine; of space ships to the moon; of the primary target in war, no longer limited to the armed forces of an enemy, but instead to include his civil populations; of ultimate conflict between a united human race and the sinister forces of some other planetary galaxy; of such dreams and fantasies as to make life the most exciting of all time.

And through all this welter of change and development, your mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable: it is to win our wars.

Everything else in your professional career is but corollary to this vital dedication. All other public purposes, all other public projects, all other public needs, great or small, will find others for their accomplishment. But you are the ones who are trained to fight. Yours is the profession of arms,  the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory; that if you lose, the nation will be destroyed; that the very obsession of your public service must be: Duty, Honor, Country.

Others will debate the controversial issues, national and international, which divide men's minds; but serene, calm, aloof, you stand as the Nation's war-guardian, as its lifeguard from the raging tides of international conflict, as its gladiator in the arena of battle. For a century and a half you have defended, guarded, and protected its hallowed traditions of liberty and freedom, of right and justice.

Let civilian voices argue the merits or demerits of our processes of government; whether our strength is being sapped by deficit financing, indulged in too long, by federal paternalism grown too mighty, by power groups grown too arrogant, by politics grown too corrupt, by crime grown too rampant, by morals grown too low, by taxes grown too high, by extremists grown too violent; whether our personal liberties are as thorough and complete as they should be. These great national problems are not for your professional participation or military solution. Your guidepost stands out like a ten-fold beacon in the night: Duty, Honor, Country.

You are the leaven which binds together the entire fabric of our national system of defense. From your ranks come the great captains who hold the nation's destiny in their hands the moment the war tocsin sounds. The Long Gray Line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their white crosses thundering those magic words: Duty, Honor, Country.

This does not mean that you are war mongers.

On the contrary, the soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.

But always in our ears ring the ominous words of Plato, that wisest of all philosophers: "Only the dead have seen the end of war."1

The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. My days of old have vanished, tone and tint. They have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were. Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears, and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. I listen vainly, but with thirsty ears, for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll. In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield.

But in the evening of my memory, always I come back to West Point.

Always there echoes and re-echoes: Duty, Honor, Country.

Today marks my final roll call with you, but I want you to know that when I cross the river my last conscious thoughts will be of The Corps, and The Corps, and The Corps.

I bid you farewell.

David Bowie: "If it itches, play it", Berklee College of Music - 1999

8 May 1999, Hynes Convention Centre, Boston Massachusetts, USA

Thank you. Thanks very much. Rockers... Jazzers... Samplers... That was a fantastic concert last night. I think both Wayne and myself were just so moved to hear our compositions coming back at us through your ears and abilities. It was dynamite. You don't know how much we appreciate it.

I chatted with some of the students last night and I asked one of them if he could give me a good joke to start today off with and also his worst fear.

He said, "I'll give you both. How does a tuba player answer the telephone? Hello, Dominoes."

"Thank you," I said.

Oh, I should remind you that anybody left over from the proceedings today can join my wife and I at [local pizza place] Little Stevie's for a slice. Dunkin Donuts, then, alright?

I've got a message here for the administration from my sometimes-collaborator and fellow musician Reeves Gabrels, ex-alumni. It says here, "I haven't forgotten that $900 I owe from my last semester. I should point out that this has been owed since the spring of 1980. I read recently in Allegro that they are holding an unclaimed check for me backdating from my days with Tin Machine."

Well, that should wipe out about $30-worth right there.

As always on occasions like this, I really never know what to do—which is pretty much the way that I've handled my career as a musician/writer. I guess any list of advice I have to offer to a musician always ends with "If it itches, go and see a doctor." Real world! But that's not going to be of any help today.

My sometimes-collaborator Brian Eno described himself as a non-musician. In fact he tried to get it put into his passport as his work definition. [faking British customs officer voice] "Non-musician? Made any records?" [impersonating Brian Eno] "Of course not. I'm a bloody non-musician." Anyway I'd describe myself, I think, as a bit of a non-musician. I took classes, initially, after seeing the Little Richard band in a film with, at that time Britain's foremost baritone jazz player Ronnie Ross. I was about 14 and I gave him a phone. I found his number in the phone book and he very kindly took me on. But I quickly found that what was written as "be doo boo doobie doop ba doo bip ..." That's a George Redman composition, West Coast band, 60s you wouldn't know about it.

"Be doobiee doobie doop a doop bip," when I started playing it, came out as "bdzzzz dzzzzz zzzz." So it seemed that authenticity and the natural form of expression wasn't going to be my forte. In fact, what I found that I was good at doing, and what I really enjoyed the most, was the game of "what if?" What if you combined Brecht-Weill musical drama with rhythm and blues? What happens if you transplant the French chanson with the Philly sound? Will Schoenberg lie comfortably with Little Richard? Can you put haggis and snails on the same plate? Well, no, but some of the ideas did work out very well.

So, I learned enough saxophone and guitar and what's euphemistically called "composer's piano" to get my ideas over to proper musicians, as we have here today. And then I went on a crusade, I suppose, to change the kind of information that rock music contained. I adored Coltrane, Harry Parch, Eric Dolphy, Velvet Underground, John Cage, Sonny Stitt. Unfortunately, I also loved Anthony Newley, Florence Foster Jenkins, Johnnie Ray, Julie London, the legendary Stardust Cowboy, Edith Piaf and Shirley Bassey.

A word about Shirley Bassey. During the very early days of Ziggy Stardust, we often used to play these fairly grotty clubs called the "workingman's clubs." They were sort of like nightclubs but you got a cheap meal. The whole family would come. A round of beer. A rock act. A stripper—sometimes one in the same. Well, backstage one night I was desperate to use the bathroom. I was dressed in my full, battle finery of Tokyo-spaceboy and a pair of shoes high enough that it induced nose bleeds. I went up to the promoter—actually I tottered over to the promoter—and I asked, "Could you please tell me where the lavatory is?"

And he said, "Yeah, look down that corridor. On the far end of that wall. You see that sink? There you go."

I said, "My good man, I'm not taking a piss in the sink."

He said, "Listen son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."

From which I learned that mixing elements of bad taste with good would often produce the most interesting results. So, in short, I didn't feel comfortable as a folk singer or an R&B singer or a balladeer. I was drawn more and more to the idea of manipulation of signs, rather than individual expression—a concept that really had its start in the late 50s with Pop Art and by the early 70s I found myself making what British writer Simon Fricke described as "art pop."

It wasn't so much about how I felt about things, but rather, how things around me felt. To put it simply, I had discovered the Englishman's true place in rock and roll. This all sounds, I suppose, quite dispassionate, but believe me, still, even now, when I hear the most fantastic solo being played on a CD and it's on the fadeout, I still rush over to the volume switch and bring it up in proportion to the way it's fading down, so I can catch that last note. It still is very much my life. It's impossible for me to talk about popular music without mentioning probably my greatest mentor, John Lennon. I guess he defined for me, at any rate, how one could twist and turn the fabric of pop and imbue it with elements from other artforms, often producing something extremely beautiful, very powerful and imbued with strangeness. Also, uninvited, John would wax on endlessly about any topic under the sun and was over-endowed with opinions. I immediately felt empathy with that. Whenever the two of us got together it started to resemble Beavis and Butthead on "Crossfire."

The seductive thing about John was his sense of humor. Surrealistically enough, we were first introduced in about 1974 by Elizabeth Taylor. Miss Taylor had been trying to get me to make a movie with her. It involved going to Russia and wearing something red, gold and diaphanous. Not terribly encouraging, really. I can't remember what it was called—it wasn't On the Waterfront, anyway, I know that.

We were in LA, and one night she had a party to which both John and I had been invited. I think we were polite with each other, in that kind of older-younger way. Although there were only a few years between us, in rock and roll that's a generation, you know? Oh boy, is it ever.

So John was sort of [in Liverpool accent] "Oh, here comes another new one." And I was sort of, "It's John Lennon! I don't know what to say. Don't mention the Beatles, you'll look really stupid."

And he said, "Hello, Dave." And I said, "I've got everything you've made—except the Beatles."

A couple of nights later we found ourselves backstage at the Grammys where I had to present "the thing" to Aretha Franklin. Before the show I'd been telling John that I didn't think America really got what I did, that I was misunderstood. Remember that I was in my 20s and out of my head.

So the big moment came and I ripped open the envelope and announced, "The winner is Aretha Franklin." Aretha steps forward, and with not so much as a glance in my direction, snatches the trophy out of my hands and says, "Thank you everybody. I'm so happy I could even kiss David Bowie." Which she didn't! And she promptly spun around swanned off stage right. So I slunk off stage left.

And John bounds over and gives me a theatrical kiss and a hug and says "See, Dave. America loves ya."

We pretty much got on like a house on fire after that.

He once famously described glam rock as just rock and roll with lipstick on. He was wrong of course, but it was very funny.

Towards the end of the 70s, a group of us went off to Hong Kong on a holiday and John was in, sort of, house-husband mode and wanted to show Sean the world. And during one of our expeditions on the back streets a kid comes running up to him and says, "Are you John Lennon?" And he said, "No but I wish I had his money." Which I promptly stole for myself.

[imitating a fan] "Are you David Bowie?"

No, but I wish I had his money.

It's brilliant. It was such a wonderful thing to say. The kid said, "Oh, sorry. Of course you aren't," and ran off. I thought, "This is the most effective device I've heard."

I was back in New York a couple of months later in Soho, downtown, and a voice pipes up in my ear, "Are you David Bowie?" And I said, "No, but I wish I had his money."

"You lying bastard. You wish you had my money." It was John Lennon.

These are just a few moments from my life. This moment is very definitely yours. Thank you so much for indulging me for the last 10 minutes. I hope it's been reasonably interesting for you.

Music has given me over 40 years of extraordinary experiences. I can't say that life's pains or more tragic episodes have been diminished because of it. But it's allowed me so many moments of companionship when I've been lonely and a sublime means of communication when I wanted to touch people. It's been both my doorway of perception and the house that I live in.

I only hope that it embraces you with the same lusty life force that it graciously offered me. Thank you very much and remember, if it itches, play it.

David McCullough: 'You are not special. Because everyone is', Wellesley High School -2012

1 June 2012, Wellesley High School, Massachusetts, USA

David McCullough is an English teacher at the school. This address went viral and had over 2 million views on Youtube.

Dr. Wong, Dr. Keough, Mrs. Novogroski, Ms. Curran, members of the board of education, family and friends of the graduates, ladies and gentlemen of the Wellesley High School class of 2012, for the privilege of speaking to you this afternoon, I am honored and grateful.  Thank you.

So here we are… commencement… life’s great forward-looking ceremony.  (And don’t say, “What about weddings?”  Weddings are one-sided and insufficiently effective.  Weddings are bride-centric pageantry.  Other than conceding to a list of unreasonable demands, the groom just stands there.  No stately, hey-everybody-look-at-me procession.  No being given away.  No identity-changing pronouncement.  And can you imagine a television show dedicated to watching guys try on tuxedos?  Their fathers sitting there misty-eyed with joy and disbelief, their brothers lurking in the corner muttering with envy.  Left to men, weddings would be, after limits-testing procrastination, spontaneous, almost inadvertent… during halftime… on the way to the refrigerator.  And then there’s the frequency of failure: statistics tell us half of you will get divorced.  A winning percentage like that’ll get you last place in the American League East.  The Baltimore Orioles do better than weddings.)

But this ceremony… commencement… a commencement works every time.  From this day forward… truly… in sickness and in health, through financial fiascos, through midlife crises and passably attractive sales reps at trade shows in Cincinnati, through diminishing tolerance for annoyingness, through every difference, irreconcilable and otherwise, you will stay forever graduated from high school, you and your diploma as one, ‘til death do you part.

No, commencement is life’s great ceremonial beginning, with its own attendant and highly appropriate symbolism.  Fitting, for example, for this auspicious rite of passage, is where we find ourselves this afternoon, the venue.  Normally, I avoid clichés like the plague, wouldn’t touch them with a ten-foot pole, but here we are on a literal level playing field.  That matters.  That says something.  And your ceremonial costume… shapeless, uniform, one-size-fits-all.  Whether male or female, tall or short, scholar or slacker, spray-tanned prom queen or intergalactic X-Box assassin, each of you is dressed, you’ll notice, exactly the same.  And your diploma… but for your name, exactly the same.

All of this is as it should be, because none of you is special.

You are not special.  You are not exceptional.

Contrary to what your u9 soccer trophy suggests, your glowing seventh grade report card, despite every assurance of a certain corpulent purple dinosaur, that nice Mister Rogers and your batty Aunt Sylvia, no matter how often your maternal caped crusader has swooped in to save you… you’re nothing special.

Yes, you’ve been pampered, cosseted, doted upon, helmeted, bubble-wrapped.  Yes, capable adults with other things to do have held you, kissed you, fed you, wiped your mouth, wiped your bottom, trained you, taught you, tutored you, coached you, listened to you, counseled you, encouraged you, consoled you and encouraged you again.  You’ve been nudged, cajoled, wheedled and implored.  You’ve been feted and fawned over and called sweetie pie.  Yes, you have.  And, certainly, we’ve been to your games, your plays, your recitals, your science fairs.  Absolutely, smiles ignite when you walk into a room, and hundreds gasp with delight at your every tweet.  Why, maybe you’ve even had your picture in the Townsman!  [Editor’s upgrade: Or The Swellesley Report!] And now you’ve conquered high school… and, indisputably, here we all have gathered for you, the pride and joy of this fine community, the first to emerge from that magnificent new building.

But do not get the idea you’re anything special.  Because you’re not.

The empirical evidence is everywhere, numbers even an English teacher can’t ignore.  Newton, Natick, Nee… I am allowed to say Needham, yes? …that has to be two thousand high school graduates right there, give or take, and that’s just the neighborhood Ns.  Across the country no fewer than 3.2 million seniors are graduating about now from more than 37,000 high schools.  That’s 37,000 valedictorians… 37,000 class presidents… 92,000 harmonizing altos… 340,000 swaggering jocks… 2,185,967 pairs of Uggs.  But why limit ourselves to high school?  After all, you’re leaving it.  So think about this: even if you’re one in a million, on a planet of 6.8 billion that means there are nearly 7,000 people just like you.  Imagine standing somewhere over there on Washington Street on Marathon Monday and watching sixty-eight hundred yous go running by.  And consider for a moment the bigger picture: your planet, I’ll remind you, is not the center of its solar system, your solar system is not the center of its galaxy, your galaxy is not the center of the universe.  In fact, astrophysicists assure us the universe has no center; therefore, you cannot be it.  Neither can Donald Trump… which someone should tell him… although that hair is quite a phenomenon.

“But, Dave,” you cry, “Walt Whitman tells me I’m my own version of perfection!  Epictetus tells me I have the spark of Zeus!”  And I don’t disagree.  So that makes 6.8 billion examples of perfection, 6.8 billion sparks of Zeus.  You see, if everyone is special, then no one is.  If everyone gets a trophy, trophies become meaningless.  In our unspoken but not so subtle Darwinian competition with one another–which springs, I think, from our fear of our own insignificance, a subset of our dread of mortality — we have of late, we Americans, to our detriment, come to love accolades more than genuine achievement.  We have come to see them as the point — and we’re happy to compromise standards, or ignore reality, if we suspect that’s the quickest way, or only way, to have something to put on the mantelpiece, something to pose with, crow about, something with which to leverage ourselves into a better spot on the social totem pole.  No longer is it how you play the game, no longer is it even whether you win or lose, or learn or grow, or enjoy yourself doing it…  Now it’s “So what does this get me?”  As a consequence, we cheapen worthy endeavors, and building a Guatemalan medical clinic becomes more about the application to Bowdoin than the well-being of Guatemalans.  It’s an epidemic — and in its way, not even dear old Wellesley High is immune… one of the best of the 37,000 nationwide, Wellesley High School… where good is no longer good enough, where a B is the new C, and the midlevel curriculum is called Advanced College Placement.  And I hope you caught me when I said “one of the best.”  I said “one of the best” so we can feel better about ourselves, so we can bask in a little easy distinction, however vague and unverifiable, and count ourselves among the elite, whoever they might be, and enjoy a perceived leg up on the perceived competition.  But the phrase defies logic.  By definition there can be only one best.  You’re it or you’re not.

If you’ve learned anything in your years here I hope it’s that education should be for, rather than material advantage, the exhilaration of learning.  You’ve learned, too, I hope, as Sophocles assured us, that wisdom is the chief element of happiness.  (Second is ice cream…  just an fyi)  I also hope you’ve learned enough to recognize how little you know… how little you know now… at the moment… for today is just the beginning.  It’s where you go from here that matters.

As you commence, then, and before you scatter to the winds, I urge you to do whatever you do for no reason other than you love it and believe in its importance.  Don’t bother with work you don’t believe in any more than you would a spouse you’re not crazy about, lest you too find yourself on the wrong side of a Baltimore Orioles comparison.  Resist the easy comforts of complacency, the specious glitter of materialism, the narcotic paralysis of self-satisfaction.  Be worthy of your advantages.  And read… read all the time… read as a matter of principle, as a matter of self-respect.  Read as a nourishing staple of life.  Develop and protect a moral sensibility and demonstrate the character to apply it.  Dream big.  Work hard.  Think for yourself.  Love everything you love, everyone you love, with all your might.  And do so, please, with a sense of urgency, for every tick of the clock subtracts from fewer and fewer; and as surely as there are commencements there are cessations, and you’ll be in no condition to enjoy the ceremony attendant to that eventuality no matter how delightful the afternoon.

The fulfilling life, the distinctive life, the relevant life, is an achievement, not something that will fall into your lap because you’re a nice person or mommy ordered it from the caterer.  You’ll note the founding fathers took pains to secure your inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness –- quite an active verb, “pursuit” -- which leaves, I should think, little time for lying around watching parrots rollerskate on Youtube.  The first President Roosevelt, the old rough rider, advocated the strenuous life.  Mr. Thoreau wanted to drive life into a corner, to live deep and suck out all the marrow.  The poet Mary Oliver tells us to row, row into the swirl and roil.  Locally, someone… I forget who… from time to time encourages young scholars to carpe the heck out of the diem.  The point is the same: get busy, have at it.  Don’t wait for inspiration or passion to find you.  Get up, get out, explore, find it yourself, and grab hold with both hands.  (Now, before you dash off and get your YOLO tattoo, let me point out the illogic of that trendy little expression–because you can and should live not merely once, but every day of your life.  Rather than You Only Live Once, it should be You Live Only Once… but because YLOO doesn’t have the same ring, we shrug and decide it doesn’t matter.)

