Purpose

Try to remember that every one of you is a star of your own. If you pay attention to others and extend a helping hand to those in need, you will be a star in someone else's life.

In every career, your job is to make and tell stories. You will build a body of work, but you will also build a body of affection—the people you've helped and who've helped you back.

Your career as human beings and as Americans and as graduates of Yale is to stand on the fulcrum between fear and faith—fear at your back, faith in front of you. Which way will you lean? Which way will you move? Move forward. Ever forward.

At least I get to pursue what I want. That's something not to take for granted—the actual pursuit of happiness.

You have so much power, so much opportunity. Make sure this education, this amazing gift, doesn't go to waste.

These international students are our true hope. They will become our ambassadors of change, the ambassadors of democratic freedoms and the rights for higher education, and they will become our future leaders.

May you thrive in a way that enhances the justice, and the safety, and the dignity of every person who has made the clothes that you are wearing today.

Pessimists do not change the world. They don't think it's worth the trouble. But you can.

That is the story of Spelman College — that unyielding presumption of promise, that presumption of brilliance, that presumption that every woman who enrolls at this school has something infinitely valuable to offer this world. And ladies, that is now your story. That legacy is now your inheritance.

All of mankind's problems are due to the fact that we do not know what we are and cannot agree on what we wish to become.

Go forth. Think. Save the world.

It is the ultimate luxury to combine passion and contribution. It's also a very clear path to happiness.