Read some
of the most interesting and popular commencement speeches of all time.
George
Saunders at the Graduation Ceremony 2013 in Syracuse University
"Be kind."
"What I regret most in my life are failures of
kindness," Saunders said. "Those moments when another human being was
there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded ... sensibly. Reservedly.
Mildly."
Do those things that incline you toward the big questions,
and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial. That luminous
part of you that exists beyond personality -- your soul, if you will -- is as bright
and shining as any that has ever been.
President Barack Obama, Morehouse Graduation
Ceremony 2013
"My whole life, I've tried to be for Michelle and my
girls what my father was not for my mother and me."
"Sometimes I wrote off my own failings as just another
example of the world trying to keep a black man down"
"I had a tendency sometimes to make excuses for me not
doing the right thing. But one of the things that all of you have learned over
the last four years is there's no longer any room for excuses"
Neil
Gaiman, University of the Arts 2012
"When
things get tough, this is what you should do. Make good art."
“A
freelance life, a life in the arts, is sometimes like putting message in
bottles, on a desert island, and hoping that someone will find one of your
bottles and open it and read it, and put something in a bottle that will wash
its way back to you: appreciation, or a commission, or money, or love."
"People
keep working, in a freelance world ... because their work is good, and because
they are easy to get along with, and because they deliver the work on time. And
you don't even need all three. Two out of three is fine"
Here is an example of a funny commencement address:
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