Long

We were all put on this earth to serve others. Sometimes the more successful you get, people tend to forget that. Don't forget, no matter how successful you become, to serve others.

Ask for guidance before you commit the crime. Trust me, it is much less embarrassing to ask for help privately than to beg for forgiveness at graduation.

All of us are here today because somebody helped us. And now it's our job to help others. And that is education, and that is human progress in its simplest form.

We are all Pinocchio. We go out into the world filled with good intentions, with a vision. We are pulled this way and that. We falter. We make mistakes. But the little flame inside, no matter what we go through, will not be extinguished.

Build a good name. Let your name radiate yourself, magnify who you are, your good deeds, your code of honor. Build your name and as you go through life, your name will serve you.

We're all strapped in, seated together on a gigantic ball whirling around the sun at 67,000 miles per hour, nested in a galaxy hurtling through the depths of space and time at 1.3 million miles per hour.

What if I told you that you are about to embark on a great adventure, that you will be given all the proper equipment for this adventure — food, clothing, shelter. And what if I told you further that you will have about eight decades to complete this adventure, and that every day you will be able to discover something new along your path.

The kind of ideas she lives with. Think of it. Not what happens to her, not love affairs or good career breaks, but what she thinks about.

Education is about absorbing what others have learned and created and believe, but it is also about our responses to those concepts and those convictions.

You are about to experience the first taste of freedom in your life and that won't be freedom from your parents. You are about to be free from yourself, your old self, the self of your youth. You are, in many ways, about to be born.

Be different, be smart, but most of all accept that heavy torch from me and my generation: be the future. Believe that within you is the ability to always make it a better place than this one.

Whatever blocks you encounter, you have learned that there is a way over, around or through them. It is not those obstacles that inhibit your progress but your confidence, and will to break the inertia of fear and doubt.