毕业典礼英语演讲稿
演讲稿具有观点鲜明，内容具有鼓动性的特点。在快速变化和不断变革的新时代，演讲稿的使用频率越来越高，还是对演讲稿一筹莫展吗？以下是小编为大家收集的毕业典礼英语演讲稿，仅供参考，大家一起来看看吧。
毕业典礼英语演讲稿1
Esteemed Ladies and Gentlemen, distinguished guest, good morning. I am excited to address you on this stage today. On behalf of all the graduates of Shandong University’s School of Information and technology, I would like to thank all the people who cared about and encouraged us as we worked towards our goals. Especially, I would like to thank my parents. It is they who give me great strength for my every steps taken in my life.
Four years ago, at an age when some youngster farming and harvesting, at an age some coevals handing a rifle to defend our country, at the age of 19 or 20, we determined to unravel the secrets of mathematics and the mysteries of the inexhaustibly running charges. That was my dream; that was, is, and will be one of the most important choices of my life.
Four years is too long for a ten-year old boy, for it means four birthday cakes and 20 centimeters taller. But for us, it runs too fast to catch up with. However, so many signals strongly prove that the four years definitely exists: piles of books, scholarships in our account, the unforgettable breathtaking view of our campus, songs and laughter in our dormitory, friends sharing the same ambitions, and our first sweet love… Ladies and Gentlemen, as we leave this campus, a new page has been unraveled. It is time to break the bad habit of expecting something for nothing. Let us take more responsibility, not only for ourselves and families but for our society and country. Ladies and Gentlemen, there is
no doubt that we are facing one of the most serious economical crises in our history. In order to achieve our goal and to renew our country, we must meet challenges abroad as well as at home. In this new century, let us begin to make contribution to the world and to all human beings with energy and hope with faith and discipline. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up the enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. However long and hard the road may be, let us go forward together with our enthusiasm and our united strength.
毕业典礼英语演讲稿2
Our society is like a big complicated family in the midst of a terrible argument. I believe that one way…one way to make it better is to find ways to listen to each other, to understand our differences, and to work constantly to remind each other of our common humanity. I know you will find your own ways to help with this healing, too.
This morning, we share with the world nearly 3,000 new graduates who are ready for this urgent and timeless problem set.
You came to MIT with exceptional qualities of your own. And now, after years of focused and intense dedication, you leave us, equipped with a distinctive set of skills and steeped in this community’s deepest values – a commitment to excellence, integrity, meritocracy, boldness, humility, an open spirit of collaboration, a strong desire to make a positive impact, and a sense of responsibility to make the world a better place.
So now, go out there. Join the world. Find your calling. Solve the unsolvable. Invent the future. Take the high road. Shoot for the moon. And you will continue to make your family, including your MIT family, proud.
毕业典礼英语演讲稿3
At other places, but I’m happy to say not yet at Purdue, students have demanded to be kept, quote, "safe" from speech, that is, mere words, that challenge or discomfit them. At one large university, one, quote, "study", I enclose it in quotes, purported to find a quarter of the student body suffering from PTSD because of an election outcome. Referring to such young people, someone has coined the distasteful but descriptive term "snowflakes."
Some find a cause in the social media, which have reduced personal interaction among your younger contemporaries. Easier grading in high schools can lead to an unexpected jolt when a student arrives at college, at least if it’s a place like Purdue where top grades are still hard to come by. Another diagnosis points to overprotective parenting that limits some children’s opportunities to play and explore in unsupervised ways that require them to solve problems and resolve conflicts on their own.
毕业典礼英语演讲稿4
Today, I believe that we are living in a similar moment. And once again, we’ll be counting on MIT graduates – all of you – to lead us.
But this time, our most important and pressing mission – your generation’s mission – is not to explore deep space and reach faraway places. It is to save our own planet, the one that we’re living on, from climate change. And unlike 1962, the primary challenge before you is not scientific or technological. It is political.