None of this day-seizing, though, this YLOOing, should be interpreted as license for self-indulgence.  Like accolades ought to be, the fulfilled life is a consequence, a gratifying byproduct.  It’s what happens when you’re thinking about more important things.  Climb the mountain not to plant your flag, but to embrace the challenge, enjoy the air and behold the view.  Climb it so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.  Go to Paris to be in Paris, not to cross it off your list and congratulate yourself for being worldly.  Exercise free will and creative, independent thought not for the satisfactions they will bring you, but for the good they will do others, the rest of the 6.8 billion–and those who will follow them.  And then you too will discover the great and curious truth of the human experience is that selflessness is the best thing you can do for yourself.  The sweetest joys of life, then, come only with the recognition that you’re not special.

Because everyone is.

Congratulations.  Good luck.  Make for yourselves, please, for your sake and for ours, extraordinary lives.

You can purchase this speech and other writings by David McCullough here.

Simon Chesterman: ' From here on, you set your own exams', NUS Law School, Singapore - 2012

7 July 2012, National University of Singpaore, Singapore

Mr Wong Ngit Liong, Chairman, NUS Board of Trustees

Professor John Wong, Vice Provost (Academic Medicine), Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, Graduands of the class of 2012.

What is the difference between being clever and being wise?

Commencement is by far my favourite event in the academic year.

It marks the culmination of our students’ achievements, years of hard work rewarded in a degree and celebrated with friends and family.

But as the name suggests, it is also a beginning: a beginning as you enter the workforce or pursue further study, and as you transition from being our students to being our alumni.

This is my first graduation ceremony as Dean of NUS Law. I’m delighted that my predecessor, Professor Tan Cheng Han is here also.

For the Law students, congratulations: this is the last occasion on which you must listen to the Dean of the Law School.

In future, I’ll be asking for your time.

For the graduands of the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music — I hope that this is the last time you’ll need to listen to a lawyer at all. But that’s unlikely.

It is, however, probably the last time you’ll sit in a room with quite so many lawyers.

I would also like to offer a special welcome to the families that are here — none of our students would be graduating without the support you have given them.

I’d like to do three things in my remarks today:

First I will say something about the passage of time.

Secondly, I’ll talk about the choices ahead of you.

And thirdly, I’d like to tell you a story.

But nature of these addresses is that I’ll be lucky if you remember one thing a year from now

I hope that that will be the difference between being clever and being wise

1. Time

First let me say something about time.

As I said earlier, a graduation is both an end and a beginning.

For many of you, it is the end of your studies, but the beginning of your career — as you make the transition from being students to alumni

There is a similar progression for academics

If we are lucky, some graduates will distinguish themselves by saying that they were once so-and-so’s student.

In time, however, it is often the professor who distinguishes him or herself by saying I used to be so-and-so’s teacher.

Together with all my colleagues, I look forward to great things from you — for which we may take just a small amount of credit

We ask only that you stay in touch and tell us of your achievements.

As alumni there are many ways you can help

Most importantly, you can do good things — you can make us proud.

You can also advise potential and future students.

Finally you can contribute your time and, if you are able, your money to building NUS to be one of the truly great institutions in the world.

So how has your time at NUS changed you?

Naturally, I hope you’ve learned something.

But I also hope that you think you have changed, and that we have played a role in that change.

In particular, I hope that we’ve prepared you for a globalized world.

We talk in these days of global lawyers.

Musicians know that they are entering a global market.

If I can borrow a music analogy – discussions of law and globalization often refer to harmonization.

This is sometimes misunderstood as meaning uniformity, as the world gets smaller, or flatter.

As the music graduates know, that is not harmony. That’s monotony.

Harmony is when things that are different work together in a pleasant way, when they create something new, perhaps even something beautiful.

Now I confess that it’s more likely that people will associate beauty with the work of someone like Clarence Lee, who will be playing later. But I do believe that there can be beauty and elegance in a legal argument.

Or at least that there can be ugliness, which suggests the possibility of beauty.

I also hope that we have encouraged you to be ambitious.

Now that you’re leaving University, we won’t be setting exams for you anymore.

But I hope you will continue to set ambitious goals for yourself.

And if you ever get to point where you are achieving all your goals … then maybe those goals aren’t ambitious enough.

Having completed your studies, you earn today a piece of paper that testifies to the fact that you are clever.

Whether you are wise is another question.

2. Choices

Secondly, let me say something about some of the choices you will have to make in future.

For the real test of a university education is not whether you can complete it, but what you do with it.

Each of you made a choice to be here, a reason why you studied law or music, and why you stuck with it.

Perhaps it’s the same as what you said to an interviewer several years ago. Perhaps not.

Moving forward, in law certainly, but I believe also in music, you will face choices where there is an easy option and a hard option.

There will be an option that is open to you because you are clever, because you are able.

But it may not be wise.

In the past few months there have been an unusually large number of stories about corruption in Singapore.

This is depressing, of course.

But as my late colleague Tom Franck used to say: no one’s completely useless — you can always be a bad example.

Today you earn a qualification recognized worldwide. We hope that this is a building block in a brilliant career. But the thing that will define you is your reputation.

Resist the temptation to follow Groucho Marx.

“These are my principles,” he once said. “If you don’t like them, I have others.”

Warren Buffet put it nicely when speaking of bankers, though the same might apply to lawyers and perhaps musicians:

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.”

Joseph Hall, the English bishop and satirist, was more optimistic:

“A reputation once broken may possibly be repaired -- but the world will always keep their eyes on the spot where the crack was.”

So choose carefully in your professional life.

Remember also that there are many ways to find professional fulfilment.

An increasing number of lawyers, for example, do pro bono work and find enormous satisfaction in that.

As Singapore continues to change politically, there will be increasing demands for access to justice.

Lawyers will play an extremely important role in those changes, and you may have a role to play too.

Choose carefully in your personal life also.

Many of the choices in your work life will be complicated.

Complicated questions are, in one sense, easy — you can break them up, look at different angles, piece them back together.

It’s the simple questions that are the hardest, because they just sit there staring you in the face asking you if you’re sure. Are you sure.

What is the right thing to do?

Whom should I marry?

What sort of person am I?

Again, reputation plays an outsize role.

So treat people the way you would want to be treated.

Try to see yourself as others might see you.

And never take friendship and love for granted.

3. Story

Now I come to the story (1).

It is a short story about an old woman and a bird.

There are many versions across different cultures.

It has no known author.

I’ll tell you the version that I know.

Once upon a time there was an old woman. She was blind. But she was wise.

Now you could tell a different version about an old man, or maybe it was a young girl. Perhaps the bird was in fact a butterfly. But let’s stick with my version for the moment.

Old woman. Blind. Wise.

One day, some clever young people decide to visit her.

They know that they are clever and intend to demonstrate this by proving that the old woman is a fraud.

She may be blind, they think, but she is not wise. And she is not cleverer than they.

So a young man has brought with him a small bird. He holds the bird cupped in his hands.

“Old woman,” he says. “In my hands I hold a small bird. Tell me: is it alive or dead?”

The old woman is silent.

He repeats his question: “Is the bird I am holding alive or dead?”

And he smiles. Because if she says it is dead, he will release it — and the flapping of its wings will show her to be a fool.

But if she says it is alive, he will crush it to death and drop the carcass in her hands.

Still the old woman says nothing.

She is silent for such a long time that some of the young people begin to laugh.

Finally she speaks.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t know if the bird you are holding is alive or dead. The only thing I know is that it is in your hands. It is in your hands.”

Conclusion

Now if this were a class in Law School I can imagine the student feedback:

“Prof didn’t actually tell us what wisdom was.” “He didn’t say what would be on the exam.”

And that’s my point. From here on, you set your own exams.

So, in closing, let me offer my congratulations to the graduating class of 2012.

I wish you peace and harmony;

I wish you success and happiness;

I wish you cleverness and wisdom.

Thank you.

[1] Adapted from Toni Morrison’s Nobel Lecture,

Toni Morrison's delivered her own commencement speech which is on Speakola here.

Joseph Brodsky: 'I wish you luck, because what lies ahead is no picnic for the prepared and the unprepared alike, and you'll need luck' University of Michigan - 1988

Joseph Brodsky was a Soviet dissident and poet who won the Nobel Prize for literature the year before this speech. He was American poet laureate in 1991. He died in 1996.

18 December 1988, Winter Commencement, University of Michigan, USA

Life is a game with many rules but no referee. One learns how to play it more by watching it than by consulting any book, including the Holy Book. Small wonder, then, that so many play dirty, that so few win, that so many lose. ...

At any rate, if this place is the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, that I remember, it's fairly safe for me to assume that you, its graduates, are even less familiar with the Good Book than those who sat in these benches, let's say, 16 years ago, when I ventured afield here for the first time.

If I remember my colleagues well, if I know what's happening touniversity curricula all over the country, if I am not totally oblivious to the pressures the so-called modern world exerts upon the young, I feel nostalgic for those who sat in your chairs a dozen or so years ago, because some of them at least could cite the Ten Commandments and still others even remembered the names of the Seven Deadly Sins. As to what they’ve done with that precious knowledge of theirs afterward, as to how they fared in the game, I have no idea. All I can hope for is that in the long run one is better off being guided by rules and taboos laid down by someone totally impalpable than by the penal code alone.

Since your run is most likely to be fairly long, and since being better off and having a decent world around you is what you presumably are after, you could do worse than to acquaint yourselves with those commandments and that list of sins. There are just 17 items altogether, and some of those overlap. Of course, you may argue that they belong to a creed with a substantial record of violence. Still, as creeds go, this one appears to be the most tolerant; it's worth your consideration if only because it gave birth to the society in which you have the right to question or negate its value.

But I am not here to extol the virtues of any particular creed or philosophy, nor do I relish, as so many seem to, the opportunity to snipe at the modern system of education or at you, its alleged victims. To begin with, I don’t perceive you as such. After all, in certain fields your knowledge is immeasurably superior to mine or anyone’s of my generation. I regard you as a bunch of young, reasonably egotistical souls on the eve of a very long journey. I shudder to contemplate its length, and I ask myself in what way I could possibly be of use to you. Do I know something about life that could be of help or consequence to you, and if I do, is there a way to pass this information on to you?

The answer to the first question is, I suppose, yes — not so much because a person of my age is entitled to out-fox any of you at existential chess as because he is, in all probability, tired of quite a lot of the stuff you are still aspiring to. (This fatigue alone is something the young should be advised on as an attendant feature of both their eventual success and their failure; this sort of knowledge may enhance their savoring of the former as well as a better weathering of the latter.) As for the second question, I truly wonder. The example of the aforementioned commandments may discourage any commencement speaker, for the Ten Commandments themselves were a commencement address — literally so, I must say. But there is a transparent wall between the generations, an ironic curtain, if you will, a see-through veil allowing almost no passage of experience. At best, some tips.

Regard them, what you are about to hear as just tips -- of several icebergs, if I may say so, not of Mount Sinai. I am no Moses, nor are you biblical Jews; these are a few random jottings scribbled on a yellow pad somewhere in California -- not tablets. Ignore them if you wish, doubt them if you must, forget them if you can't help it; there is nothing imperative about them. Should some of it now or in the time to be come in handy to you, I'll be glad. If not, my wrath won't reach you.

1. Now and in the time to be, I think it will pay for you to zero in on being precise with your language. Try to build and treat your vocabulary the way you are to treat your checking account. Pay every attention to it and try to increase your earnings. The purpose here is not to boost your bedroom eloquence or your professional success — although those, too, can be consequences — nor is it to turn you into parlor sophisticates. The purpose is to enable you to articulate yourselves as fully and precisely as possible; in a word, the purpose is your balance. For the accumulation of things not spelled out, not properly articulated, may result in neurosis. On a daily basis, a lot is happening to one’s psyche; the mode of one’s expression, however, often remains the same. Articulation lags behind experience. That doesn’t go well with the psyche. Sentiments, nuances, thoughts, perceptions that remain nameless, unable to be voiced and dissatisfied with approximations, get pent up within an individual and may lead to a psychological explosion or implosion. To avoid that, one needn’t turn into a bookworm. One should simply acquire a dictionary and read it on the same daily basis — and, on and off, with books of poetry. Dictionaries, however, are of primary importance. There are a lot of them around; some of them even come with a magnifying glass. They are reasonably cheap, but even the most expensive among them (those equipped with a magnifying glass) cost far less than a single visit to a psychiatrist. If you are going to visit one nevertheless, go with the symptoms of a dictionary junkie.

2. Now and in the time to be, try to be kind to your parents. If this sounds too close to “Honor thy mother and father” for your comfort, so be it. All I am trying to say is try not to rebel against them, for, in all likelihood, they will die before you do, so you can spare yourselves at least this source of guilt if not of grief. If you must rebel, rebel against those who are not so easily hurt. Parents are too close a target (so, by the way, are sisters, brothers, wives or husbands); the range is such that you can’t miss. Rebellion against one’s parents, for all its I-won’t-take-a-single-penny-from-you, is essentially an extremely bourgeois sort of thing, because it provides the rebel with the ultimate in comfort, in this case, mental comfort: the comfort of one’s convictions. The later you hit this pattern, the later you become a mental bourgeois, i.e., the longer you stay skeptical, doubtful, intellectually uncomfortable, the better it is for you.

On the other hand, of course, this not-a-single-penny business makes practical sense, because your parents, in all likelihood, will bequeath all they’ve got to you, and the successful rebel will end up with the entire fortune intact — in other words, rebellion is a very efficient form of savings. The interest, though, is crippling; I’d say, bankrupting.

3. Try not to set too much store by politicians — not so much because they are dumb or dishonest, which is more often than not the case, but because of the size of their job, which is too big even for the best among them, by this or that political party, doctrine, system or a blueprint thereof. All they or those can do, at best, is to diminish a social evil, not eradicate it. No matter how substantial an improvement may be, ethically speaking it will always be negligible, because there will always be those — say, just one person — who won’t profit from this improvement. The world is not perfect; the Golden Age never was or will be. The only thing that’s going to happen to the world is that it will get bigger, i.e., more populated while not growing in size. No matter how fairly the man you’ve elected will promise to cut the pie, it won’t grow in size; as a matter of fact, the portions are bound to get smaller. In light of that, or, rather, in dark of that — you ought to rely on your own home cooking, that is, on managing the world yourselves — at least that part of it that lies within your reach, within your radius. Yet in doing this, you must also prepare yourselves for the heart-rending realization that even that pie of yours won’t suffice; you must prepare yourselves that you’re likely to dine as much in disappointment as in gratitude. The most difficult lesson to learn here is to be steady in the kitchen, since by serving this pie just once you create quite a lot of expectations. Ask yourself whether you can afford a steady supply of those pies, or would you rather bargain on a politician? Whatever the outcome of this soul-searching may be — however much you think the world can bet on your baking — you might start right away by insisting that those corporations, banks, schools, labs and whatnot where you’ll be working, and whose premises are heated and policed round the clock anyway, permit the homeless in for the night, now that it’s winter.

4. Try not to stand out, try to be modest. There are too many of us as it is, and there are going to be many more, very soon. Thus climbing into the limelight is bound to be one at the expense of the others who won’t be climbing. That you must step on somebody’s toes doesn’t mean you should stand on their shoulders. Besides, all you will see from that vantage point is the human sea, plus those who, like you, have assumed a similarly conspicuous — and precarious at that — position: those who are called rich and famous. On the whole, there is always something faintly unpalatable about being better off than one’s likes, and when those likes come in billions, it is more so. To this it should be added that the rich and famous these days, too, come in throngs, that up there on the top it’s very crowded. So if you want to get rich or famous or both, by all means go ahead, but don’t make a meal of it. To covet what somebody else has is to forfeit your uniqueness; on the other hand, of course, it stimulates mass production. But as you are running through life only once, it is only sensible to try to avoid the most obvious cliches, limited editions included. The notion of exclusivity, mind you, also forfeits your uniqueness, not to mention that it shrinks your sense of reality to the already-achieved. Far better than belonging to any club is to be jostled by the multitudes of those who, given their income and their appearance, represent — at least theoretically — unlimited potential. Try to be more like them than like those who are not like them; try to wear gray. Mimicry is the defense of individuality, not its surrender. I would advise you to lower your voice, too, but I am afraid you will think I am going too far. Still, keep in mind that there is always somebody next to you, a neighbor. Nobody asks you to love him, but try not to hurt or discomfort him much; try to tread on his toes carefully; and should you come to covet his wife, remember at least that this testifies to the failure of your imagination, to your disbelief in — or ignorance of — reality’s unlimited potential. Worse comes to worst, try to remember how far away — from the stars, from the depths of the universe, perhaps from its opposite end — came this request not to do it, as well as this idea of loving your neighbor no less than yourself. Maybe the stars know more about gravity, as well as about loneliness, than you do; coveting eyes that they are.

5. At all costs try to avoid granting yourself the status of the victim. Of all the parts of your body, be most vigilant over your index finger, for it is blame-thirsty. A pointed finger is a victim’s logo — the opposite of the V-sign and a synonym for surrender. No matter how abominable your condition may be, try not to blame anything or anybody: history, the state, superiors, race, parents, the phase of the moon, childhood, toilet training, etc. The menu is vast and tedious, and this vastness and tedium alone should be offensive enough to set one’s intelligence against choosing from it. The moment that you place blame somewhere, you undermine your resolve to change anything; it could be argued even that that blame-thirsty finger oscillates as wildly as it does because the resolve was never great enough in the first place. After all, a victim status is not without its sweetness. It commands compassion, confers distinction, and whole nations and continents bask in the murk of mental discounts advertised as the victim’s conscience. There is an entire victim-culture, ranging from private counselors to international loans. The professed goal of this network notwithstanding, its net result is that of lowering one’s expectations from the threshold, so that a measly advantage could be perceived or billed as a major breakthrough. Of course, this is therapeutic and, given the scarcity of the world’s resources, perhaps even hygienic, so for want of a better identity, one may embrace it — but try to resist it. However abundant and irrefutable is the evidence that you are on the losing side, negate it as long as you have your wits about you, as long as your lips can utter “No.” On the whole, try to respect life not only for its amenities but for its hardships, too. They are a part of the game, and what’s good about a hardship is that it is not a deception. Whenever you are in trouble, in some scrape, on the verge of despair or in despair, remember: that’s life speaking to you in the only language it knows well. In other words, try to be a little masochistic: without a touch of masochism, the meaning of life is not complete. If this is of any help, try to remember that human dignity is an absolute, not a piecemeal notion, that it is inconsistent with special pleading, that it derives its poise from denying the obvious. Should you find this argument a bit on the heady side, think at least that by considering yourself a victim you but enlarge the vacuum of irresponsibility that demons or demagogues love so much to fill, since a paralyzed will is no dainty for angels.

