Famous Commencement Speeches

The commencement ceremony affirms each student's search for knowledge. It often includes a graduation speech which seeks to put their recent hard (or not so hard) work into the context of their future. Many of us hear one or two commencement addresses as graduates or listen to a handful as spectators. Yet -- as we graduate from one year to another, one relationship to another, one experience to another -- we always are learning.
Though these myriad departures and arrivals of everyday existence are seldom met with ceremony, words traditionally reserved for momentous occasions may ring true and inspirational at any hour. That's why we created this unique archive of commencement addresses, selecting an eclectic menu of twenty nine extraordinary speeches from the thousands that we have reviewed since beginning work on this initiative in 1989.
Though some of these wonderful remarks were given decades ago, we believe they are as relevant and important, perhaps increasingly so, as the more current speeches. Thus we encourage you to read them all, recognizing and celebrating your own constant commencement into tomorrow, finding ways to place it firmly within the context of progress for all humankind.

- Tony Balis
INDEX OF OUTSTANDING SPEECHES FROM 1936 TO 2008
Barack Obama
"Make Us Believe Again"Wesleyan University, 2008
Barbara Kingsolver
"Your Money or Your Life"Duke University, 2008
Bill Gates
"Great Expectations"Harvard University, 2007
Alice Greenwald
"Why Does Memory Matter?"Sarah Lawrence College, 2007
Ken Burns
"A Vanguard Against this New Separatism"Georgetown University, 2006
Steve Jobs
"Find What You Love "Stanford University, 2005
Thomas L. Friedman
"Listen to Your Heart "Williams College, 2005
Toni Morrison
"Be Your Own Story "Wellesley College, 2004
Bono
"That's not a cause. That's an emergency."University of Pennsylvania, 2004
Lewis Lapham
"Merlin's Owl"St. John's College - Annapolis, 2003
Wally Lamb
"What do Novelists Know?"Connecticut College, 2003
Martha C. Nussbaum
"Compassion and Global Responsibility"Georgetown University, 2003
Daniel S. Goldin
"Gallileo and the Search for Truth"Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2001
Madelaine K. Albright
University of California, Berkeley, 2000with response from Fadia Rafeedie, a Palestinian student
Desmond Tutu
"Fly, Eagle, Fly!"Brandeis University, 2000
Aung San Suu Kyi
Bucknell University, 1999
Richard N. Kaplan
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1999
The Dalai Lama
"Education and the warm heart"Emory University, 1998
Roger Rosenblatt
"Get A Job"Brigham Young University, 1998
Elie Wiesel
"Learning and Respect" DePaul University, 1997
Russell Baker
"10 Ways to Avoid Mucking Up the World Any Worse Than It Already Is."Connecticut College, 1995
Vaclav Havel
"Civilization's Thin Veneer"Harvard University, 1995
Gordon Matthew Sumner
Berklee College of Music, 1994
Romulus Linney
Oberlin Collge, 1994
Cornel West
Wesleyan University, 1993
Robert E. Leestamper
Richmond College, London, 1989
Meg Greenfield
"A Better Truth"Williams College, 1987
Gloria Steinem
Tufts University, 1987
Margaret Atwood
University Of Toronto, 1983
Ursula Le Guin
"A Left-Handed Commencement Address"Mills College, 1983
Alan Alda
"The Wilderness of Your Intuition "Connecticut College, 1980
William Gass
"Learning to Talk"Washington University, 1979
Theodor Seuss Geisel
"My Uncle Terwilliger on the Art of Eating Popovers"Commencement poem at Lake Forest College, 1977
John F. Kennedy
American University, 1963
George C. Marshall
"The Marshall Plan"Harvard University, 1947
William Allen White
Northwestern University, 1936