Graduation

I speak because I think our time on earth is short and each moment that we are not our truest selves, each moment we pretend to be what we are not, each moment we say what we do not mean because we imagine that is what somebody wants us to say, then we are wasting our time on earth.

We cannot always bend the world into the shapes we want, but we can try. We can make a concerted and real and true effort. Always just try, because you never know.

We always move forward when we say we can make this table bigger.

You don't get redrawn in this life. You summon the hero, each day. On your best day.

Adversity is a necessary and important part of life. Adversity strengthens each of us in ways that success cannot.

As you get older, you realize that no one has all the answers. It turns out that life is an exercise in living with the certainty of uncertainty.

There is no adversity capable of stopping you once the choice to persevere is made.

Whereas children here had ghosts and the boogeyman, our equivalents were our governments.

In bringing the president to me, in having me speak to and question a shaper of history and experience the value he saw in my view, Harvard would make me feel I too could be him. I too had the power to shape history and not just be passively shaped by it.

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

Perhaps this self you've been treasuring for so long is itself the work of many hands.

It's not even a question of ethics or self-sacrifice or moral high ground, it's actually totally selfish. Being with people, doing for people, it's going to bring you joy. Unexpectedly, it just feels better.