The Greatest Commencement Addresses of All Time
INSPIRATIONAL, 2 Jun 2014
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service
Kurt Vonnegut, J.K. Rowling, David Foster Wallace, Patti Smith, Anna Quindlen, Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey, Ellen Degeneres, and more.
The commencement address is the secular sermon of our time — a packet of timeless advice on life, dispensed by a podium-perched patronly or matronly shaman of wisdom to a congregation of eager young minds about to enter the so-called “real world.” But the genre’s finest specimens speak to all of us looking for some guidance on the path to the Good Life, transcending boundaries of age or occupation or life-stage. The best commencement speeches are also masterworks of paradox: On the one hand, they gently remind us that what we think we know, we don’t; on the other, they urge us to trust our deepest intuitions about confidence, kindness, integrity, and all those embarrassingly elemental truths which, in all other contexts, our culturally conditioned cynicism leads us to dismiss as tired truisms. But not here — the commencement address is society’s most potent mechanism for clearing the clouds of our cynicism just long enough to allow a few rays of receptivity to shine through, long enough to hang our beliefs and vulnerabilities and hopes on something solid and soul-affirming, and to do so in a non-ironic way.
Gathered in this ongoing archive are the best commencement addresses I’ve encountered over the years — words of wisdom that offer such rare respite, a source of sincere solace for us cynical moderns. Please enjoy.
PLEASE READ THE 25 COMMENCEMENT ADDRESSES IN THE ORIGINAL – brainpickings.org
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 2 Jun 2014.
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