Education

Revolutions not in arms but in minds — more powerful and permanent and pervasive.

If this day means anything, it means that you are now in the contingent of the responsible.

No dream is too big, no vision is too bold; as long as we stay hungry for education and let that hunger be our North Star, there is nothing, graduates, nothing that we cannot achieve.

Education is still the key to real and lasting freedom — it is still true today. So it is now up to us to cultivate that hunger for education in our own lives and in those around us.

That fairness that my parents and I take for granted, that many Americans take for granted, is in many ways resting on your shoulders to uphold. You represent those who will make laws and effect change.

The right reason to go to college is so you can find new ways to awe yourself by reflecting on how fascinating the world we live in is. We are actually on a giant rock hurling through space. It's a crazy interesting world we are living in.

Trees, as it turns out, grow out of the air, not out of the ground! That is a beautiful thing to contemplate. And getting the special glasses that allow me to look at the world this way, well for me, that is a really good reason that I went to college.

Ideally, we lose ourselves in what we read only to return to ourselves transformed, and part of a more expansive world.

Your diploma is really not a ticket to show off what you know. You know what it really is? It's permission to admit to yourself how much you still have yet to learn.

Education does begin in the home, not in the schools. In the first weeks of life, there comes a moment when a child hears its mother's voice and knows that it's his mother. At that point, the brain shuts out all other languages and only listens to the mother's language. At that moment, education begins.

The positive revolutions are not going to be caused by generals and politicians. They are going to be caused by innovators like you.

You leave this school as well-armed for battle as anyone is. Now you actually have to go do it.