Dana Gioia, the renowned poet and chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, delivered a passionate defense of the arts in his 2007 commencement address at Stanford University, his alma mater. After spending the bulk of his speech documenting the decline of arts education and the commodification of American culture, Gioia arrived at this declaration—a thesis statement for everything he believed. Gioia argued that art is not a luxury or decoration, but a fundamental way of knowing the world that stands alongside science and philosophy. Art addresses us in the 'fullness of our being,' he said, simultaneously speaking to intellect, emotions, intuition, imagination, memory, and physical senses. There are truths about life, he insisted, that can only be expressed as stories, songs, or images—truths that no equation or argument can capture.