Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls.
speech graduation growth
Ursula K. Le Guin
Mills College Commencement 1983, 1983
You are going out. You will meet suffering. You will meet humiliation. You will meet sorrow. You will meet joy. You will meet success. You will be wanted. You will be unwanted. You will be loved. You will not be loved. All that is part of Jesus' fate.
speech graduation resilience
Mother Teresa
Niagara University Commencement 1982, 1982
Hunger is not only for a piece of bread. Hunger is for love. Nakedness is not only for a piece of cloth. Nakedness is for human dignity. Homelessness is not only for a home made of bricks. Homelessness is being rejected, unwanted, unloved.
speech graduation empathy
Mother Teresa
Niagara University Commencement 1982, 1982
I have lived like an animal in the street, but I am going to die like an angel, loved and cared for.
speech graduation love
Mother Teresa
Niagara University Commencement 1982, 1982
We all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.
speech graduation empathy
John F. Kennedy
American University Commencement 1963, 1963
Through our scientific genius we have made of this world a neighborhood; now through our moral and spiritual genius we must make of it a brotherhood.
speech graduation empathy
Martin Luther King Jr.
Morehouse College Commencement 1959, 1959
The divisions between us are artificial and transient. Our common humanity is God-made and enduring.
speech graduation empathy
Dwight Eisenhower
Penn State Commencement 1955, 1955
Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much death or nonentity. Benevolence is absolute and real. So much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he.
speech graduation philosophy
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Harvard Divinity School Address 1838, 1838
Go alone; refuse the good models, even those which are sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil.
speech graduation independence
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Harvard Divinity School Address 1838, 1838