Education

These international students are our true hope. They will become our ambassadors of change, the ambassadors of democratic freedoms and the rights for higher education, and they will become our future leaders.

For kids like me who couldn't articulate what they needed to do, the arts were my way of speaking. For people who may not be able to say exactly what they mean, they can draw it. It's a way of communicating, and if we cut it off then we are more than barbarians, because we know better.

That is the story of Spelman College — that unyielding presumption of promise, that presumption of brilliance, that presumption that every woman who enrolls at this school has something infinitely valuable to offer this world. And ladies, that is now your story. That legacy is now your inheritance.

It's your curiosity and enthusiasm that will get you noticed and make your life interesting — not your grade point average.

Fight them back with facts. Because facts matter. There are standards of truth, and we should demand nothing less.

A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste.

Education has a public value. Your education will not only bring you a bigger paycheck. It will enable you to be a better fellow citizen, more productive, better able to participate in solving the challenges I and my peers have not been able to conquer.

Our education is under attack — what do we do? Fight back.

All of us are here today because somebody helped us. And now it's our job to help others. And that is education, and that is human progress in its simplest form.

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.

This education is a gift that you will be unwrapping for the rest of your life.

The kind of ideas she lives with. Think of it. Not what happens to her, not love affairs or good career breaks, but what she thinks about.