DeFrantz closed her Connecticut College address with this four-part declaration that wove together the threads of her speech — education, integrity, courage, and self-belief. She had shown the graduates how critical thinking had served her at every turning point: from writing her first ten-page essay with embarrassingly wide margins, to questioning why she was demoted to junior varsity, to challenging the U.S. government's Olympic boycott in federal court. Quoting both Harriet Tubman ('I had reasoned this out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death') and Benjamin Franklin ('Anyone who would sacrifice liberty for temporary security deserves neither'), DeFrantz placed the graduates' choice in a long American tradition of individuals who refused to be silent when silence was easier.