6. The world you are about to enter and exist in doesn’t have a good reputation. It’s been better geographically than historically; it’s still far more attractive visually than socially. It’s not a nice place, as you are soon to find out, and I rather doubt that it will get much nicer by the time you leave it. Still, it’s the only world available; no alternative exists, and if one did, there is no guarantee that it would be much better than this one. It is a jungle out there, as well as a desert, a slippery slope, a swamp, etc. — literally — but, what’s worse, metaphorically, too. Yet, as Robert Frost has said, “The best way out is always through.” He also said, in a different poem, though, that “to be social is to be forgiving.” It’s with a few remarks about this business of getting through that I would like to close.

Try not to pay attention to those who will try to make life miserable for you. There will be a lot of those — in the official capacity as well as the self-appointed. Suffer them if you can’t escape them, but once you have steered clear of them, give them the shortest shrift possible. Above all, try to avoid telling stories about the unjust treatment you received at their hands; avoid it no matter how receptive your audience may be. Tales of this sort extend the existence of your antagonists; most likely they are counting on your being talkative and relating your experience to others. By himself, no individual is worth an exercise in injustice (or for that matter, in justice). The ratio of one-to-one doesn’t justify the effort: it’s the echo that counts. That’s the main principle of any oppressor, whether state-sponsored or autodidact. Therefore, steal, or still, the echo, so that you don’t allow an event, however unpleasant or momentous, to claim any more time than it took for it to occur.

What your foes do derives its significance or consequence from the way you react. Therefore, rush through or past them as though they were yellow and not red lights. Don’t linger on them mentally or verbally; don’t pride yourself on forgiving or forgetting them — worse come to worse, do the forgetting first. This way you’ll spare your brain cells a lot of useless agitation; this way, perhaps, you may even save those pigheads from themselves, since the prospect of being forgotten is shorter than that of being forgiven. So flip the channel: you can’t put this network out of circulation, but at least you can reduce its ratings. Now, this solution is not likely to please angels, but, then again, it’s bound to hurt demons, and for the moment that’s all that really matters.

I had better stop there. As I said, I'll be glad if you find what I've said useful. If not, it will show that you are equipped far better for the future than one would expect from people of your age. Which, I suppose is also a reason for rejoicing -- not for apprehension. In either case -- well equipped or not -- I wish you luck, because what lies ahead is no picnic for the prepared and the unprepared alike, and you'll need luck. Still, I believe you'll manage.

I'm no gypsy; I can't divine your future, but it's pretty obvious to any naked eye that you have a lot going for you. To say, the least,you were born, which is in itself half the battle, and you live in a democracy -- this halfway house between nightmare and utopia -- which throws fewer obstacles in the way of an individual than its alternatives.

Lastly,  you've been educated at the University of Michigan, in my view the best school in the nation, if only because 16 years ago it gave a badly needed break to the laziest man on the earth, who, on top of that, spoke practically no English -- to yours truly. I taught here for some eight years; the language in the which I address you today I learned here; some of my former colleagues are still on the payroll, others retired, and still others sleep the eternal sleep in the earth of Ann Arbor that now carries you. Clearly this place is of extraordinary sentimental value to me; and so it will become, in a dozen years or so, for you. To that extent, I can divine your future; in that respect I knowyou will manage, or, more precisely, succeed. For, feeling a wave of warmth coming over you in a dozen or so years at the mention of this town's name will indicate that, luck or no luck, as human beings you've succeeded. It's this sort of success I wish to you above all in the years to come. The rest depends on luck and matters less.

Nick Selby: 'If you want to play theme music during your convocation speech like a badass, we’re at Georgia Tech, we can do that!', Freshmen Convocation - 2013

18 August 2013, Georgia Tech University, Georgia USA

And so, in the words of Sir Isaac Newton: “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

Georgia Tech is proud of its many traditions, but the one I find most exciting is ...

Our tradition of excellence!

Our mission as students is not to follow in the footsteps of the astronauts, Nobel Prize Laureates, and president who graduated before us, but to exceed their footsteps,

Crush the shoulders of the giants upon whom we stand!

We here are all such innovative people.

So I am telling you

if you want to change the world, you’re at Georgia Tech, you can do that!

If you want to build the Iron Man suit, you’re at Georgia Tech–you can do that!

If you want to play theme music during your convocation speech like a badass, we’re at Georgia Tech–we can do that!

I am doing that!

Congratulations on your acceptance and brace yourselves for a hell of a ride on your way to becoming a hell of an engineer.

The above is the brilliant conclusion to the speech. Below is the full version. It contains ten tips for new Georgia Tech students.

Sarah Haynes, 'Now I’m very sorry to all the parents here today, but Ravenswood isn’t perfect – and I’m sure you already know that' Ravenswood - 2015

December 2015, Ravenswood School for Girls, Sydney, Australia

Firstly, thank you Reverend Park, for bringing greetings from the Synod, it seems like yesterday that we welcomed you to your first speech day as moderator, and hope that you will look forward to joining us at more events like this in the school calendar in the future. Please note that you will always be welcome in the Ravenswood community.

Good morning Miss Steer(?), Moderator, Chairman of council, Staff, Parents and most importantly, Girls.

I'm eighteen years old, I've spent seventy two percent of my life at school, fifty percent at Ravenswood, and about ninety-five percent of this week stressing about this speech.

The remaining five percent was spent enjoying the stories from those celebrating up at Schoolies. Special mention to those who made it back here today from the Gold Coast and have managed to stay awake this long. Very impressed.

Walking out of the Ravo gates and leaving the Titanic, or Cheese-wedge of a building behind, was a surreal experience. I felt like I was entering uncharted waters. I'm now faced with very difficult decisions. Like, what am I going to do with my life? And, if I wake up at 11.30, do I have breakfast? Or lunch?

There's a lot that I've missed about Ravo in the past four weeks. It's hard to leave something that has literally encompassed half your life. The structure, the activities, my great teachers, and most importantly, you girls. It can be kind of lonely not seeing your smiling faces every day. Plus, if I ever take another selfie, it'll never live up to our run for final assembly.

It's not very often one gets the chance to represent such a great group of girls, and to speak in front of as many people that are here today. Speech day is a day to celebrate the successes of the year.

Year Seven, you have survived your first year of high school, and will no longer be victim of jokes of arriving to class way too early.

Year Eight, you've managed to make it to the end of the year, despite losing Bin Man Max(?)

Year Nine, you've survived what used to be called Middle school. Unfortunately the concept of Middle school didn't survive Twenty Fifteen.

Year Ten, you've made it through a year filled with way too many formal jokes, and well done, honour #thatssoRavo hashtag.

Year Eleven, you've made it to the beginning of the end, get excited.

And Year Twelve, I don't think any of us need reminding on our triumphs for Twenty Fifteen.

Now I've spent a lot of this year speaking about the achievements and successes of Ravo, but I'm going to do something a little different this year. Be honest. Everyone knows that I've always had a strong love for my school and the people that are part of it. But, I also know that a lot of people here today know that I've experienced a lot of other feelings towards my school this year.

About half way through this year, at a time when my family needed Ravo most, it let us down. I know that there have been rumours and gossip about my sister leaving the school and I'd rather not add fuel to the fire, but I'd prefer to say that people who I trusted and respected made an unjustified, cruel and incorrect decision. There are a lot of flaws in the whole procedure, but my aim today isn't to point out all of those in a personal vendetta. I'm sharing this today because I want to be honest with everyone here, and I would have felt insincere if I had to get up here today and pretended like I still love everything about the school when so many know that I don't.

For a large part of this year I was hurt, betrayed, and very much begun to hate certain things and people within the school. But, as some important person once said, ‘there's no point hating something you love’. I do still love my school, and most of all my year group and teachers that carried me through this final year. There are still a lot of great things about it. But, there are also a few that aren't.  There's no point hating something you love, but there's nothing wrong with realising that what you love isn't perfect.

I wrote two speeches today, just so I’d be able to say that Ravo isn’t perfect. I’ve given a fair few speeches in my lifetime, but once I became school captain, everything I ever wrote had to be sent and censored by those higher up than me.

I thought this was something normal as all other Ravo captains had to do it, but what I learned was that not all school captains had to do it.

I was never trusted to say the right thing which I found kind of silly because if I wanted to say something audacious like I am today, I could always have sent someone a different speech.

Anyway, earlier this year I was speaking at an open day, I was selling the school which used to be something I loved to do, because I loved everything about Ravo.

I thought I’d be really clever and so include the school motto in there. So I concluded my speech with: ‘Ravo’s isn’t perfect, but we’re always towards better things’.

I sent this to those in charge of me and received a reply: ‘Great speech, but change the ending. No parent wants to hear that the school isn’t perfect.’

Now I’m very sorry to all the parents here today, but Ravenswood isn’t perfect – and I’m sure you already know that.

I want to be clear again that I’m not saying anything to merely get back at the school.

I just want to be honest and share one of the greatest lessons I’ve learned at school.

Nothing is perfect and nothing should be expected to be perfect.

As my main gal Hannah Montana said:  'everybody makes mistakes, everybody has those days,’

But how often do we really recognise and believe this? If a school can’t admit it isn’t perfect then how can they expect extraordinary adolescent girls to realise that perfection is unattainable.

Before 2015, I really do think I looked at Ravenswood through glassy eyes, seeing its wondrous perfection that it wants to sell everyone.

So as you can imagine, being elected school captain was the most humbling experience. But, it also freaked me out. Like a lot.

I hate to admit it, but I think I came home and cried every night the week after being elected. I'd always looked toward previous school captains and couldn't find flaws in them. The excelled in all areas and just seemed like they had it all together, all the time.

And here I was, crying. Because I think I was happy, crying because I didn't think I could do the job as well as they had, and crying because there were people who had made it very obvious to me they didn't want me to be school captain. Or probably crying because I was overtired, or dinner wasn't ready on time, or something like that. I'm embarrassed to say I've actually done that before.

I think we've all felt at one point, that we weren't good enough, or deserving of something. I saw Ravenswood as perfect, I saw other school captains as perfect, and I knew that I wasn't. But like Ravo, I wanted to give the impression that I was.

This Didn't go too well for me, as within the first term, a friend of mine came to me and said, “Hey Sarah, you know I'm actually really glad you're captain, because you're not as perfect as the others”. At the time it felt like a bit of a backhanded compliment, but it's now something I'll cherish. I'm far from the model student. I've been kicked out of Geography class, sorry Geography, we'd never have worked out. I've had a detention. I've said things I shouldn't have. I've hurt people who didn't deserve it, I've even had my skirt above the patella.

Now these aren't things to be proud of, and they aren't things to look up to, but they certainly aren't things to be ashamed of. They are things to learn from. And school's all about learning, right? And we learn from mistakes. But, I think we're all still afraid to make them, and admit to them, myself included.

The only dangerous thing about mistakes, which I think Ravo may have lost sight of this year, is being able to recognise and admit to them.

Have any of you not done something you want to do, for fear you would mess it up? I can't do art, I won't be able to draw; I can't swim at the big pool at the swimming carnival, what if I'm the person that finishes dead last? I can't do house dance, I can't dance. That last one is very much me. I used to think that I was saving everyone from seeing my dance moves, but now I really think it would have been entertainment for everyone.

What I try to remind myself all the time is that mistakes are inevitable, so we shouldn't let them stop us from getting involved or trying something new. And hey, if it doesn't work out, always towards better things. I'm trying to be clever again and slip in the school motto.

The person who doesn't make mistakes is unlikely to make anything.

In my final weeks at school, I overheard a conversation between my parents that went something like this:

 'Oh, Chris, I'm kind of worried for Sarah finishing school.'

'Why is that, Robyn?'

'Well, you know, at school she was somebody, after school she's going to be nobody,'

I'm sure my parents would be very embarrassed to have me say that, and to be honest I'm embarrassed at my attempt to impersonate them. But what they said was actually very very true. Ravenswood gave me so many opportunities to be somebody. Whether it was sport, debating, community problem solving, Duke of Ed. I will admit, a few of these I did work hard for, but I also got very lucky.

From about Year Six, I used to get picked out by staff to participate in a lot of things. I would get picked to speak at events, or help out at open days, and I'm really really thankful for these opportunities. But, I don't feel like everyone else was as lucky to receive the same opportunities.

Some people work hard and get noticed and good on them.

But some people work hard, struggle and get overlooked.

I don’t know how to run a school. but it seems to me that today's schools are being run more and more like businesses where everything becomes financially motivated. Where more value is placed on those who provide good publicity or financial benefits.

Perhaps this is a naive view.

Perhaps this has become a necessary evil in today’s society.

But either way I’d love to see Ravo work towards something better – where each member of the school feels valued equally, as they should be.

So, here's to the girls who worked hard enough to receive an award here today. And here's to those who failed a few tests and can work harder next year.

To the girls who got a detention, but can make the concious effort to behave better next year.

To the girls who made the top sporting teams, and to those who missed out, but can train better to make it next year. 

I'm sorry for giving a speech that's a little more serious than my usuals, on a day that probably needs more humour. Blame the people who made this year a difficult one for me, but also forgive them.

Jessica Hagee(?) wrote 'the nasty people may not deserve your love or admiration, but your scorn earns the both of you.'

The bumps along the road made me appreciate the support of all you girls so much more. I cannot thank you all enough for supporting me. Enduring these long speeches, and endulging me as your captain for Twenty Fifteen.

To the class of Twenty Fifteen, you've been remarkable. I'm so proud to be one of you, and I've loved being a part of our year group.  So much so that I may or may not have taken, slash, stolen our year group photo from our common room.

Don't tell Miss Steer(?)

If you've already forgotten everything I've said, remember these two things.

Ravenswood isn't perfect, but it can always work towards better. And don't let perfect be the enemy of good, or mistakes scare you from taking chances. I'll now leave you all with an irrelevant quote that makes me smile.

'Before you criticise anyone, make sure to walk a mile in their shoes. That way, you're a mile away from them. And you have their shoes.'

Speakola is a site that compiles speeches - of all types.

A considerably more brutal take down of a private school was this one by Shane Maloney, delivered to Scotch College in 2001.

William H McRaven: 'What starts here changes the world', University of Texas - 2015

17 May 2015, University of Texas, Austin, Texas, USA

Admiral William H. McRaven is the ninth commander of U.S. Special Operations Command and a graduate of The University of Texas

President Powers, Provost Fenves, Deans, members of the faculty, family and friends and most importantly, the class of 2014. Congratulations on your achievement.

It's been almost 37 years to the day that I graduated from UT. I remember a lot of things about that day. I remember I had throbbing headache from a party the night before. I remember I had a serious girlfriend, whom I later married — that's important to remember by the way — and I remember that I was getting commissioned in the Navy that day.

But of all the things I remember, I don't have a clue who the commencement speaker was that evening, and I certainly don't remember anything they said. So, acknowledging that fact, if I can't make this commencement speech memorable, I will at least try to make it short.

The University's slogan is, "What starts here changes the world." I have to admit — I kinda like it. "What starts here changes the world."

Tonight there are almost 8,000 students graduating from UT. That great paragon of analytical rigor, Ask.Com, says that the average American will meet 10,000 people in their lifetime. That's a lot of folks. But, if every one of you changed the lives of just 10 people — and each one of those folks changed the lives of another 10 people — just 10 — then in five generations — 125 years — the class of 2014 will have changed the lives of 800 million people.

800 million people — think of it — over twice the population of the United States. Go one more generation and you can change the entire population of the world — eight billion people.

If you think it's hard to change the lives of 10 people — change their lives forever — you're wrong. I saw it happen every day in Iraq and Afghanistan: A young Army officer makes a decision to go left instead of right down a road in Baghdad and the 10 soldiers in his squad are saved from close-in ambush. In Kandahar province, Afghanistan, a non-commissioned officer from the Female Engagement Team senses something isn't right and directs the infantry platoon away from a 500-pound IED, saving the lives of a dozen soldiers.

But, if you think about it, not only were these soldiers saved by the decisions of one person, but their children yet unborn were also saved. And their children's children were saved. Generations were saved by one decision, by one person.

But changing the world can happen anywhere and anyone can do it. So, what starts here can indeed change the world, but the question is — what will the world look like after you change it?

Well, I am confident that it will look much, much better. But if you will humor this old sailor for just a moment, I have a few suggestions that may help you on your way to a better a world. And while these lessons were learned during my time in the military, I can assure you that it matters not whether you ever served a day in uniform. It matters not your gender, your ethnic or religious background, your orientation or your social status.

Our struggles in this world are similar, and the lessons to overcome those struggles and to move forward — changing ourselves and the world around us — will apply equally to all.

I have been a Navy SEAL for 36 years. But it all began when I left UT for Basic SEAL training in Coronado, California. Basic SEAL training is six months of long torturous runs in the soft sand, midnight swims in the cold water off San Diego, obstacles courses, unending calisthenics, days without sleep and always being cold, wet and miserable. It is six months of being constantly harrassed by professionally trained warriors who seek to find the weak of mind and body and eliminate them from ever becoming a Navy SEAL.

But, the training also seeks to find those students who can lead in an environment of constant stress, chaos, failure and hardships. To me basic SEAL training was a lifetime of challenges crammed into six months.

So, here are the 10 lessons I learned from basic SEAL training that hopefully will be of value to you as you move forward in life.

Every morning in basic SEAL training, my instructors, who at the time were all Vietnam veterans, would show up in my barracks room and the first thing they would inspect was your bed. If you did it right, the corners would be square, the covers pulled tight, the pillow centered just under the headboard and the extra blanket folded neatly at the foot of the rack — that's Navy talk for bed.

It was a simple task — mundane at best. But every morning we were required to make our bed to perfection. It seemed a little ridiculous at the time, particularly in light of the fact that were aspiring to be real warriors, tough battle-hardened SEALs, but the wisdom of this simple act has been proven to me many times over.

If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter. If you can't do the little things right, you will never do the big things right.

And, if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made — that you made — and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.

If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.

During SEAL training the students are broken down into boat crews. Each crew is seven students — three on each side of a small rubber boat and one coxswain to help guide the dingy. Every day your boat crew forms up on the beach and is instructed to get through the surfzone and paddle several miles down the coast. In the winter, the surf off San Diego can get to be 8 to 10 feet high and it is exceedingly difficult to paddle through the plunging surf unless everyone digs in. Every paddle must be synchronized to the stroke count of the coxswain. Everyone must exert equal effort or the boat will turn against the wave and be unceremoniously tossed back on the beach.

