“Sometime when you’re talking up a storm so brilliant, so charming that you can hardly believe how wonderful you are, pause just a moment and listen to yourself. It’s good for the soul to hear yourself as others hear you, and next time maybe, just maybe, you will not talk so much, so loudly, so brilliantly, so charmingly, so utterly shamefully foolishly.” — Russell Baker, Commencement Address to the Connecticut College Class of 1995 (1995-05-27)
“True liberty is founded upon a lively sense of the rights of others and a fighting conviction that the rights of others must be maintained.” — William Allen White, “Duty in a Democracy,” commencement address at Northwestern (1937-06-12)
“I have often gone to masquerades as myself, and in that guise no one knew I was there.” — William H. Gass, “Learning to Talk,” Commencement address for Washington University’s Class of 1979 (1979-05-18)
“If you simply cannot resist being an incompetent klutz, don’t boast about it by wearing a tee shirt that says ‘underachiever and proud of it.’ Being dumb is not the worst thing in the world, but letting your clothes shout it out loud depresses the neighbors and embarrasses your parents.” — Russell Baker, Commencement Address to the Connecticut College Class of 1995 (1995-05-27)
“Improving your odds doesn’t guarantee success.” — Bill Gates, Remarks of Bill Gates, Harvard Commencement 2007 (2007-06-07)
“If it’s true that this is the best time of your life, if you have already lived or are now living at this age the best years, or if the next few turn out to be the best, then you have my condolences. Because you’ll want to remain here, stuck in these so-called best years, never maturing, wanting only to look, to feel and be the adolescent that whole industries are devoted to forcing you to remain.” — Toni Morrison, Commencement Address to the Wellesley College Class of 2004 (2004-05-28)
“The daily activities that contribute most to happiness are having dinner with friends and having sex. The daily activity that detracts most from happiness is commuting. Have more sex. Commute less.” — David Brooks, “What Me Worry,” Commencement Address, Indiana University (2013-05-03)
“They taught me that the truth would make me free but failed to warn me of the kind of trouble I’d get into by trying to tell it – I remain duly grateful.” — Margaret Atwood, “Attitude,” Commencement Address, University Of Toronto, 14 June 1983
“Leave it to others to have doubts about you.” — Callie Khouri, Commencement Address, Sweet Briar College (22 May 1994)
“One of the wisest things I learned in college was something that I read on a bathroom wall, which I know is a pretty sad statement, but one that taught me to take your wisdom where you can find it.” — Callie Khouri, Commencement Address, Sweet Briar College (22 May 1994)
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