Long

For the most important decisions in your life, trust your intuition, and then work with everything you have, to prove it right.

Find allies rather than adorers. Adorers will point out everything you do well. Allies will also be honest with you when they feel you are making mistakes or not living up to your potential.

Do something you're not ready to do. In pushing through that discomfort you'll learn a lot more about yourself. You'll learn to do something you didn't think you could do, or you'll learn where your limits are. Either is valuable.

Growth has been the great alleviator of poverty. Growth has been the engine of social mobility. Growth is the key ingredient in the glue that holds our society together.

The elevation of appearance over substance, of celebrity over character, of short-term gain over lasting achievement is precisely what your generation needs to help end.

It's moments like these that force us to try harder, to dig deeper, and to discover gifts we never knew we had — to find the greatness that lies within each of us.

Great necessities call out great virtues. We live in a time of great necessities — a time when we cannot avoid the burdens of global leadership.

The earth couldn't afford to send any recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint.

If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren't pessimistic, you don't understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and you aren't optimistic, you haven't got a pulse.

Imagination is cultivated, above all, by courses in the arts and humanities. It is in some ways the most essential of all, if we are to work toward a world in which we see distant lives as spacious and deep.

Always remember that the moments we have with friends and family, the chances we have to make a difference in the world — all those wonderful chances that life gives us, life also takes away. It can happen fast, and a whole lot sooner than you think.

Do not confuse dreams with wishes. Dreams are where you visualize yourself being successful at what's important to you to accomplish. Dreams build convictions because you work hard to pay the price to make sure that they come true. Wishes are hoping good things will happen to you, but there's no fire in your gut.