For the boat to make it to its destination, everyone must paddle. You can't change the world alone — you will need some help — and to truly get from your starting point to your destination takes friends, colleagues, the good will of strangers and a strong coxswain to guide them.

If you want to change the world, find someone to help you paddle.

Over a few weeks of difficult training my SEAL class, which started with 150 men, was down to just 35. There were now six boat crews of seven men each. I was in the boat with the tall guys, but the best boat crew we had was made up of the the little guys — the munchkin crew we called them — no one was over about five-foot-five.

The munchkin boat crew had one American Indian, one African American, one Polish American, one Greek American, one Italian American, and two tough kids from the midwest. They out-paddled, out-ran and out-swam all the other boat crews. The big men in the other boat crews would always make good-natured fun of the tiny little flippers the munchkins put on their tiny little feet prior to every swim. But somehow these little guys, from every corner of the nation and the world, always had the last laugh — swimming faster than everyone and reaching the shore long before the rest of us.

SEAL training was a great equalizer. Nothing mattered but your will to succeed. Not your color, not your ethnic background, not your education and not your social status. 

If you want to change the world, measure a person by the size of their heart, not the size of their flippers.

Several times a week, the instructors would line up the class and do a uniform inspection. It was exceptionally thorough. Your hat had to be perfectly starched, your uniform immaculately pressed and your belt buckle shiny and void of any smudges. But it seemed that no matter how much effort you put into starching your hat, or pressing your uniform or polishing your belt buckle — it just wasn't good enough. The instructors would find "something" wrong.

For failing the uniform inspection, the student had to run, fully clothed into the surfzone and then, wet from head to toe, roll around on the beach until every part of your body was covered with sand. The effect was known as a "sugar cookie." You stayed in that uniform the rest of the day — cold, wet and sandy.

There were many a student who just couldn't accept the fact that all their effort was in vain. That no matter how hard they tried to get the uniform right, it was unappreciated. Those students didn't make it through training. Those students didn't understand the purpose of the drill. You were never going to succeed. You were never going to have a perfect uniform.

Sometimes no matter how well you prepare or how well you perform you still end up as a sugar cookie. It's just the way life is sometimes.

If you want to change the world get over being a sugar cookie and keep moving forward.

Every day during training you were challenged with multiple physical events — long runs, long swims, obstacle courses, hours of calisthenics — something designed to test your mettle. Every event had standards — times you had to meet. If you failed to meet those standards your name was posted on a list, and at the end of the day those on the list were invited to a "circus." A circus was two hours of additional calisthenics designed to wear you down, to break your spirit, to force you to quit.

No one wanted a circus.

A circus meant that for that day you didn't measure up. A circus meant more fatigue — and more fatigue meant that the following day would be more difficult — and more circuses were likely. But at some time during SEAL training, everyone — everyone — made the circus list.

But an interesting thing happened to those who were constantly on the list. Over time those students — who did two hours of extra calisthenics — got stronger and stronger. The pain of the circuses built inner strength, built physical resiliency.

Life is filled with circuses. You will fail. You will likely fail often. It will be painful. It will be discouraging. At times it will test you to your very core.

But if you want to change the world, don't be afraid of the circuses.

At least twice a week, the trainees were required to run the obstacle course. The obstacle course contained 25 obstacles including a 10-foot high wall, a 30-foot cargo net and a barbed wire crawl, to name a few. But the most challenging obstacle was the slide for life. It had a three-level 30-foot tower at one end and a one-level tower at the other. In between was a 200-foot-long rope. You had to climb the three-tiered tower and once at the top, you grabbed the rope, swung underneath the rope and pulled yourself hand over hand until you got to the other end. 

The record for the obstacle course had stood for years when my class began training in 1977. The record seemed unbeatable, until one day, a student decided to go down the slide for life head first. Instead of swinging his body underneath the rope and inching his way down, he bravely mounted the TOP of the rope and thrust himself forward.

It was a dangerous move — seemingly foolish, and fraught with risk. Failure could mean injury and being dropped from the training. Without hesitation the student slid down the rope perilously fast. Instead of several minutes, it only took him half that time and by the end of the course he had broken the record.

If you want to change the world sometimes you have to slide down the obstacle head first.

During the land warfare phase of training, the students are flown out to San Clemente Island which lies off the coast of San Diego. The waters off San Clemente are a breeding ground for the great white sharks. To pass SEAL training there are a series of long swims that must be completed. One is the night swim.

Before the swim the instructors joyfully brief the trainees on all the species of sharks that inhabit the waters off San Clemente. They assure you, however, that no student has ever been eaten by a shark — at least not recently. But, you are also taught that if a shark begins to circle your position — stand your ground. Do not swim away. Do not act afraid. And if the shark, hungry for a midnight snack, darts towards you — then summon up all your strength and punch him in the snout, and he will turn and swim away.

There are a lot of sharks in the world. If you hope to complete the swim you will have to deal with them.

So, if you want to change the world, don't back down from the sharks.

As Navy SEALs one of our jobs is to conduct underwater attacks against enemy shipping. We practiced this technique extensively during basic training. The ship attack mission is where a pair of SEAL divers is dropped off outside an enemy harbor and then swims well over two miles — underwater — using nothing but a depth gauge and a compass to get to their target.

During the entire swim, even well below the surface, there is some light that comes through. It is comforting to know that there is open water above you. But as you approach the ship, which is tied to a pier, the light begins to fade. The steel structure of the ship blocks the moonlight, it blocks the surrounding street lamps, it blocks all ambient light.

To be successful in your mission, you have to swim under the ship and find the keel — the centerline and the deepest part of the ship. This is your objective. But the keel is also the darkest part of the ship — where you cannot see your hand in front of your face, where the noise from the ship's machinery is deafening and where it is easy to get disoriented and fail.

Every SEAL knows that under the keel, at the darkest moment of the mission, is the time when you must be calm, composed — when all your tactical skills, your physical power and all your inner strength must be brought to bear.

If you want to change the world, you must be your very best in the darkest moment.

The ninth week of training is referred to as "Hell Week." It is six days of no sleep, constant physical and mental harassment, and one special day at the Mud Flats. The Mud Flats are area between San Diego and Tijuana where the water runs off and creates the Tijuana slues, a swampy patch of terrain where the mud will engulf you.

It is on Wednesday of Hell Week that you paddle down to the mud flats and spend the next 15 hours trying to survive the freezing cold mud, the howling wind and the incessant pressure to quit from the instructors. As the sun began to set that Wednesday evening, my training class, having committed some "egregious infraction of the rules" was ordered into the mud. 

The mud consumed each man till there was nothing visible but our heads. The instructors told us we could leave the mud if only five men would quit — just five men — and we could get out of the oppressive cold. Looking around the mud flat it was apparent that some students were about to give up. It was still over eight hours till the sun came up — eight more hours of bone-chilling cold.

The chattering teeth and shivering moans of the trainees were so loud it was hard to hear anything. And then, one voice began to echo through the night, one voice raised in song. The song was terribly out of tune, but sung with great enthusiasm. One voice became two and two became three and before long everyone in the class was singing. We knew that if one man could rise above the misery then others could as well.

The instructors threatened us with more time in the mud if we kept up the singingbut the singing persisted. And somehow the mud seemed a little warmer, the wind a little tamer and the dawn not so far away.

If I have learned anything in my time traveling the world, it is the power of hope. The power of one person — Washington, Lincoln, King, Mandela and even a young girl from Pakistan, Malala — one person can change the world by giving people hope.

So, if you want to change the world, start singing when you're up to your neck in mud.

Finally, in SEAL training there is a bell. A brass bell that hangs in the center of the compound for all the students to see. All you have to do to quit is ring the bell. 

Ring the bell and you no longer have to wake up at 5 o'clock. Ring the bell and you no longer have to do the freezing cold swims. Ring the bell and you no longer have to do the runs, the obstacle course, the PT — and you no longer have to endure the hardships of training. Just ring the bell.

If you want to change the world don't ever, ever ring the bell.

To the graduating class of 2014, you are moments away from graduating. Moments away from beginning your journey through life. Moments away from starting to change the world — for the better. It will not be easy. 

But, YOU are the class of 2014, the class that can affect the lives of 800 million people in the next century.

Start each day with a task completed. Find someone to help you through life. Respect everyone.

Know that life is not fair and that you will fail often. But if take you take some risks, step up when the times are toughest, face down the bullies, lift up the downtrodden and never, ever give up — if you do these things, then the next generation and the generations that follow will live in a world far better than the one we have today.

And what started here will indeed have changed the world — for the better.

Thank you very much. Hook 'em horns.

Tim Minchin: 'You've always wanted to be an actor', Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts - 2015

9 November 2015, Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts, United Kingdom

Not the easiest guy to follow.

I knew Dennis (Kelly) would say something amazing so I made mine rhyme a bit. Not properly just, like, free versey. And it's too long. But like most of what I do it makes up for in internal rhyme what it lacks in brevity.

I'm sorry, it's a bit actor-centric, but I know a lot of you are actors, and I knew Dennis would talk a lot about the other stuff.

So this is a poem I wrote yesterday called 'You've Always Wanted to be an Actor'.

You’ve always wanted to be an actor,
And your friends and you say to each other,
“I want to act because I think story-telling is vital to culture”, or
“I want to act so I may hold up to society a mirror”,
And there’s truth in that,
But let’s be honest, you really want to act
Because it’s really fun, and you quite like being clapped.

So you go to Drama School,
And you learn about shedding your skin
And inhabiting your something something
And you get your head screwed up by Stanislavski
And then recalibrated by Mamet
Or the other way round,
And you learn to scuttle across a stage like a lizard
And to caw like a crow,
And to let yourself go,
And to sing and tap,
And to cry on cue,
And you make all your mistakes,
You have sex with your classmates (and then y’stop doing that),
And you learn to find the rhythm of the bard,
So that every iamb shines but doesn’t creak,
And you work really hard, and change the way you speak
And you… become slowly aware of these relentless waves
Of self-confidence and self-loathing that come and come and come
(And you think the waves will smooth out when you have success
But they don’t and they won’t so the only solution is to
Worry about them less.
Just by the way.)

So you graduate drama school and that’s amazing, brilliant, amazing
And – as you should be – you are proud,
And at the graduation ceremony you watch two clowns
Standing on the set of their mutual fluke
Reading speeches that they wrote the day before,
And you think, “if those idiots can succeed, anything is possible”,
Which is true, in a way,
But not in a way that should necessarily give you confidence,
Due to the randomness… of… well, Dennis.
Look at him.
God does clearly play dice with the universe.

And so, off you go and you get an AGENT. Yippee!
And – oo – let’s say, just hypothetically,
You’re really good-looking.
You’re beautiful.
And you’ve been blessed lets say with hot genes,
You stay slim easily
You go to the gym easily
You have those well-spaced eyes and high cheekbones
And one of those lovely big mouths that kids seem to have these days
And you have found that if you stand still in front of a camera
And look just past the shoulder of the DOP,
And think about a…. cup of tea… or a tricycle…
And the light hits your well-spaced eyes and your high cheekbones just perfectly,
Then we, the audience, will read into your stillness
Grief, or pride, or piety. (Wow)
And you’re also an amazing actor…
A truthful, intelligent actor,
Hard working and skilled etc
But that’s not so much the point,
Because… B eauty.

So you get a role in an indi film.
I mean first you do an advert for cheese,
And a co-op at the King’s Head
(which, although you don’t know it at the time,
Will be the last theatre board you ever tread),
And then a guesty on Coronation Street, yay
And then an arc on Holby City, hooray
And… THEN a supporting role in an independent film
That ends up at Cannes and is seen
By a Rudin or a Weinstein,
And gets distributed across the USA
And so [click] you sign with an agent at CAA,
And a manager at, I dunno, somewhere,
And they tell you that you “should move to LA
Because you will have more opportunities here”,
But it’s clearly because they
Won’t get paid if you’re doing a play
At the fucking National. Will they?
(Just by the way.)

So you do. You move to LA
And you’re sharing a bungalow in Silverlake
With a Canadian actress who thinks everything happens for a reason,
Which you also believe, because no one has ever pointed out to you
That that is a stupid thing to think. (Just by the way)

And as is the tradition,
You struggle for a year,
Coffee shop job between auditions
And then, yes!
You get a well-paid job playing a sexual assault victim on
Two episodes of Season 25 of
Law and Order – SVU
And you buy an SUV and you move into a mid-century-
Modern rental in West Ho,
With a friend of a friend who has a band:
Four banjos, a cellist, and a DJ –
Who once played Coachella
And a YouTube vid of one of their audience members
Choking on a corn dog went viral so now they’re quite popular.

And then, yay, during your second pilot season in LA,
When you’re missing the drizzly comfort of the UK spring
And your mum’s on the phone telling you to
Come home, darling, just come home,
You audition for a new NBC “dramady” –
For a “character who doesn’t say too much in the pilot, but-
Great script, and 16 great writers, and-
They’ll definitely write more for your character after the pilot, so” –
After six-call backs and weeks of anxiety
And after being filmed with the star to test for your “chemistry”,
You get offered the part,
And you –
Little you, bullied in high school for having spotty skin,
Told by your primary teachers that you need to pull your head in
And stop showing off,
Little you who lived with 4 people in a flat in Wood Green,
And worked and worked on your craft and you didn’t give in –
You have a role in a fucking US network television pilot,
And you do not hesitate to sign it:
The contract that says if it goes to series
You will be committed 39 weeks a year for up to eight years.

And yay! They make the pilot,
And it gets picked up,
And it goes to series,
And so…
Your weeks start with a 4:30am pickup on a Monday,
And the crew is great and the cast is great
And although half of your day is
Spent in your trailer,
And it’s more boring than you’d foreseen,
You’re in pretty much every scene,
Generally doing something with a computer
Slash Bunsen burner
Slash non-specific screen
In the background,
So you’re always on set.
And inevitably, by week’s end,
Production has fallen behind 6 hours,
So you don’t actually get
Off set
For your weekend until 2am on a Saturday morning,
And you sleep all Saturday,
And on Sunday you learn your sides,
And reset, rolling, speed… and action!

And that’s fine.
Cos the series is a hit!
And you’re on the telly,
And the newspapers in the UK
Write about you saying some thing you don’t remember saying,
And the Daily Mail comments on your hair and your abs and your arse,

And when it goes to Season 2, and the ratings go higher,
You get a pay rise and now you’re making a million quid a year,
And you are proper famous,
And you are friends with proper famous people,
And you know Sandra and George and Bono and Elon Musk,
And you buy a fenced-in house in the hills with a pool,
And you’re single, but, y’know, that’s cool.
You find it hard to meet people, because, y’know,
They come to you with so many assumptions about who you are,
About your hair and your abs and your arse.

And then after season 3,
When the show’s not quite so hot,
And the ratings start to drop,
The network gets the writers to simplify the script,
Cut expenses, cut the complex bits,
And on they forge, churning out the eps,
Motivated by nothing but $$$,
And every year, the ratings go down a bit more,
The show loses it’s edge a bit more,
The ideas get a bit more
Repetitive,
And your character is always saying the same shit,
And you can’t remember the last time
You cared about a line,
The last time you expressed an idea
That had any value. What. So. Ever.

And one Sunday, you have some of your famous friends around,
For a drink,
These beautiful, kind, generous Americans,
You do adore them …
But whom you always feel you can’t quite reach,
Personalities like a left-over pudding that has cling-wrap
Pulled so tight across the bowl
That you don’t notice it’s there at all until you go to dig in
And your spoon bounces off.
And so you’re sitting by your pool with these kind, cling-film friends,
And the thought enters your head
That you’d really like to walk down the street to have a drink at a pub,
But you can’t, because you’re too famous to leave your house.
You can’t leave your house.

This is not a warning, to be clear,
If that becomes your story, you’ll be sweet.

I wrote that because in ten years,
When those of you who don’t end up being
Knightly, or Laurie, or Cumbers,
When you have done a hundred jobs,
And, like the boxer, you
Carry the reminder of ever glove that blah blah blah
You’ve borne the slings and arrows of outrageous… tweets,

I hope you remember that in our game,
Success doesn’t mean what they think it means.
And even if you get the type of success
That they think is success,
It won’t necessarily be for the best.

The people I knew at your age,
The folks with whom I built sets and rigged lights
And acted and drank and dreamed,
They are…. Everything.
Mike is one of the finest drama teachers you would ever meet,
Jenny gathers the memories of the elderly and turns them into plays
And Brian makes puppets,
And Christine runs a theatre company that tells stories of refugees,
And Tommy is a vet,
And Iggy makes music with Aboriginal Elders,
And Trossy is a mum,
And Justo has a millions children, and paints, and is a barrister
(oh you should hear his voice, it’d be like being defended by Lear)
And Toby’s a pirate,
And Bec runs an events company, and…

To state the obvious
I observe among my friends
No correlation
Between wealth and happiness,
Or fame and happiness.

The happy ones work hard, generally
And they are generous, generally.
And they generate, generally, valuable ideas.

Which is your job, (just by the way):
To put into the world valuable ideas.

So look for stories that are worth telling
And lessons that need teaching,
And tell them and teach them,
And stay passionate,
And I’ll see ya at the pub.

Lots of love.”

Speakola is a home for all types of speeches, both famous and non famous. The commencement speech is one of the most popular genres. Tim Minchin delivered a classic at University of WA in 2013, 'Life is Meaningless'. Click photo to listen/read.

Meryl Streep: 'There’s only change, and resistance to it and then more change', Barnard College - 2010

17 May 2010, Barnard College, New York, USA

Thank you, all. Thank you, President Spar, Ms. Golden, President Tilghman, Members of the Board of Trustees, distinguished faculty, proud swelling parents and family, and gorgeous class of 2010. If you are all really, really lucky, and if you continue to work super hard, and you remember your thank you notes and everybody's name; and you follow through on every task that's asked of you and also somehow anticipate problems before they even arise and you somehow sidestep disaster and score big. If you get great scores on your LSATS, or MSATS, or ERSATS or whatever. And you get into your dream grad school or internship which leads to a super job with a paycheck commensurate with responsibilities of leadership or if you somehow get that documentary on a shoe-string budget and it gets accepted at Sundance and maybe it wins Sundance and then you go on to be nominated for an Oscar and then you win the Oscar. Or if that money-making website that you designed with your friends somehow suddenly attracts investors and advertisers and becomes the go-to site for whatever it is you're selling, blogging, sharing, or net-casting and success shinning, hoped-for but never really anticipated success comes your way I guarantee you someone you know or love come to you and say, "Will you address the graduates at my college?" And you'll say "Yeah sure, when is it? May 2010? 2010? Yeah sure, that's months away and then the nightmare begins. The nightmare we've all had and I assure you, you'll continue to have even after graduation, 40 years after graduation. About a week before the due date, you wake up in the middle of the night, "Huh, I have a paper due and I haven't done the reading, Oh my god!"

