Education

You are not your circumstance. Where you start out in life doesn't have to determine where you'll end up or just how far you can go. Only you can determine your distance.

You're the most progressive, best-educated, least prejudiced, most open generation in American history.

Expertise is powerful, but love always wins.

Allow that diploma you're receiving today to be a reminder of who you are and what you want. Let it be a guiding light that always brings you back to this day — when you were proud of yourself, when you were at the height of hope.

By reading, you can have lunch with Ben Franklin, or every great personality in the history of the world. You can in fact have a very long lunch with them.

You cannot dream of becoming something you do not know about. You have to learn to dream big.

Education has a more important value than money. It is deeply important to our growth as people and as a community.

Your piece of paper not only says where you were educated, but who you were educated with. It declares that you are a member of a community of people to be relied upon, to take risks, provoke thought, and to be committed participants in this world.

You always have a goddess of wisdom in your corner. It is your education. It is your experience. It is the incredible lessons you have learned right here.

I wish someone had told me at my own commencement that the one and only requirement for graduation was that I had to emerge out of the closed, cordoned-off space of my own head. I had to learn to listen.

Talk about your accomplishments. Be humble, but not too humble. Don't be invisible.

There is no humanity without education. There is no education without demand.