In a society that systematically limits feelings, I hope you will not be afraid to fight for them.
speech graduation authenticity
Meredith Monk
Sarah Lawrence College Commencement 1985, 1985
That choice, between the devil and the dream, comes up every day in different little disguises. I'm sure it comes up in every field of endeavor and every life.
speech graduation authenticity
Meryl Streep
Vassar College Commencement 1983, 1983
Integrate what you believe into every single area of your life. Take your heart to work, and ask the most and best of everybody else too.
speech graduation authenticity
Meryl Streep
Vassar College Commencement 1983, 1983
BE BOLD, BE BOLD, BE BOLD. Keep on reading. And remember when you hear yourself saying you don't have time anymore to read — then you're getting old. That means they got to you, after all.
speech graduation courage
Susan Sontag
Wellesley College Commencement 1983, 1983
That choice, between the devil and the dream, comes up every day in different little disguises.
speech graduation courage
Meryl Streep
Vassar College Commencement 1983, 1983
You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You can't get there by bus, only by hard work and risk and by not quite knowing what you're doing. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover will be yourself.
speech graduation courage
Alan Alda
Connecticut College Commencement 1980, 1980
You cannot afford to think of being here to receive an education: you will do much better to think of being here to claim one.
speech graduation independence
Adrienne Rich
Douglass College Commencement 1977, 1977
Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you; it means learning to respect and use your own brains and instincts; hence, grappling with hard work.
speech graduation independence
Adrienne Rich
Douglass College Commencement 1977, 1977
It means insisting that work be as meaningful as love and friendship in our lives. It means, therefore, the courage to be different.
speech graduation courage
Adrienne Rich
Douglass College Commencement 1977, 1977
Our problems are manmade — therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.
speech graduation courage
John F. Kennedy
American University Commencement 1963, 1963
The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough — more than enough — of war and hate and oppression.
speech graduation courage
John F. Kennedy
American University Commencement 1963, 1963
Those who discovered and pioneered this land had to have rare qualities of courage and imagination, nor did these qualities stop there. Even the modern-day immigrants have been possessed of courage beyond that of their neighbors — the courage to tear up centuries-old roots and leave their homelands, to come to this land where even the language was strange.
speech graduation courage
Ronald Reagan
Eureka College Commencement 1957, 1957