If you have been touched by the success fairy, people think you know why. People think success breeds enlightenment and you are duty bound to spread it around like manure, fertilize those young minds, let them in on the secret, what is it that you know that no one else knows, the self examination begins, one looks inward, one opens an interior door. Cobwebs, black, the lights bulbs burned out, the airless dank refrigerator of an insanely over-scheduled, unexamined life that usually just gets take-out. Where is my writer friend, Anna Quindlen when I need her? On another book tour.

Hello I'm Meryl Streep, and today, Class of 2010 and I am really, I am very honored, and humbled to be asked to pass on tips and inspiration to you for achieving success in this next part of your lives. President Spar, when I consider the other distinguished medal recipients and venerable Board of Trustees, the many accomplished faculty and family members, people who've actually done things, produced things, while I have pretended to do things, I can think about 3,800 people who should have been on this list before me and you know since my success has depended wholly on putting things over on people. So I'm not sure parents think I'm that great a role model anyway.

I am however an expert in pretending to be an expert in various areas, so just randomly like everything else in this speech, I am or I was an expert in kissing on stage and on screen. How did I prepare for this? Well most of my preparation took place in my suburban high school or rather behind my suburban high school in New Jersey. One is obliged to do great deal of kissing in my line of work. Air kissing, ass-kissing, kissing up and of course actual kissing, much like hookers, actors have to do it with people we may not like or even know. We may have to do it with friends, which, believe it or not is particularly awkward, for people of my generation, it's awkward.

My other areas of faux expertise, river rafting, miming the effects of radiation poisoning, knowing which shoes go with which bag, coffee plantation, Turkish, Polish, German, French, Italian, that's Iowa-Italian from the bridges of Madison county, bit of the Bronx, Aramaic, Yiddish, Irish clog dancing, cooking, singing, riding horses, knitting, playing the violin, and simulating steamy sexual encounters, these are some of the areas in which, I have pretended quite proficiently to be successful, or the other way around. As have many women here, I'm sure.

Women, I feel I can say this authoritatively, especially at Barnard where they can't hear us, what am I talking about? They professionally can't hear us. Women are better at acting than men. Why? Because we have to be, if successfully convincing someone bigger than you are of something he doesn't know is a survival skill, this is how women have survived through the millennia. Pretending is not just play. Pretending is imagined possibility. Pretending or acting is a very valuable life skill and we all do it. All the time, we don't want to be caught doing it but nevertheless it's part of the adaptations of our species, we change who we are to fit the exigencies of our time, and not just strategically, or to our own advantage, sometimes sympathetically, without our even knowing it for the betterment of the whole group.

I remember very clearly my own first conscious attempt at acting. I was six placing my mother's half slip over my head in preparation to play the Virgin Mary in our living room. As I swaddled my Betsy Wetsy doll I felt quieted, holy, actually, and my transfigured face and very changed demeanor captured on super-8 by my dad pulled my little brother Harry to play Joseph and Dana too, a barnyard animal, into the trance. They were actually pulled into this nativity scene by the intensity of my focus. In my usual technique for getting them to do what I want, yelling at them would never ever have achieved and I learned something on that day.

Later when I was nine, I remember taking my mother's eyebrow pencil and carefully drawing lines all over my face, replicating the wrinkles that I had memorized on the face of my grandmother whom I adored and made my mother take my picture and I look at it now and of course, I look like myself now and my grandmother then. But I do really remember in my bones, how it was possible on that day to feel her age. I stooped, I felt weighted down but cheerful, you know I felt like her.

Empathy is at the heart of the actor's art. And in high school, another form of acting took hold of me. I wanted to learn how to be appealing. So I studied the character I imagined I wanted to be that of the generically pretty high school girl. I researched her deeply, that is to say shallowly, in Vogue, in Seventeen, and in Mademoiselle Magazines. I tried to imitate her hair, her lipstick, her lashes, the clothes of the lithesome, beautiful and generically appealing high school girls that I saw in those pages. I ate an apple a day, period. I peroxided my hair, ironed it straight. I demanded brand name clothes, my mother shut me down on that one. But I did, I worked harder on this characterization really than anyone I think I've ever done since. I worked on my giggle, I lightened it. Because I like it when it went, kind of "ehuh" and the end, "eheeh" "ehaeaahaha" because I thought it sounded child like, and cute. This was all about appealing to boys and at the same time being accepted by the girls, a very tricky negotiation.

Often success in one area precludes succeeding in the other. And along with all my other exterior choices, I worked on my, what actors call, my interior adjustment. I adjusted my natural temperament which tends to be slightly bossy, a little opinionated, loud, a little loud, full of pronouncements and high spirits, and I willfully cultivated softness, agreeableness, a breezy, natural sort of sweetness, even shyness if you will, which was very, very, very effective on the boys. But the girls didn't buy it. They didn't like me; they sniffed it out, the acting. And they were probably right, but I was committed, this was absolutely not a cynical exercise, this was a vestigial survival courtship skill I was developing. And I reached a point senior year, when my adjustment felt like me, I had actually convinced myself that I was this person and she, me, pretty, talented, but not stuck-up. You know, a girl who laughed a lot at every stupid thing every boy said and who lowered her eyes at the right moment and deferred, who learned to defer when the boys took over the conversation, I really remember this so clearly and I could tell it was working, I was much less annoying to the guys than I had been, they liked me better and I like that, this was conscious but it was at the same time motivated and fully-felt this was real, real acting.

I got to Vassar which 43 years ago was a single-sex institution, like all the colleges in what they call the Seven Sisters, the female Ivy League and I made some quick but lifelong and challenging friends. And with their help outside of any competition for boys my brain woke up. I got up and I got outside myself and I found myself again. I didn't have to pretend, I could be goofy, vehement, aggressive, and slovenly and open and funny and tough and my friends let me. I didn't wash my hair for three weeks once. They accepted me like the Velveteen Rabbit. I became real instead of an imagined stuffed bunny but I stockpiled that character from high school and I breathed life into her again some years later as Linda in the "Deer Hunter." There is probably not one of you graduates who has ever seen this film but the "Deer Hunter" it won best picture in 1978 Robert De Niro, Chris Walken, not funny at all. And I played Linda, a small town girl in a working class background, a lovely, quiet, hapless girl, who waited for the boy she loved to come back from the war in Vietnam. Often men my age, President Clinton, by the way, when I met him said, "Men my age, mention that character as their favorite of all the women I've played." And I have my own secret understanding of why that is and it confirms every decision I made in high school. This is not to denigrate that girl by the way or the men who are drawn to her in anyway because she's still part of me and I'm part of her. She wasn't acting but she was just behaving in a way that cowed girls, submissive girls, beaten up girls with very few ways out have behaved forever and still do in many worlds. Now, in a measure of how much the world has changed the character most men mention as their favorite is, Miranda Priestly.

Now as a measure of how the world has changed. The character most men mention as their favorite. Miranda Priestly. The beleaguered totalitarian at the head of Runway magazine in Devil Wears Prada. To my mind this represents such an optimistic shift. They relate to Miranda. They wanted to date Linda. They felt sorry for Linda but they feel like Miranda. They can relate to her issues, the high standards she sets for herself and others. The thanklessness of the leadership position. The "Nobody understands me" thing. The loneliness. They stand outside one character and they pity her and they kind of fall in love with her but they look through the eyes of this other character. This is a huge deal because as people in the movie business know the absolute hardest thing in the whole world is to persuade a straight male audience to identify with a woman protagonist to feel themselves embodied by her. This more than any other factor explains why we get the movies we get and the paucity of the roles where women drive the film. It's much easier for the female audience because we were all grown up brought up identifying with male characters from Shakespeare to Salinger. We have less trouble following Hamlet's dilemma viscerally or Romeo's or Tybalt or Huck Finn or Peter Pan -- I remember holding that sword up to Hook -- I felt like him. But it is much much much harder for heterosexual boys to identify with Juliet or Desdemona, Wendy in Peter Pan or Joe in Little Women or the Little Mermaid or Pocohontas. why I don't know, but it just is. There has always been a resistance to imaginatively assume a persona, if that persona is a she. But things are changing now and it's in your generation we're seeing this. Men are adapting... about time...they are adapting consciously and also without consciously and without realizing it for the better of the whole group. They are changing their deepest prejudices to regard as normal the things that their fathers would have found very very difficult and their grandfathers would have abhorred and the door to this emotional shift is empathy. As Jung said, emotion is the chief source of becoming conscious. There can be no transforming of lightness into dark of apathy into movement without emotion. Or as Leonard Cohen says pay attention to the cracks because that's where the light gets in. You, young women of Barnard have not had to squeeze yourself into the corset of being cute or to muffle your opinions but you haven't left campus yet. I'm just kidding. What you have had is the privilege of a very specific education. You are people who may able to draw on a completely different perspective to imagine a different possibility than women and men who went to coed schools.

How this difference is going to serve you it's hard to quantify now, it may take you forty years like it did me to analyze your advantage. But today is about looking forward into a world where so-called women's issues, human issues of gender inequality lie at the crux of global problems from poverty to the AIDS crisis to the rise in violent fundamentalist juntas, human trafficking and human rights abuses and you're going to have the opportunity and the obligation, by virtue of your providence, to speed progress in all those areas. And this is a place where the need is very great, the news is too. This is your time and it feels normal to you but really there is no normal. There's only change, and resistance to it and then more change.

Never before in the history or country have most of the advanced degrees been awarded to women but now they are. Since the dawn of man, it's hardly more than 100 years since we were even allowed into these buildings except to clean them but soon most of law and medical degrees will probably also go to women. Around the world, poor women now own property who used to be property and according to Economist magazine, for the last two decades, the increase of female employment in the rich world has been the main driving force of growth. Those women have contributed more to global GDP growth than have either new technology or the new giants India or china. Cracks in the ceiling, cracks in the door, cracks in the Court and on the Senate floor.

You know, I gave a speech at Vassar 27 years ago. It was a really big hit. Everyone loved it, really. Tom Brokaw said it was the very best commencement speech he had ever heard and of course I believed this. And it was much easier to construct than this one. It came out pretty easily because back then I knew so much. I was a new mother, I had two academy awards and it was all coming together so nicely. I was smart and I understood boiler plate and what sounded good and because I had been on the squad in high school, earnest full-throated cheerleading was my specialty so that's what I did but now, I feel like I know about 1/16th of what that young woman knew. Things don't seem as certain today. Now I'm 60, I have four adult children who are all facing the same challenges you are. I'm more sanguine about all the things that I still don't know and I'm still curious about.

What I do know about success, fame, celebrity that would fill another speech. How it separates you from your friends, from reality, from proportion. Your own sweet anonymity, a treasure you don't even know you have until it's gone. How it makes things tough for your family and whether being famous matters one bit, in the end, in the whole flux of time. I know I was invited here because of that. How famous I am. I how many awards I've won and while I am I am overweeningly proud of the work that, believe me, I did not do on my own. I can assure that awards have very little bearing on my own personal happiness. My own sense of well-being and purpose in the world. That comes from studying the world feelingly, with empathy in my work. It comes from staying alert and alive and involved in the lives of the people that I love and the people in the wider world who need my help. No matter what you see me or hear me saying when I'm on your TV holding a statuette spewing, that's acting.

Being a celebrity has taught me to hide but being an actor has opened my soul.

Being here today has forced me to look around inside there for something useful that I can share with you and I'm really grateful you gave me the chance.

You know you don't have to be famous. You just have to make your mother and father proud of you and you already have. Bravo to you. Congratulations.

Kurt Vonnegut: 'I would like to see America try socialism', Bennington College -1970

1970, Bennington College, Vermont, USA

I hope you will all be very happy as members of the educated class in America. I myself have been rejected again and again.

As I said on Earth Day in New York City not long ago: It isn't often that a total pessimist is invited to speak in the springtime. I predicted that everything would become worse, and everything has become worse.

One trouble, it seems to me, is that the majority of the people who rule us, who have our money and power, are lawyers or military men. The lawyers want to talk our problems out of existence. The military men want us to find the bad guys and put bullets through their brains. These are not always the best solutions—particularly in the fields of sewage disposal and birth control.

I demand that the administration of Bennington College establish an R.O.T.C. unit here. It is imperative that we learn more about military men, since they have so much of our money and power now. It is a great mistake to drive military men from college campuses and into ghettos like Fort Benning and Fort Bragg. Make them do what they do so proudly in the midst of men and women who are educated.

When I was at Cornell University, the experiences that most stimulated my thinking were in the R.O.T.C.—the manual of arms and close-order drill, and the way the officers spoke to me. Because of the military training I received at Cornell, I became a corporal at the end of World War Two. After the war, as you know, I made a fortune as a pacifist.

You should not only have military men here, but their weapons, too—especially crowd-control weapons such as machine guns and tanks. There is a tendency among young people these days to form crowds. Young people owe it to themselves to understand how easily machine guns and tanks can control crowds.

There is a basic rule about tanks, and you should know it: The only man who ever beat a tank was John Wayne. And he was in another tank.

Now then—about machine guns: They work sort of like a garden hose, execpt they spray death. They should be approached with caution.

There is a lesson for all of us in machine guns and tanks: Work within the system.

How pessimistic am I, really? I was a teacher at the University of Iowa three years ago. I had hundreds of students. As nearly as I am able to determine, not one of my ex-students has seen fit to reproduce. The only other demonstration of such a widespread disinclination to reproduce took place in Tasmania in about 1800. Native Tasmanians gave up on babies and the love thing and all that when white colonists, who were criminals from England, hunted them for sport.

I used to be an optimist. This was during my boyhood in Indianapolis. Those of you who have seen Indianapolis will understand that it was no easy thing to be an optimist there. It was the 500-mile Speedway Race, and then 364 days of miniature golf, and then the 500-mile Speedway Race again.

My brother Bernard, who was nine years older, was on his way to becoming an important scientist. He would later discover that silver iodide particles could precipitate certain kinds of clouds as snow or rain. He made me very enthusiastic about science for a while. I thought scientists were going to find out exactly how everything worked, and then make it work better. I fully expected that by the time I was twenty-one, some scientist, maybe my brother, would have taken a color photograph of God Almighty—and sold it to Popular Mechanics magazine.

Scientific truth was going to make us so happy and comfortable.

What actually happened when I was twenty-one was that we dropped scientific truth on Hiroshima. We killed everybody there. And I had just come home from being a prisoner of war in Dresden, which I'd seen burned to the ground. And the world was just then learning how ghastly the German extermination camps had been. So I had a heart-to-heart talk with myself.

"Hey, Corporal Vonnegut," I said to myself, "maybe you were wrong to be an optimist. Maybe pessimism is the thing."

I have been a consistent pessimist ever since, with a few exceptions. In order to persuade my wife to marry me, of course, I had to promise her that the future would be heavenly. And then I had to lie about the future again every time I thought she should have a baby. And then I had to lie to her again every time she threatened to leave me because I was too pessimistic.

I saved our marriage many times by exclaiming, "Wait! Wait! I see light at the end of the tunnel at last!" And I wish I could bring light to your tunnels today. My wife begged me to bring you light, but there is no light. Everything is going to become imaginably worse, and never get better again. If I lied to you about that, you would sense that I'd lied to you, and that would be another cause for gloom. We have enough causes for gloom.

I should like to give a motto to your class, a motto to your entire generation. It comes from my favorite Shakespearean play, which is King Henry VI, Part Three. In the first scene of Act Two, you will remember, Edward, Earl of March, who will later become King Edward IV, enters with Richard, who will later become Duke of Gloucester. They are the Duke of York's sons. They arrive at the head of their troops on a plain near Mortimer's Cross in Herefordshire and immediately receive news that their father has had his head cut off. Richard says this, among other things, and this is the motto I give you: "To weep is to make less the depth of grief."

Again: "To weep is to make less the depth of grief."

It is from the same play, which has been such a comfort to me, that we find the line, "The smallest worm will turn being trodden on." I don't have to tell you that the line is spoken by Lord Clifford in Scene One of Act Two. This is meant to be optimistic, I think, but I have to tell you that a worm can be stepped on in such a way that it can't possibly turn after you remove your foot.

I have performed this experiment for my children countless times. They are grown-ups now. They can step on worms now with no help from their Daddy. But let us pretend for a moment that worms can turn, do turn. And let us ask ourselves, "What would be a good, new direction for the worm of civilization to take?"

Well—it should go upward, if possible. Up is certainly better than down, or is widely believed to be. And we would be a lot safer if the Government would take its money out of science and put it into astrology and thereading of palms. I used to think that science would save us, and science certainly tried. But we can't stand any more tremendous explosions, either for or against democracy. Only in superstition is there hope. If you want to become a friend of civilization, then become an enemy of truth and a fanatic for harmless balderdash.

I know that millions of dollars have been spent to produce this splendid graduating class, and that the main hope of your teachers was, once they got through with you, that you would no longer be superstitious. I'm sorry—I have to undo that now. I beg you to believe in the most ridiculous superstition of all: that humanity is at the center of the universe, the fulfiller or the frustrator of the grandest dreams of God Almighty.

If you can believe that, and make others believe it, then there might be hope for us. Human beings might stop treating each other like garbage, might begin to treasure and protect each other instead. Then it might be all right to have babies again.

Many of you will have babies anyway, if you're anything like me. To quote the poet Schiller: "Against stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vain."

About astrology and palmistry: They are good because they make people feel vivid and full of possibilities. They are communism at its best. Everybody has a birthday and almost everybody has a palm. Take a seemingly drab person born on August 3, for instance. He's a Leo. He is proud, generous, trusting, energetic, domineering, and authoritative! All Leos are! He is ruled by the Sun! His gems are the ruby and the diamond! His color is orange! His metal is gold! This is a nobody?

His harmonius signs for business, marriage, or companionship are Sagittarius and Aries. Anybody here a Sagittarius or an Aries? Watch out! Here comes destiny!

