Graduation

You cannot flourish without a larger purpose. And that's lucky in a way, because our society cannot flourish without your reaching for a larger purpose, either.

If you find yourself in a place where you stop caring — where your greatest concern becomes only you — get out of there.

People often say find your passion. But there's more to it than that. Not all passions are enough. Just existing for your desires feels empty and insufficient, because our desires are fleeting and insatiable. You need a loyalty.

What gnaws at you? And what will you do about it?

We are not so good. We are humans, and, as such, we are, without our quite knowing it, always living at least partly in the dark.

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

Work hard, like, every waking hour. That's the thing I would say, particularly if you're starting a company.

Focus on signal over noise. A lot of companies get confused — they spend money on things that don't actually make the product better.

Don't just follow the trends. Think in terms of the physics approach of first principles — rather than reasoning by analogy, you boil things down to the most fundamental truths you can imagine and you reason up from there.

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.

We're the lucky ones, and we can never forget that we didn't get where we are today all on our own. We got here because of so many people who toiled and sweat and bled and died for us. We owe them.

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.