More from Jimmy Tingle

If I could get the help I needed to get a B minus in statistics at graduate school at Harvard, there is hope for world peace.

JT

Jimmy Tingle

Harvard University Commencement 2010, 2010

9:09

Video starts at 9:09 — the moment this quote was spoken

The Story Behind This Quote

Tingle built to this punchline—which doubled as a sincere thesis statement—after describing the unlikely community that formed in his statistics study sessions. Students from nations in conflict had come together, set aside their differences, and helped one another succeed. Some even earned A's. Tingle himself, after attending every single extra help session, managed a B minus—which, he noted in the spirit of honesty, was a 'minor miracle.' The line brought the house down, but it carried real weight. If a comedian who'd spent his youth stealing bicycles from Harvard Yard could, decades later, pass statistics at the Kennedy School with the help of people from across the world's most entrenched divides, then perhaps the seemingly impossible challenges facing humanity weren't so impossible after all. It was classic Tingle: wrapping a hopeful, humanistic message inside a perfectly constructed joke.

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