Is this lonely-looking human being really alone? Far from it! He shares the sign of Leo with T. E. Lawrence, Herbert Hoover, Alfred Hitchcock, Dorothy Parker, Jacqueline Onassis, Henry Ford, Princess Margaret, and George Bernard Shaw! You've heard of them.

Look at him blush with happiness! Ask him to show you his amazing palms. What a fantastic heart line he has! Be on your guard, girls. Have you ever seen a Hill of the Moon like his? Wow! This is some human being!

Which brings us to the arts, whose purpose, in common with astrology, is to use frauds in order to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us human beings who move much more gracefully than human beings really move. Films and books and plays show us people talking much more entertainingly than people really talk, make paltry human enterprises seem important. Singers and musicians show us human beings making sounds far more lovely than human beings really make. Architects give us temples in which something marvelous is obviously going on. Actually, practically nothing is going on inside. And on and on.

The arts put man at the center of the universe, whether he belongs there or not. Military science, on the other hand, treats man as garbage—and his children, and his cities, too. Military science is probably right about the comtemptibility of man in the vastness of the universe. Still—I deny that contemptibililty, and I beg you to deny it, through the creation of appreciation of art.

A friend of mine, who is also a critic, decided to do a paper on things I'd written. He reread all my stuff, which took him about two hours and fifteen minutes, and he was exasperated when he got through. "You know what you do?" he said. "No," I said. "What do I do?" And he said, "You put bitter coatings on very sweet pills."

I would like to do that now, to have the bitterness of my pessimism melt away, leaving you with mouthfuls of a sort of vanilla fudge goo. But I find it harder and harder to prepare confections of this sort—particularly since our military scientists have taken to firing at crowds of their own people. Also—I took a trip to Biafra last January, which was a million laughs. And this hideous war in Indochina goes on and on.

Still—I will give you what goo I have left.

It has been said many times that man's knowledge of himself has been left far behind by his understanding of technology, and that we can have peace and plenty and justice only when man's knowledge of himself catches up. This is not true. Some people hope for great discoveries in the social sciences, social equivalents of F=ma and E=mc^2, and so on. Others think we have to evolve, to become better monkeys with bigger brains. We don't need more information. We don't need bigger brains. All that is required is that we become less selfish than we are.

We already have plenty of sound suggestions as to how we are to act if things are to become better on earth. For instance: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. About seven hundred years ago, Thomas Aquinas had some other recommendations as to what people might do with their lives, and I do not find these made ridiculous by computers and trips to the moon and television sets. He praises the Seven Spiritual Works of Mercy, which are these:

To teach the ignorant, to counsel the doubtful, to console the sad, to reprove the sinner, to forgive the offender, to bear with the oppressive and troublesome, and to pray for us all.

He also admires the Seven Corporal Works of Mercy, which are these:

To feed the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty, to clothe the naked, to shelter the homeless, to visit the sick and prisoners, to ransom captives, and to bury the dead.

A great swindle of our time is the assumption that science has made religion obsolete. All science has damaged is the story of Adam and Eve and the story of Jonah and the Whale. Everything else holds up pretty well, particularly the lessons about fairness and gentleness. People who find those lessons irrelevant in the twentieth century are simply using science as an excuse for greed and harshness.

Science has nothing to do with it, friends.

Another great swindle is that people your age are supposed to save the world. I was a graduation speaker at a little preparatory school for girls on Cape Cod, where I live. I told the girls that they were much too young to save the world and that, after they got their diplomas, they should go swimming and sailing and walking, and just fool around.

I often hear parents say to their idealistic children, "All right, you see so much that is wrong with the world—go out and do something about it. We're all for you! Go out and save the world."

You are four years older than those prep school girls but still very young. You, too, have been swindled, if people have persuaded you that it is now up to you to save the world. It isn't up to you. You don't have the money and the power. You don't have the appearance of grave maturity—even though you may be gravely mature. You don't even know how to handle dynamite. It is up to older people to save the world. You can help them.

Do not take the entire world on your shoulders. Do a certain amount of skylarking, as befits people of your age."Skylarking," incidentally, used to be a minor offense under Navel Regulations. What a charming crime. It means intolerable lack of seriousness. I would love to have a dishonorable discharge from the United States Navy—for skylarking not just once, but again and again and again.

Many of you will undertake exceedingly serious work this summer—campaigning for humane Senators and Congressmen, helping the poor and the ignorant and the awfully old. Good. But skylark, too.

When it really is time for you to save the world, when you have some power and know your way around, when people can't mock you for looking so young, I suggest that you work for a socialist form of government. Free Enterprise is much too hard on the old and the sick and the shy and the poor and the stupid, and on people nobody likes. The just can't cut the mustard under Free Enterprise. They lack that certain something that Nelson Rockefeller, for instance, so abundantly has.

So let's divide up the wealth more fairly than we have divided it up so far. Let's make sure that everybody has enough to eat, and a decent place to live, and medical help when he needs it. Let's stop spending money on weapons, which don't work anyway, thank God, and spend money on each other. It isn't moonbeams to talk of modest plenty for all. They have it in Sweden. We can have it here. Dwight David Eisenhower once pointed out that Sweden, with its many utopian programs, had a high rate of alcoholism and suicide and youthful unrest. Even so, I would like to see America try socialism. If we start drinking heavily and killing ourselves, and if our children start acting crazy, we can go back to good old Free Enterprise again.

Not Kurt Vonnegut (Mary Schmish): 'Wear sunscreen' - 1997

1997, uploaded at MIT

The Washington Post states in this article that Vonnegut never delivered this speech. It was a a column written by Mary Schmich for the Chicago Tribune about a speech she would have liked to give to a graduating class, which was later posted online and attributed by a third party to Vonnegut. But it is so much a part of commencement lore Speakola has included it.

Ladies and gentlemen of the class of ’97:

Wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they’ve faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don’t worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 pm on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts. Don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long and, in the end, it’s only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else’s.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.

Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents. You never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They’re your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you’ll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you’ll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.

Don’t mess too much with your hair or by the time you’re 40 it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen.

Australian writer and comedian John Safran made a parody of the speech.

Arianna Huffington: 'What I urge you to do is to lead the third women’s revolution', Smith College - 2013

19 May 2013, Smith College,  Northampton, Massachusetts, USA

Thank you so much, President Christ, the Board of Trustees, distinguished alumnae, members of the faculty, devoted parents and friends, and especially the fabulous Smith College class of 2013. Congratulations. You have reached the light at the end of the tunnel. And I’m sure that when you first arrived at Smith four years ago you never would have imagined that at the other end of that tunnel would be a lady behind a podium talking to you in a funny accent. This accent, incidentally, was the bane of my existence — until, that is, I moved to New York in 1980 and met Henry Kissinger, who told me not to worry about my accent, because you can never, in American public life, underestimate the advantages of complete and total incomprehensibility.

I’m so grateful to be with you at this special moment in your lives, and I want to start by taking a moment to honor President Christ, your magnificent, viola-playing, Victorian poetry-quoting president, who is retiring after 11 years of service, leadership and inspiration.

You don’t know it but I have spent the last several weeks stalking you — on your various Smith websites, on your Twitter feeds, on Facebook, on Instagram, on Tumblr — so I could get to know you better.

And here’s what I’ve found: you’re fascinating and curious and quirky and asking the big questions and worrying about the little things, and solving the cosmic riddles and agonizing about what shoes to wear at Commencement, and what happens if you trip and become a YouTube sensation.

I’ve learned about Smithies writing honors theses on subjects that I not only don’t understand but can’t even pronounce. Like Lisa Stephanie Cunden’s thesis on entropy and enthalpy contributions to the chelate effect — I wanted to give you the gift of hearing that said in a Greek accent. I’ve learned about the three seniors who were part of the basketball team, which made the Division III NCAA tournament for the first time — a historic accomplishment to add to your already historic status as the birthplace of women’s basketball. I’ve learned about the many Smithies who will be the first in their families to graduate from college, like Massiel De los Santos, who began her journey in the Dominican Republic.

But before I go any further, because I’ve been so impressed, I feel compelled to extend to you a lifelong invitation to blog on The Huffington Post — about your graduation, and about all your adventures on the next stage of the journey you’re starting today.

Getting to know you has made me feel very protective of you, especially since I have two college-aged daughters myself. But I know you don’t need protecting. You are prepared and ready to take on the world — and if you have attended the Wurtele Center for Work and Life, you even have a Passport to Life After Smith, with the opportunity to learn things like job interviewing skills, how to balance a budget, cook a healthy meal and even change a tire.

So you can consider my speech today a continuation of the Passport to Life After Smith, though in the interest of full disclosure, I can’t cook and definitely cannot change a tire. But part of life after Smith will be deciding what things you want to put your energy into and what things you don’t. It was a big revelation for me I realized that I didn't have to complete everything I thought I wanted to do, like learning German or becoming a good skier or learning to cook. Indeed I realized that you can complete a project by dropping it.

Commencement speakers are traditionally expected to tell graduates how to go out there and climb the ladder of success, but I want to ask you, instead, to redefine success. Because the world you are headed into desperately needs it. And because you are up to it. Your education at Smith has made it unequivocally clear that you are entitled to take your place in the world on equal footing, in every field, and at the top of every field. But what I urge you to do is not just take your place at the top of the world, but to change the world.

What I urge you to do is to lead the third women’s revolution.

The first was led by the suffragists over a hundred years ago, when brave women like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton fought, among other things, to give women the right to vote. The second women’s revolution was powerfully led by Smith alumnae, Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem. They fought — and Gloria continues to fight — to expand the role of women in our society, to give us full access to the rooms of power where decisions are being made.

And while the second revolution is still in progress, we simply can’t wait any longer for the third revolution to begin. And I can’t imagine a place where I would be more likely to find the leaders of that revolution than right here at Smith.

At the moment, our society’s notion of success is largely composed of two parts: money and power. In fact, success, money and power have practically become synonymous.

But it’s time for a third metric, beyond money and power — one founded on well-being, wisdom, our ability to wonder, and to give back. Money and power by themselves are a two legged stool — you can balance on them for a while, but eventually you’re going to topple over. And more and more people, very successful people, are toppling over every day. Basically, success the way we’ve defined it is no longer sustainable. It’s not sustainable for human beings; it’s not sustainable for the planet. To live the lives we want, and not just the ones we settle for, the lives society defines as successful, we need to include the third metric.

In 2004, President Christ gave a speech that was really ahead of its time. It was titled “Inside the Clockwork of Women’s Careers.” To me, it’s very much a third women’s revolution call to arms. She spoke of the need to dispel myths about ambition and success, chief among them the myth that success and ambition look like a straight line. Now I guess it’s no big surprise that the image of success created by men would be, yes, a long, phallic-shaped straight line.

But if we don’t redefine success, the personal price we pay will get higher and higher. And as the data shows, that price is even higher for women than it is for men. Already, women in stressful jobs have a nearly 40 percent increased risk of heart disease, and a 60 percent greater risk of diabetes. And in the last 30 years, as women have made strides and gains in the workplace, self-reported levels of stress have gone up 18 percent.

Another Smith graduation speaker, Alistair Cooke, notoriously told the class of 1954 that their way to the top would be determined by the men they married.

I want to do old Alistair one better, and tell you that you don’t get to the top by marrying someone. A much simpler way is to sleep your way to the top. Right now I imagine President Christ is thinking she probably should have vetted this speech.

But no, I’m talking about sleep in the literal sense. Because right now, the workplace is absolutely fueled by sleep deprivation and burnout. I know of what I speak: In 2007, sleep deprived and exhausted, I fainted, hit my head on my desk, broke my cheekbone and got four stitches on my right eye. And that was the beginning of my reaquainting myself with sleep, and with the need to redefine success to include our own well-being. Even if sleep deprivation is not affecting your health, it’s affecting your creativity, your productivity, and your decision-making. The Exxon Valdez wreck, the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle, and the nuclear accidents at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island — all were at least partially the result of decisions made on too little sleep.

According to researchers at Walter Reed hospital, the only thing that gets better with sleep deprivation is “magical thinking” and reliance on superstition. So for those of you majoring in fortune telling, go ahead and burn the midnight oil. The rest of you: not so much.

As you can tell by now, I’m a major sleep evangelist. The Huffington Post’s office in New York sports two nap rooms. At the beginning our reporters, editors and engineers were reluctant to use them, afraid that people might think they’re shirking their duties. I’m happy to say, our nap rooms are now always booked. Although the other day I was walking by and I saw two people walking out of one of the nap rooms. But, hey, whatever it takes to recharge. Just don’t tell HR, okay?

What adding well-being to our definition of success means is that, in addition to looking after our financial capital, we need to look after our human capital. My mother was an expert at that. I still remember, when I was 12 years old, a very successful Greek businessman came for dinner. He looked rundown and exhausted. But when we sat down to dinner, he told us how well things were going for him. My mother was not impressed. “I don’t care how well your business is doing,” she told him bluntly, “you’re not taking care of you. Your business might have a great bottom line, but you are your most important capital. There are only so many withdrawals you can make from your health bank account, but you just keep on withdrawing. You could go bankrupt if you don’t make some deposits soon.” And indeed, not long after that, the man had to be admitted for an angioplasty.

When we include well-being in our definition of success, another thing that will change is our relationship with time. Researchers have come up with a term for our stressed out feeling that there’s never enough time for what we want to do — they call it “Time Famine.” Every time we look at our watch it seems to be later than we think. I personally have long had a very strained relationship with time — more in line with a certain Ph.D. from Oxford, in English Lit, actually — Dr. Seuss.

“How did it get so late so soon?” he wrote. “It’s night before it’s afternoon. December is here before it’s June. My goodness how the time has flown. How did it get so late so soon?”

Does that feel familiar to anyone? Or, more likely, to everyone? The problem is that as long as success is defined by just money and power, climbing and burnout, we are never going to be able to enjoy that other aspect of the third metric: wonder.

I was blessed with a mother who was in a constant state of wonder. Whether she was washing dishes or feeding seagulls at the beach or reprimanding overworking businessmen, she maintained her sense of wonder, delighted at both the mysteries of the universe and the everyday little things that fill our lives. And whenever I’d complain or be upset about something, she would say to me: “Darling, change the channel. You are in control of the clicker. Don’t replay the bad, scary movie.”

One of the gifts this attitude to life gave her was the ability to cut through hierarchies. One night, when I was in my 20s and still living in London, a Tory member of Parliament I was dating at the time (it might have been one of those decisions brought on by sleep deprivation) had brought the Prime Minister Edward Heath to dinner. My mother was in the kitchen, where she could be found most of the time, talking to the plumber, who had come to fix a last-minute problem. She asked the plumber what he thought of the prime minister. “Not much,” the plumber said, “he hasn’t been good for working people.” “Let me go bring him here so you can tell him directly,” my mother replied. And that’s how the prime minister ended up in the kitchen talking to the plumber.

Well-being, wonder, and now I’d like to talk about another indispensable W — wisdom.

Wherever we look around the world, we see leaders in positions of power — in politics, in media, in business, all of them with high IQs and great degrees — making terrible decisions. What is missing is not IQ, but wisdom. And today, it's getting harder and harder to tap into our own wisdom. Because we are all so hyper-connected to our devices, our gadgets, our screens, our social media, we're having a hard time disconnecting from technology and reconnecting with ourselves. Your very own, very wise Smith sophomore, Erin McDaniel, wrote in the Sophian about her decision to disconnect from all her social media. “We have eschewed real social connections in favor of superficial, technology-bridged ones...We have become, in many cases, nearly as (socially) robotic as our computers.”

Don’t worry — you don’t have the head of a digital company telling you to completely disconnect from technology. What I’m telling you is to regularly disconnect from technology, to regularly unplug and recharge in order to reconnect with ourselves and our own deepest wisdom. I’m convinced that there are two fundamental truths about human beings. The first truth is that we all have within us a centered place of wisdom, harmony, and strength. This is a truth that all the world’s religions — whether Christianity, Islam, Judaism, or Buddhism — and many of its philosophies, hold true in one form or another: “The Kingdom of God is Within.”

The second truth is that we’re all going to veer away from that place again and again and again. That’s the nature of life. In fact, we may be off-course more often than we are on-course. At the Huffington Post, we even came up with an app, called GPS for the Soul, that helps us get back to that place. I know there is something paradoxical about using technology to disconnect from technology, but the snake in our digital garden of Eden has been hyper-connectivity with technology. And we have to be more wily than the snake, hence using technology to help us disconnect from technology.

When we’re in that centered place of wisdom, harmony and strength, life is transformed, from struggle to grace, and we are suddenly filled with trust, no matter the obstacles, challenges and disappointments. Because there is a purpose to our lives, even if it is often hidden from us, and even if the biggest turning points and heartbreaks only make sense as we look back, not as we are experiencing them. So we might as well live life as if — as the poet Rumi put it — “Everything is rigged in our favor.”

We’ve talked about well-being, wisdom, and wonder. And now, the last element of the third metric of success: empathy, compassion, the willingness to give back.

The founding fathers wrote about the pursuit of happiness, and if you go back to the original documents — as I’m sure all of you have done— happiness did not mean the pursuit of more ways to be entertained. It was the happiness that comes from feeling good by doing good.

Of course many of you already know that. Smithies have given back in countless ways, near and far: working with Chinese schools and NGOs through the Smith China Project, spending time in the community with people with disabilities through the Best Buddies program, tutoring children in Holyoke, and using digital storytelling to start conversations about health issues in Springfield.

So as you leave this beautiful campus today to follow your dreams and scale great heights in whatever profession you choose, I beg you: don’t buy society’s definition of success. Because it’s not working for anyone. It’s not working for women, it's not working for men, it's not working for polar bears, it's not working for the cicadas that are apparently about to emerge and swarm us. It’s only truly working for those who make pharmaceuticals for stress, sleeplessness and high blood pressure.

So please don’t settle for just breaking through glass ceilings in a broken corporate system or in a broken political system, where so many leaders are so disconnected from their own wisdom that we are careening from one self-inflicted crisis to another. Change much more than the M to a W at the top of the corporate flow chart. Change it by going to the root of what’s wrong and redefining what we value and what we consider success.

And remember that while there will be plenty of signposts along your path directing you to make money and climb up the ladder, there will be very few signposts reminding you to stay connected to the essence of who you are, to take care of yourself along the way, to reach out to others, to pause to wonder, and to connect to that place from which everything is possible. “Give me a place to stand,” my Greek compatriot Archimedes said, “and I will move the world.”

