Havel's conclusion wove together the personal and the political. He noted that the United States 'now bears probably the greatest responsibility for the direction our world will take' and warned against isolationism by citing three historical failures: the late entry into World War I, the appeasement of Hitler before World War II, and FDR's acquiescence to Stalin's division of the world. But the speech ended with disarming intimacy. Havel revealed that his mother had always dreamed he would study at Harvard — 'Fate did not permit me to fulfill her dream. But something else happened, something that would never have occurred even to my mother: I have received a doctoral degree at Harvard without even having to study here.' The final image was of his mother looking down from heaven, 'thinking that I'm sticking my nose into matters that only people who have properly studied political science at Harvard have the right to stick their noses into.'