The Best Commencement Speeches of All Time
Winston Churchill at the Harrow School, 1941
"Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty-never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense," Churchill told students at his alma mater prep school.
John F. Kennedy at American University, 1963
Amidst an escalating arms race with the Soviet Union, the President urged graduates to work for world peace. "Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it is unreal. We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade; therefore, they can be solved by man," he said. "And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings."
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Oberlin College, 1965
As they prepared to blaze a trail in the real world, King reminded grads to look out for one another along the way, too: "All I'm saying is simply this: that all mankind is tied together; all life is interrelated, and we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."
Nora Ephron at Wellesley College, 1996
With her signature wit, Ephron told her fellow alumna they didn't have the excuses her generation did to avoid making a splash in the world, as they spent their college years searching for knowledge, not husbands. "Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim," she said. "It will be a little messy, but embrace the mess. It will be complicated, but rejoice in the complications. It will not be anything like what you think it will be like, but surprises are good for you. And don't be frightened: you can always change your mind."
Conan O'Brien at Harvard University, 2000
"The last time I was invited to Harvard it cost me $110,000," the 1985 alumnus joked during his Class Day speech, "so you'll forgive me if I'm a bit suspicious." O'Brien recognized his young audience's ambition would also be a vulnerability, noting his own personal stumbles after graduation, and the years of self-doubt. "As graduates of Harvard, your biggest liability is your need to succeed, your need to always find yourself on the sweet side of the bell curve. Success is a lot like a bright white tuxedo. You feel terrific when you get it, but then you're desperately afraid of getting it dirty, of spoiling it," he said. "Know that your mistakes are your own unique way of getting to where you need to be."
Bono at the University of Pennsylvania, 2004
"You have worked your ass off for this. Your pockets are full, even if your parents' are empty, and now you've got to figure out what to spend it on," Bono told the alums, encouraging them to disrupt the status quo. "The future is not fixed, it's fluid. The world is more malleable than you think and it's waiting for you to hammer it into shape. That's what this degree of yours is, a blunt instrument. So go forth and build something with it."
David Foster Wallace at Kenyon College, 2005
The late novelist and Amherst alum gave what many people consider to be the best commencement speech of all time. (It was later published in This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life and videos of the speech got millions of views.) Wallace made a case that, at best, a liberal arts education gives you insight into how you perceive others, find meaning, and act compassionately in the world. "The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day." The whole speech is like that: Deep, funny, and irreverant. "'Learning how to think' really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think.It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.Because if you cannot or will not exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed."
Steve Jobs at Stanford University, 2005
Addressing the class of 2005 while battling the cancer that would eventually kill him, the Apple founder and CEO compelled his audience to make the most of what they had and remain true to themselves. "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition... Stay hungry, stay foolish."
Bill Gates at Harvard University, 2007
Finally (and officially) receiving his Harvard degree 30 years after dropping out to start Microsoft, Gates implored the assemblage to work not only for professional success, but for a better society. "You graduates are coming of age in an amazing time. As you leave Harvard, you have technology that members of my class never had. You have awareness of global inequity, which we did not have. And with that awareness, you likely also have an informed conscience," he said. "You have more than we had; you must start sooner, and carry on longer. Knowing what you know, how could you not?"
J.K. Rowling at Harvard University, 2008
The author reflected on the dark years of her life before Harry Potter, pressing the students to never lose hope. "It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all-in which case, you fail by default. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity."
Madeleine Albright at Knox College, June 2008
Speaking at the historic Old Main, the only building remaining from the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates where Lincoln championed the protections of the Declaration of Independence for all Americans, the former Secretary of State challenged the students to act on his legacy of righteousness. "If your faculty has done its job, and I am sure it has, you will leave here with a gift far more valuable than knowledge... You will greet every easy answer with a question, every glib assumption with a challenge, and every example of complacency with a burning passion to solve hard problems," she said.
Jeff Bezos at Princeton University, 2010
The Amazon founder told the crowds to make every decision one they could take pride in. "When you are 80 years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices. Build yourself a great story."
Stephen Colbert at Northwestern University, 2011
Alumni and former theater major Colbert joked of his undergrad days and stressed the newest class to have humor, no matter what roles they played on life's stage. "You cannot win improv and life is an improvisation. You have no idea what is going to happen next and you are mostly just making up things as you go along," he said.
Michelle Obama at Eastern Kentucky University, 2013
A first-generation college student herself, the First Lady told the class of 2013 that the determination that fueled their undergrad years would motivate them for the rest of their lives. Recalling her own early days at Princeton, she said, "I realized that what really mattered wasn't how much money my parents made or what those people in my high school said about me. What mattered was what was in my mind and what was in my heart. So my four years in school gave me the confidence to know that if I could make it on a college campus, I could make it anywhere."
George Saunders at Syracuse University, 2013
Author Saunders told the graduates to think bravely, act largely, and tackle the big questions without fear. "Do the ambitious things-travel, get rich, get famous, innovate, lead, fall in love, make and lose fortunes, swim in wild jungle rivers-but as you do, to the extent that you can, err in the direction of kindness."
Admiral William McRaven at University of Texas at Austin, 2015
The decorated Navy SEAL Admiral shared what he knew about survival at his alma mater and preached the value of making your bed, appreciating friends who help you paddle through difficult waters, and singing when you're up to your neck in trouble. Why? "If you can't do the little things right, you will never do the big things right," McRaven said. "Know that life is not fair and that you will fail often, but if you step up when the times are toughest, then the generations that follow will live in a world far better than the one we have today."
Meredith Viera at Boston University, 2015
Viera delighted crowds when she said, "Don't ever be a conformist just for convenience's sake," and brought out a gyrating shark, making a nod to Katy Perry's free-styling backup dancer who stole the Super Bowl XLIX halftime show. "As you travel through life, I hope you leave deep footprints behind," she said, "not as a result of all the people you've stepped on to get ahead, but rather as a result of all the lives you have lifted along the way."
Barack Obama at Howard University, 2016
Given the divisive political climate, the president sounded surprisingly upbeat when he delivered the commencement address at Howard on May 7th. "America is a better place today than it was when I graduated from college," he said. He went on to make an impassioned plea for political cooperation and mutual respect: "If you think that the only way forward is to be as uncompromising as possible, you will feel good about yourself, you will enjoy a certain moral purity, but you're not going to get what you want. And if you don't get what you want long enough, you will eventually think the whole system is rigged. And that will lead to more cynicism, and less participation, and a downward spiral of more injustice and more anger and more despair. And that's never been the source of our progress. That's how we cheat ourselves of progress."