So find your place to stand — your place of wisdom and peace and strength. And from that place, lead the third women’s revolution and remake the world in your own image, according to your own definition of success, so that all of us — women and men — can live our lives with more grace, more joy, more empathy, more gratitude, and yes, more love. And now, Smith College class of 2013, congratulations, onward, upward and inward!

Arianna Huffington: 'Don't be so connected to everybody that you're not truly connected to anybody', Vassar College - 2015

Video embedded here

1 June 2015, Vassar College, Hudson Valley, New York, USA

Thank you so much, President Hill, Members of the Board of Trustees, distinguished alumni, members of the faculty, devoted parents and friends, and especially the fabulous Vassar College Class of 2015. I am deeply grateful to have been invited to be part of such a special moment in your lives. Commencement is one of my favorite rituals -- coming together for one last time, dressed alike before you head off into your singular and unique lives. When I was deciding what to wear under my gown, I asked Siri what the weather was in Poughkeepsie. And Siri responded with a list of mixed drinks with whiskey. I think I'm going to wait until Siri comes up with an update for Greek accents.

Today is the culmination of your time at Vassar. And it's also a mini-culmination for me. Because I've spent a lot of time in recent weeks getting to know you -- following you and your activities on social media, on Vassar's website, in The Miscellany News, and in other ways I'm not prepared to disclose that will remain between me and the folks at the NSA. It feels a little like I've been checking out your online dating profile, and now we're finally meeting. And when I saw you walk in, all 611 of you, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Because let's face it, you look fantastic. If we were on Tinder, I would definitely be ready to swipe right. Or is it left? Actually, at my age, it doesn't matter, as long as you're swiping.

One of the things I learned from my cyber-stalking is that the Vassar College seal shows the goddess Athena in front of the Parthenon, which I love. Though it occurs to me that I'm probably here because Athena couldn't be booked, so you settled for another Greek lady from Athens. And to really sell it, I'll be delivering my speech in a thick, sometimes- hard-to-understand Greek accent, instead of the crystal clear, accentless voice I use at all other times. In my private detective work, I also learned that your former motto "purity and wisdom" was abandoned in 1930, which was probably a good idea given that when The Miscellany News -- or the Misc as I understand you call it -- sent out an email to seniors asking what was on their bucket list, most of the answers had to do with sex. One replied, "Have sex under the sex tree!" Another said, "Have sex in the circle couches near the Art Library." A third wrote back, "Sex in the meditation room or the roof of the library." Aren't you glad I'm not disclosing your names in front of your parents? You owe me!

What was clear from all my private detective work is that you belong to a community. And for the rest of your lives, you'll essentially have a language you speak that no one else understands...sort of a more fun version of how I've been feeling my whole life. Chili Wednesdays at The Retreat. The Bell Ringing. Founder's Day. Mug Nights. A Quidditch team, The Butterbeer Brooers. The Deece. Running naked through the library the night before final exams. The Vassar Devil, which I understand to be some sort of ice cream sensation I'm definitely planning to sample before I leave. The a cappella groups -- all 3,475 of them.

And what a treasure trove of stories you're leaving Vassar with. Not just from your years here but from Vassar's incredibly colorful past: Way back in the 1880s, you invented fudge -- maybe. Some of you actually believe that the squirrels around campus are the slightly deranged reincarnations of English majors who couldn't get jobs after graduation. But, hey, at least the squirrels aren't living at home, right mom and dad? And here is my favorite: before your time, Vassar students were given the emblem of an acorn to display on their doors when they did not wish to be disturbed. The custom was apparently discontinued, but I want to urge you to revive it as something to use physically and spiritually for the rest of your lives. It's actually central to the three relationships I want to talk to you about today. And those are: your relationship with technology, your relationship with yourself, and your relationship with the world.

Let's start with your relationship with technology. No generation has been as liberated and as connected by technology as yours. But also, no generation has been as enslaved and as distracted by technology. So bring on that acorn because as the writer Eric Barker said, "Those who can sit in a chair, undistracted for hours, mastering subjects and creating things will rule the world -- while the rest of us frantically and futilely try to keep up with texts, tweets and other incessant interruptions." Sadly, we have become not just distracted by our devices, our texts, emails, constant notifications, and social media, but addicted to them. And when it comes to social media, let me break it to you: our addiction is not a bug, but a feature. This isn't some unforeseen side effect, it was always the intention, that social media would consume as much of our time and attention -- as much of our lives -- as possible.

To your credit, many of you have already recognized this and have taken steps to curb this addiction. As senior Justin Mitchell told the Misc, "I was mindlessly going through people's profiles and being an idiot. So I cut it out. There's just not enough time to do that with school." And having graduated just a few years before you, I can tell you there is even less time to do that with life.

But the addiction is so powerful that, according to a recent survey, 20 percent of millennials actually use their smartphones during sex. Maybe I should have read the instructions on my phone more carefully, but I'm not even sure what that means. Indeed, a recent study shows that more than half of women would rather go a month with no sex than a month with no smartphone -- although I am sure this survey did not include any women with access to the Vassar Sex Tree.

Contrary to what many of you may think, not only is multitasking not very efficient, it doesn't actually exist. It's actually rapid task switching -- instead of doing two things at once, we simply switch between doing two things badly. It's one of the most stressful ways we can use our time, and it robs us of our capacity to notice and appreciate every moment of our lives. I live in New York, and you hardly ever see anybody simply walking down the street who's not also staring at a screen, talking on the phone, or, even worse, texting while walking. It's like being in a really boring zombie movie. I used to be exactly like that myself. I remember one day, I left my apartment with a friend. I looked up and said, "What a gorgeous building! I wonder when that went up?" "1890" my friend said. I'd never noticed it. As Vassar alum Mary Oliver put it, "Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be Astonished. Tell about it." And by the way, when you do, please tell about it on The Huffington Post. I'm going to make it super easy for you by giving you my email so you can bypass the growing HuffPost blogging bureaucracy: arianna@huffingtonpost.com.

As someone who runs a 24/7 digital media company and who uses every form of social media ever invented, I hope I have some street cred when I urge you to build boundaries, introduce digital detoxes into your life, and learn to regularly disconnect from the jumble and the cacophony and make time to reconnect with yourself. There will be many profound and fulfilling relationships ahead of you, but the relationship with yourself is the most important relationship you'll ever have. And, like any relationship, it can't be taken for granted -- without care and attention, it will atrophy and, ultimately, break down.

If there is one thing I wish I knew when I was sitting where you are today -- and by the way, there are many -- it's that the Delphic admonition "Know Thyself" and Socrates' admonition that "the unexamined life is not worth living" are not ancient philosophical platitudes, but in fact the most relevant and important guiding truths for our lives. In the well-earned rush and excitement of your new life that's about to begin, it's remarkably easy to forget that most important relationship. That's because the ever-increasing creep of technology -- into our bedrooms, our brains, and our lives -- makes it much harder to connect with ourselves.

Indeed, for so many of us, connecting with ourselves has been so neglected that we will do anything to avoid it. Researchers from Harvard and the University of Virginia did an experiment in which they gave people a choice to be alone in a room, without anything -- no devices, no papers, no phones -- or get an electric shock. A whopping 67 percent of men chose the electric shock. I'm very happy to say that only 25 percent of women chose the shock. Seriously guys -- and a quarter of women -- what is wrong with you? It's not like you have to go shopping with your own thoughts or move in with them and pick out drapes, just be alone with them for fifteen minutes. Is it that bad?

In fact most of us actually know more about the state of our smartphones than we do about the state of ourselves. I bet pretty much everyone here knows approximately how much battery remains in your smartphone right now. And when it gets below 20%, giving us the dreaded red low power alert, we begin to get anxious and desperately look around for one of the little recharging shrines we meticulously maintain everywhere around us, lest anything should happen to our precious phone. But how much do you know, how aware are you, how mindful are you, of the state of your own being? Of your own energy and alertness and reserves? How quickly do you spring into action when you go into the low power zone?

I was fascinated to read about Vassar's Maria Mitchell, America's first female astronomer, and to see the gorgeous building that used to house her observatory. And while I completely understand the sense of wonder that has led men and women through the ages to explore outer space, I'm personally much more fascinated with exploring inner space. As Thomas Merton put it, "What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it all the rest are not only useless but disastrous." In other words, it's the quality of our inner journeys that allows us to make sense of our outer journeys.

There is now a collective longing to stop living in the shallows and recognize that life is actually shaped from the inside out -- a truth that has been celebrated by spiritual teachers, poets and philosophers throughout the ages and has now been unambiguously validated by modern science. And you, Vassar graduates, can lead the way, and chart a new path forward. You're the first generation born into the digital world. And you can be the first generation to master it, to make it serve you, instead of the other way around. And when you do, you'll find that you have the wind at your back because that's what the times are calling for.

One of the things that's so special about Vassar is that at the heart of your education is a deep and profound sense of responsibility for the world and those around us. You've been taught to use your considerable talents, and your drive and your dedication to make a difference in the world. I was moved and inspired by all the projects you've started and been involved in: The Vassar Prison Initiative, The Vassar Haiti Project, The College Committee on Sustainability, Operation Donation, etc., etc. You've already made a difference in the world you're about to enter.

And it's no accident that Vassar has recognized the crisis of growing inequality in our country. In fact, congratulations for being the number one college to enroll high-performing, low-income students and support them through successful graduation. The concern about growing inequality has become almost universal -- transcending political parties and ideologies. The statistics are staggering: Student loan debt is at 1.2 trillion dollars, the number of Americans in poverty has grown by 15 million since 2000, the number of high-poverty neighborhoods has tripled since 1970, while America is now home to more prisoners than any other country in the world, with more than 2 million people behind bars.

As we see this happening, I keep being reminded of my visit to Pompeii, whose people were wiped out in the first century by a violent volcanic eruption. There had been many warning signs, including a severe earthquake, tremors, springs and wells that dried up, dogs that ran away, and birds that no longer sang. And then the most obvious warning sign: columns of smoke belching out of Mount Vesuvius before the volcano blew its top, burying the city and its inhabitants under sixty feet of ash and volcanic rock. But the warning signs had been dismissed as "not particularly alarming." The warning signs are all around us today, too, pointing out the gulf between what we know we should be doing and what we're choosing to do instead.

It's not that we don't have enough data -- in fact, we're drowning in data. What we're lacking is wisdom. Indeed ninety percent of the data now available to us has been created in the last two years. But how much of our collective wisdom has been made available in that time? That's what's missing from our leaders and from our public discourse. Could our political debate, dominated as it is by meaningless head-to-head polls, manufactured controversies, horse-race sound-bites, and news of Hillary Clinton asking for extra guacamole at Chipotle and Ted Cruz suddenly liking country music after 9/11 -- be any more trivialized?

In fact, at The Huffington Post we've started a "Who Cares?" section to cover all these non-issues and hopefully leave more room for the real ones. And for those of you going into journalism, our goal at HuffPost is to reimagine the craft. There's an old saying in the news business, one that's guided editorial thinking for decades: "If it bleeds, it leads." But it turns out this is just lousy journalism. As journalists, our job is to provide an accurate picture -- and that means the full picture -- of what's going on in the world. Just showing tragedy, violence, and mayhem -- just focusing on what's broken and what's not working -- misses too much of what is really happening all around us. What about how people are responding to these challenges, how they're coming together, even in the midst of violence, poverty and loss? And what about all the stories of innovation, creativity, ingenuity, compassion and grace? By shining a light on these stories, we can scale up these solutions and create a positive contagion that can expand and broaden their reach. Instead of just producing copycat crimes, we can start to produce copycat solutions.

And you can be a part of those solutions. There is an invisible but very real and inescapable connection between our relationship with ourselves and our relationship with the world. As Alexander Solzhenitsyn put it, "If you wanted to put the world to rights, who should you begin with: yourself or others?" I know everyone here wants to help put the world to rights. But please remember, it begins with yourself... as they say on airplanes, secure your own oxygen mask first.

So regularly hang that virtual acorn on your door because while the world will provide plenty of insistent, pleading, flashing, high-volume signals directing you to distract yourself, to not be in the moment, to burn out in order to climb higher up the ladder of what the world defines as success, there will be almost no worldly signals reminding you to stay connected to the essence of who you are, to pause to wonder, and to connect to that place of wisdom in you -- that place from which everything is possible. The world will keep coming at you with its incessant demands, beeps, blinking lights, and alerts. "Every day," Iain Thomas wrote, "the world will drag you by the hand, yelling, 'This is important! And this is important! And this is important! You need to worry about this! And This! And This!' And each day, it's up to you to yank your hand back, put it on your heart and say, 'No. This is what's important.'"

It's from this sacred place that life is transformed from struggle to grace, from information to wisdom. We have, if we're lucky, about 30,000 days to play the game of life. And trust me, that's not morbid. In fact, it's wisdom that will put all the inevitable failures and rejections and disappointments and heartbreaks into perspective. Because as the great Onion headline summed it up, "Death Rate Holding Steady at 100%" So let's stop sweeping it under the rug. That's a modern impulse. Ancient Romans would carve "MM," Memento Mori, Remember Death, on statues and trees -- to put every victory and every defeat into its proper perspective. I'm not sure if you want to carve it on the sex tree, though, because things could get weird.

And if you've been to a memorial service recently, you'll have noticed that our eulogies have very little to do with our resumes and our LinkedIn profiles. For instance, here's the sort of thing you don't hear in a eulogy: "George was amazing, he increased market share by one-third." Or, "her PowerPoint slides were always meticulously prepared." Or, "she ate lunch at her desk every single day." Our eulogies are always about the other stuff: what we gave, how we connected, how much we meant to our family and friends, small kindnesses, lifelong passions, and the things that made us laugh. So why do we spend so much of our lives chasing things we don't value and that don't ultimately matter?

As you leave this magical campus, don't let technology wrap you up in a perpetually harried existence. Don't be so connected to everybody that you're not truly connected to anybody. Or to yourself. And don't get so caught up in your busy life that life's mystery passes you by. Bring joy and gratitude into every moment -- even the tough ones -- and start displaying that acorn on your door. Thank you so much.

Greil Marcus: 'I’ve always believed that the divisions between high art and low art are false', School of Visual Arts - 2013

2013 SVA Commencement Address. Transcript, highlights, and discussion: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/05/13/greil-marcus-sva-commencement-address/

13 May 2013, School of Visual Arts, New York, USA

Speech excerpts contained at Brain Pickings

I’ve always believed that the divisions between high art and low art, between high culture, which really ought to be called “sanctified culture,” and what’s sometimes called popular culture, but really ought to be called “everyday culture” — the culture of anyone’s everyday life, the music I listen to, the movies you see, the advertisements that infuriate us and that sometimes we find so thrilling, so moving — I’ve always believed that these divisions are false. And, as a result of trying to make that argument over the years, I’ve also come to believe that these divisions are permanent — they can be denied, but they can never go away.

...

I couldn’t understand then, and I don’t understand now, why George Herriman’s Krazy Kat strips, or the comic books by anonymous artists and inkers and graphics people, were lesser art — really, why whey weren’t better art, the real art — than the pop art classic that Philip Guston and Roy Lichtenstein had made of them. Nearly everything I’ve written is based on the conviction — the experience — that there are depths and satisfactions in blues, rock & roll, detective stories, movies, television, as rich and as profound as those that can be found anywhere else. Who, really, could argue that the sense of transportation, even in the religious sense — taking of oneself out of oneself, connecting oneself to something greater, something you know in the moment, in your heart, that every person who was ever born must experience or their life is going to be poor — who can argue that that sense of transportation is not as present in The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” … as in the art most exalted in motive, most revered in history?

... 

What art does — maybe what it does most completely — is tell us, make us feel that what we think we know, we don’t. There are whole worlds around us that we’ve never glimpsed.

...

I think we all have this little theatre on top of our shoulders, where the past and the present and our aspirations and our memories are simply and inevitably mixed. What makes each one of us unique, is the potency of the individual mix.

...

That’s what art does, that’s what it’s for — to show you that what you think can be erased, cancelled, turned on its head by something you weren’t prepared for — by a work, by a play, a song, a scene in a movie, a painting, a collage, a cartoon, an advertisement — something that has the power that reaches you far more strongly than it reaches the person standing next to you, or even anyone else on Earth — art that produces a revelation that you might not be able to explain or pass on to anyone else, a revolution that you desperately try to share in your own words, in your own work.

...

What’s the impulse behind art? It’s saying in whatever language is the language of your work, “If I could move you as much as it moved me … if I can move anyone a tenth as much as that moved me, if I can spark the same sense of mystery and awe and surprise as that sparked in me, well that’s why I do what I do.”

Judith Butler: 'What value do the humanities have?' McGill University - 2013

30 May 2013, McGill University, Montreal, Canada

I’m most honored to be here and would like to thank McGill University for conferring on me this honor. Je suis tres vraiment heureuse aujourd’hui d’etre a Montreal sur cette occasion. I come here thinking about you. Some of you are completing your education at this time, on the threshold of entering a new life or, at least, a different world. So it may well be a moment to reflect upon the importance of the kind of education you have received, and how you will bring it forward into the world you find and the world you help to make. I remember when I was in your position, I was always asked what good it would do to have majored in philosophy and to have spent all that other time studying literature. And now, most certainly, there are new voices of skepticism asking, What value do the humanities have? Are they useful? Can we measure their impact, their output, their profits?

I want to suggest to you that both of us are very lucky to have been able to take such courses, to learn to read carefully, with appreciation, and with a critical eye. To find ourselves unexpectedly in the middle of the ancient texts we read, but also to find ways of living, thinking, acting, and reflecting that belong to times and spaces we have never known. The humanities give us a chance to read across languages and cultural differences in order to understand the vast range of perspectives in and on this world. How else can we imagine living together without this ability to see beyond where we are, to find ourselves linked with others we have never directly known, and to understand that, in some abiding and urgent sense, we share a world?

Perhaps what we ourselves share today is a sense of the enduring value of careful interpretation and critical thinking, of backing up our claims with evidence, but also, perhaps, to become dislocated from our own cultural and historical perspectives only to return to them enriched by an understanding of other lives, with greater clarity and with knowledge of why and how people seek to know and make the world as they do. Ideally, we lose ourselves in what we read only to return to ourselves transformed, and part of a more expansive world. In short, we become more critical and more capacious in our thinking and in our acting.

It may not be altogether clear that studying the humanities and critical thinking has something to do with becoming a citizen, or becoming publicly engaged, or learning how best to change and to preserve this world. Yet these are precisely the immeasurable values that critical thinking brings to the university. We cannot quantify such knowledge without losing the very value that such knowledge has for us. Learning what it means to practice citizenship, and learning what it means to be without rights of citizenship, either having lost them, or never having been granted them in part or in full; learning, in other words, what it means to live in the shattered world of non-recognition, and how best to counter it, ethically, legally, and politically. As we know, an active and sensate democracy requires that we learn how to read well, not just texts, but images and sounds, to translate across languages, across forms of media, ways of performing, listening, acting, making art and theory. We have to continue to shake off what we sometimes think we know in order to lend our imaginations to vibrant and sometimes agonistic spectrums of experience: this is one part of the way toward understanding the global complexity of who we are.

This means, I think, that even as we seek to affirm ways of acting and transforming the world, we also have to affirm ways of being thoughtful, ways of reading, listening, learning: to continue learning, even as we leave the university, and to take those critical practices with us onto the street, into those spaces of work and love, and into our public lives. For as important as freedom of expression is—and it most surely is—so too it is important to know what it is we want to express, and why. And as important as freedom of assembly is—and it most surely is, as we saw so dramatically in Montreal’s student movement last year—it remains equally important to know why it is we assemble, and for what purpose. This means that even in the space of activism, there has to be time for reflection. And in the world of practical matters, there has to be a way to consider what we do, and why, and how it affects our world.

As much as the university is inevitably politicized—and we can think of many political issues: effective policies on sexual and racial harassment, funding for the study of native peoples, investment policies that damage the environment or contribute to the subjugation of others—the university is also a place where we can actually learn about gender, sexuality, the environment, race, indigeneity, economics and justice, to name but a few of those issues. I am made hopeful by the fact that you had this quite marvelous chance to take this time to learn, to question, and to discover, and that you could actually take the time to consider this world in which you live, and for which you now assume a rather awesome and exciting responsibility. You will need all those skills as you move forward, affirming this earth, our ethical obligations to live among those who are invariably different from ourselves, to demand recognition for our histories and our struggles at the same time that we lend that to others, to live our passions without causing harm to others, and to know the difference between raw prejudice and distortion, and sound critical judgment. The first steps toward non-violence, which is surely an absolute obligation we all bear, is to begin to think carefully and to ask others to do the same.

I thank you for your time, your willingness to hear, and for this great honor to be among you today on this special occasion. Je vous souhaite un avenir vivant et transformatrice. Merci bien pour votre patience. Merci.

Jake Bailey: 'None of us get out of life alive so be gallant, be great, be gracious,' Christchurch Boys High School, Senior Prizegiving - 2015

7 November, 2015, Christchurch, New Zealand

I wrote a speech and then a week before I was due to deliver it they said, you’ve got cancer. They said if you don’t get any treatment you’ll be dead in three weeks. And they told me that I wouldn’t be able to come and deliver this speech here tonight.

But luckily, that speech isn’t about what is to come - it’s about what an amazing year it has been. And you didn’t really expect me to write a whole new one from my hospital bed did you? It started like this:

"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

Bernard of Chartres compared us to dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants. He pointed out that we see more and further than our predecessors, not because we have keener vision, nor greater height, but because we are lifted up and borne aloft on their gigantic stature and knowledge. Thank you Christchurch Boys’ High School for the height you offer.

Tena koutou katoa. Good evening everyone, I am Jakob Ross Bailey - Senior Monitor of 2015.

To all the fine young men who have gone before me, and to the fine young men sitting before me, thank you for supporting me as your Senior Monitor this year. Yes, at times I have wondered whether I deserved this job. At times I have doubted I could get it done to the standard I thought it should be done to. But despite my fear, I have never stopped striving to be a leader who did not let you down. And consequently, I am grateful for what you have given to me in return. I want to share with you all some words which I hold particularly close to heart, words which meant a lot more to me this year than they ever could have before. “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

This job would not have been possible alone, and consequently I must thank a massive team. Firstly, to my deputies, Sam and Jesse. You have been solid and inspirational, strong where I was weak, and an amazing source of support. I always felt you had my back, and that made every day so much better. To the Monitors of 2015, I owe all of you so much. I treasure the connection I have had with each and every one of you. Thank you for accepting me into a group which I could have so easily not been accepted into, for giving me a chance, for the brotherhood that we have had. Maybe the best thing that this role has given me is a connection with you all I wouldn't have had otherwise, and it means more to me than you will ever know. As I said on Monitors Camp, you are all exceptional people of outstanding calibre, each and every one of you will go far, and I have learnt things from all of you.

I must acknowledge the sturdy leadership and support I have received from Mr Hill and the solid guidance received from Mr Fraser, Mr Williams and Mr Dunnett through this year. It has been at the core of how I have conducted myself this year, and at times I would have been very lost without your guidance. You have all taught me much, and I will carry it through life with me. Thank you for the opportunity you gave me, I hope I have done you proud.

I want to acknowledge the support I have received from, and sincerely thank the Old Boys. In particular I thank you Terry Donaldson and Jim Blair for being men of fine character who encouraged me to walk beside you, and I have been honoured to do so. The Old Boys helped me to grasp what 130 years of history means in action. What it means to value tradition, to appreciate our rich history and to comprehend the mark the Old Boys have made on the worlds of the military, the arts and culture, commerce, law, community service and sport. I have been privileged to be supported by these wise men who spoke softly about their accomplishments, and gently of how much we have to learn and to offer - and about the responsibility that comes with that privilege. And these are the words I wrote before they sat beside my hospital bed. Thank you.

Sadly, it has been both a short and long few years but here we are now, ready to move on men. We’ve worked hard to get to this point but haven’t done it by ourselves. As guys we become the type of men we are, not overnight, but as a result of our decisions, the choices we make, and those who surround and support us. And it is those people we need to thank.
To our teachers, thank you for sharing your talent and knowledge, and the occasional movie. What you did for us often went beyond the call of duty. You took the time to explain assignments, repeatedly because we weren't paying attention. You allowed us to come to you for extra help when you could have chosen not to. You put in effort to make lessons more interesting so we wouldn't just tune out. You demanded excellence from us whether or not we wanted to give it. And even to a bunch of teenage boys, it didn’t go unnoticed.

To our parents, thank you for supporting us in more ways than it's easy to reconcile. Not just this year passed, but for the last 13 years of school. Every day you dragged us out of bed, made sure we were semi-fed and clothed for school, herded us out the door. You helped us with homework, paid our class fees. You came to our various events, attended our sports matches and worked with the school as required. You commiserated over our daily dramas and were there for us, but you also gave us enough space to become the men we are today.
To those sport coaches who provided us with strong counsel and guidance, thank you for making school about more than just classwork. Through our sports, we’ve learned how to power on through adversity and give it our best effort, win or lose. We learned the importance of discipline and good sportsmanship, and how to work closely with others to achieve a common goal - and had a lot of fun doing it.

As you heard earlier, my middle name is Ross. I was given it not long before I was born because my 'great' uncle, Ross, drowned in Sri Lanka. Mr Ross Bailey was a Christchurch based kidney transplant surgeon working for the Asian Commission for the Global Advancement of Nephrology. He was known for making a serious difference to an extraordinary number of people's lives back when organ transplants were an amazing feat, and all humility aside, was
the best in the world at it - a true pioneer, the first person to perform a kidney transplant in New Zealand. He was also an Old Boy of Christchurch Boys’ High. He came from a working class background, the only one of his siblings to go to university and he went on to save numerous lives because, well, he could. Because he sought higher things. His funeral saw the Cathedral in the Square bursting at the seams with people he had helped. He had done so much in his short years giving life to the dying. He dared to make a difference. A graduate of CBHS, from a working class background putting Altiora Peto into action.

Now we can't all save lives by transplanting organs. But we can make a difference in our own way.

Christchurch Boys’ High supports academic, cultural and sporting success, and as a school we are exceptional in each and every one of those fields. But we can’t all be the best scholar achieving straight excellences or the best sportsman in the 1st XV, believe me. While we can’t be the best at everything or even at times, even anything, what we can choose is to have moral strength. Moral strength is another of the Boy’s High values. I wrote about this before I knew I had cancer. Now I have a whole new spin on it.

Moral strength is about making a conscious decision to be a person who doesn’t give up, when it would be easy to. To be lesser because the journey is less arduous. Jim Rohn said ‘Let others lead small lives, but not you. Let others argue over small things, but not you. Let others cry over small hurts, but not you. Let others leave their future in someone else's hands, but not you. Of course doing this will mean at some point we may have to face our fear of falling short. Fear of looking like a fool. Fear of not being enough. Being Senior Monitor meant facing these fears, most often daily’. But none of us get out of life alive so be gallant, be great, be gracious, be grateful for the opportunities you have. The opportunity to learn from the men who have walked before you and those that walk beside you.

CBHS, I have been absent for 3 weeks – could you please stop sending my mother texts asking if she knows where I am every morning. That aside, I have missed you all. For the last 5 years I have been proud to be a student who attended Christchurch Boys’ High School. And from today onwards for the rest of my life, I will be a proud Old Boy, giving back to those before me, as they have given to me.

My challenge to each of you, and to myself, is to continue to grow, to develop for the better. The future is truly in our hands. Forget about having long-term dreams. Let’s be passionately dedicated to the pursuit of short-term goals. Micro-ambitious. Work with pride on what is in front of us. We don’t know where we might end up. Or when it might end up.

Some of us will not cross paths again. Some of us will likely be seen on TV. Others in print. Some of us will also probably end up in prison. I have thoroughly enjoyed growing up with you all. It has been an honour and delight to share these years with you. I know that as I look out at all of you, I will measure my time here in the friendships I've enjoyed in these last years. Some were pretty casual and others were much closer but I'll remember each one fondly, as I'm sure you all will too. And when many of our high school memories begin to fade, that's ultimately how we may measure the time we spent here, not in the classes, or the lunchtimes,
or the exam results or years, but in the friendships that we made and the times we shared together.

And so here we stand. Our rule is over and it's up to the next class to step into our shoes and take over. I hope that those of you who follow will carry on a proud legacy. May the lads that follow benefit from the school’s work to replicate the hall and the community spirit that undeniably comes from sitting together, as one, strength and character of this mighty institution combined.

I don't know where it goes from here for any of us - for you, for anyone, and as sure as hell not for me. But I wish you the very best in your journey, and thank you for all being part of mine. Wherever we go and whatever we do, may we always be friends when we meet again.

Altiora Peto lads

Clare Wright: 'Be ambitious, be creative, take risks', Northcote High School - 2014

26 October, 2014, Northcote High School, Melbourne, Australia

In keeping with the spirit of reconciliation, I’d acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands on which we gather today, the Wurrundjeri people, and pay my respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging. I recognize that this has always been a place of teaching, learning and celebrating rites of passage.

I’d also like to thank Kate Morris for inviting me to give the valedictory speech tonight. It’s a great honour and a great pleasure to have the chance to join you all in this special milestone event.

I reckon I’m well placed in several respects to stand behind the microphone.

For one, I was myself a Year 12 students once, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and I well remember my own Graduation Night in this very room.  I thought it was boring and unnecessary and bloated to bursting by long-winded speeches delivered by pompous, self-satisfied adults giving well-meaning advice that I was sure we’d all forgot by the time we spilled out onto Swanston Street and tried to find an underage drink.

I’m also the parent of two kids at Northcote High, one who will be doing his Year 12 next year.   So I have some idea of the anxieties and pressures that beset today’s high school students, particularly at the pointy end of your secondary education.  I know from the inside what those uncertainties and misgivings about the next step look like.

And, because I work at a university, I’m actually on the front line of what does happen next in that great leap forward.  Not all of you will go on to a tertiary education, but most of you will experience not only the sense of elation in finally achieving some hard-won freedom and autonomy but also the disappointment and frustration of life’s inevitable crash landings.  I watch those first year students wave and flail around and bob up and down in the heaving tide of new experiences and expectations, but I’ve yet to see one drown.

So now that I’ve convinced you that I’m the right woman for the job tonight, or perhaps that I’m one of those smug windbags I abhorred when I was 17, let me begin.  I want to tell you a bit about me, a bit about you, and a bit about the country we live in.

First to me: my favourite topic.  I did my Year 12, or HSC as it was known then, at MacRobertson Girls High School in 1986.  (The Maths Methods students have just figured out I’m 45.)  I got straight A’s for my final exams, with a perfect 100% in English.  It was the last perfect thing I ever did, though it would take me until I was about 40 to realize that perfection wasn’t the goal.  I took a Gap Year, worked and lived in Canada, travelled in Europe on the money I made waitressing in Toronto.  I lied on my job application.  Told the restaurant manager I was 18 and knew how to make a good coffee.  (I was from Melbourne wasn’t I?)  I snogged boys and ate a lot of junk food.  From those experiences I learnt that it’s hard to make a good coffee, that it’s much easier to get boys to kiss you than to take you seriously, and that eating fast food was about as satisfying as being a fast girl. 

I came back to Australia and started an Arts/Law Degree at Melbourne Uni.  I did Law because that’s what you were expected to do if you got straight A’s in your Year 12 exams.  I spent a lot of the first semester of Uni crying.  I felt homesick in my own home and I hated Law.  (Well, I actually loved the intellectual rigour of Law as a discipline, but I could see that Law as a profession was going to right for me.)

But in the midst of that confusing, lonely year, I was very lucky.  I fell in love twice.  I fell in love with the boy who is now my husband and the father of my three children.  We’ve been together for 26 years, enjoying a relationship of true companionship, respect, conversation and humour.  I also fell in love with History, the Uni subject I most adored, despite the fact that I had no idea what I could possible do with it.  And I was fortunate for another reason: when I told my parents I wanted to drop Law and just study History, they told me to do whatever made me happy.  They told me to do what I must do, and do it well.  (I later discovered that’s a line out of a Bob Dylan song, but it was well chosen for the occasion.)

And so, that is what I have done.  I did an Honours degree in History, a Masters degree in History, a PhD and postdoctoral research in history.  I’ve published two history books and made two history documentaries for tv.  I’ve won awards and received numerous grants and scholarships.  But I also need you to know that my path to professional success and personal fulfillment hasn’t been all straight and narrow.  I’ve suffered periods of depression and anxiety, moments of profound despair, and run myself ragged in the attempt to be 100% in control and on top of my game.  I learnt the hard way that it’s ok to fail every once and a while.

I tell you all this because I’m sick to death of watching successful women either undermine their own achievements or blame themselves for every blemish. 

Girls, be proud of your accomplishments, don’t apologise for your strengths and talents, don’t be afraid to take up too much space, don’t be silent about your dreams and your grievances.  There is enough in our public culture to demean and trivialize you, and enough in even our own homes to threaten and belittle you, that you do not need to contribute to your own denigration.   And boys, trust the women around you.  They will be your friends, your workmates, your bosses, your lovers and your staunchest allies.  Give them credit where credit is due, and give yourself some credit too: credit for having the courage to swim against the tide of prejudice and discrimination that can so easily carry us away.

Since the death of Gough Whitlam earlier this week, there has been a lot of reflection about the legacy of this larger-than-life former Prime Minister.  Whitlam came to power at a time in Australia’s history when there was a great wave of restless energy and ambition, largely on the part of young people, to change the world that they had no choice but to live in.  The era was not unlike the gold rush period that my latest book is about: a youthful population who were angry about the fact that they had no right to participate in the institutions or systems of making the very laws that governed them.  Later, once men had secured democratic voting entitlements, women also began to fight for their rights to be heard, to be recognized, to be treated as full and equal citizens.  And in the 1960s white men and women came together to support indigenous Australians to also be included in the democratic process.  At this same time, young men were being sent off to fight a war that most Australians didn’t support – imagine that: instead of leaving school and going to uni or learning a trade or starting your own business, you are being shipped off to Vietnam whether you like it or not — and non-European people could still be excluded from entering the country under the legal framework of the White Australia Policy.  Successive conservative governments had turned a blind eye to the changes in the Australian population and the global movement towards social justice.

And then along came Gough – with the election campaign slogan IT’S TIME.  Time for a better, stronger, fairer Australia.  Time to use power to make a difference.  You will have heard a lot this week about his reforms: indigenous land rights, single mother’s pensions, free tertiary education.  But I want to read you some lines from one of my favourite of Whitlam’s speeches.  He said these words in Ballarat on 3 December 1973, while unveiling a newly restored Eureka Flag.

He said: “the kind of nationalism that every country needs … is a benign and constructive nationalism [that] has to do with self-confidence, with maturity, with originality, with independence of mind.  If Australia is to remain in the forefront of nations … if it is determined to be a true source of power and ideas in the world, a generous and tolerant nation respected for its generosity and tolerance, then I believe that something like ‘the new nationalism’ must play a part in our government and in the lives of us all”.

With his deeds in the parliament, and his carefully chosen words at moments like these, Whitlam created a vision of the sort of country Australia could be.  He wanted this country to be the BEST country it could be.  He didn’t try to instill fear and anxiety among the Australian people.  He didn’t say that it was okay to be a bigot or a racist or a homophobe or a sexist pig because what harm was there in a little fun right?  He didn’t try to set neighbor against neighbor; community against community, in the hope that a scared and vulnerable population would cling to the familiar terrain of what they already knew of the world and its ways.  “Better the devil you know”, goes the saying (or the Kylie Minogue song if you’d prefer), but that is such a monumentally unadventurous and conformist position from which to face life that no self-respecting teenager could ever agree.  “Workers of the world: you’ve got nothing to lose but your chains” is the aphorism I prefer.  If you don’t try to change the world, who will?

So what does all this have to do with you.  Gough Whitlam was the Prime Minister in 1972, long before you were born.  Ancient history.  And I’m certainly not trying to turn you all into Marxists.

But listen closely to Whitlam’s language: self-confidence, maturity, originality, independence of mind, generosity, tolerance.  These were all values and attributes that Whitlam wanted for Australia.  And as you make this tentative but inevitable leap from high school to the world of work and higher education, they are exactly the skills and outcomes I wish for each and every one of you.

Some, but not all, of you will be high flyers.  Few of you, I sincerely trust, will be low hanging fruit. You have been given far too good an education to resort to that.  Most of you will live quietly productive lives, making objects, making homes, making children, making money, making grand designs.  I hope more of you are producers than consumers.  You will be happier, believe me.  But all of you will have to make choices about what sort of person you want to be and what sort of a country you want to live in.

And here I have only one piece of advice: do what you must do, and do it well.

Be ambitious, be creative, take risks with your ideas, your philosophies, your opinions. Make mistakes, learn from them, reach out when you are flailing and throw others a line when you can see that they are not waving but drowning too.

In other words, be your best self.  It’s all — and everything — you can be.