The fact is we’ve already pioneered the technology to tackle climate change. We know how to power buildings using sun and wind. We know how to power vehicles using batteries charged with renewable energy. We know how to power factories and industries using hydrogen and fuel cells. And we know that these innovations don’t require us to sacrifice financially or economically. Just the opposite, these investments, on balance, create jobs and save money.
Yes, all of those power sources need to be brought to scale – and that will require further scientific innovation, which we need you to help lead. But the question isn’t how to tackle climate change. We’ve known how to do that for many years. The question is: why the hell are we moving so slowly?
The race we are in is against time, and we are losing. And with each passing year, it becomes clearer just how far behind we’ve fallen, and how fast the situation is deteriorating, and how tragic the results can be.
毕业典礼英语演讲稿5
It means you’re willing to look foolish, you’re willing to run the risk of looking foolish in the service of what matters to you. And if you remember that, because some of the things your heart will tell you to do, will make you among your peers look foolish, or not smart, or not sophisticated. But we’ll all be better for people of your consequence to do it.
That’s what I want you to most remember. Not who spoke at the day you all assembled on this mall. You’re a remarkable class. I sure don't remember who the hell was my commencement speaker. I know this is not officially commencement. But ask your parents when you leave here, who spoke at your commencement? It’s a commencement speaker aversion of a commencement speaker’s fate to be forgotten. The question is only how quickly. But you’re the best in your generation. And that is not hyperbole. And you're part of a remarkable generation.
毕业典礼英语演讲稿6
Question three:
As you heard a moment ago, the second person to walk on the moon was Buzz Aldrin. Buzz was the first astronaut to have a doctoral degree, and he earned it from the school that has produced more astronauts than any nonmilitary institution. In fact, of the 12 humans who have walked on the moon, four graduated from that same institution, which is known by just three letters.
MIT.
You are great. I knew you could do it. "The beaver has landed!" Mrs. Reif, I believe they are ready.
As you…as you prepare for liftoff, I’d like to use the Apollo story to reflect on a few larger lessons we hope you learned at MIT because the spirit of that magnificent human project speaks to this community’s deepest values and its highest aspirations.
The first lesson is the power of interdisciplinary teams. We live in a culture that loves to single out heroes. We love to crown superstars.
As graduates of MIT, however, I expect you’re already skeptical of stories of scientific triumph that have only one hero. You know by now that if you want to do something big, like detect gravitational waves in outer space or decode the human genome, or tackle climate change, or finish an 8.01 pset before sunrise, you cannot do it without a team.
As Margaret Hamilton herself would be quick to explain, by 1968, the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory had 600 people working on the moon-landing software. At its peak, the MIT hardware team was 400. And from Virginia to Texas, NASA engaged thousands more. In short, she was one star in a tremendous constellation of talent. And together – together – those stars created something impossible for any one of them to create alone.
毕业典礼英语演讲稿7
We've created entire value systems and a physical reality to support the worth of self. Look at the industry for self-image and the jobs it creates, the revenue it turns over. We'd be right in assuming that the self is an actual living thing. But it's not. It's a projection which our clever brains create in order to cheat ourselves from the reality of there is something that can give the self ultimate and infinite connection -- and that thing is oneness, our essence. The self's struggle for authenticity and definition will never end unless it's connected to its creator -- to you and to me. And that can happen with awareness -- awareness of the reality of oneness and the projection of a start, we can think about all the times when we do lose ourselves. It happens when I dance, when I'm acting. I'm earthed in my essence, and my self is suspended. In those moments, I'm connected to everything --
毕业典礼英语演讲稿8
Toastmaster of the day, fellow toastmasters, awonderful afternoon to all of you. My name is Jeff. Today I want to share withyou part of my life experiences and I hope some of you will find it useful.
March 15, 20xx, Xiamen, China. My phone rang the moment when I stepped into themain entrance of our condominium. It was my 68-year-old mum. She said, "your dad and I are now at the boarding gate, but we couldn’t find your dad’s bag, which contains his IC and a few thousand dollars". Just 35 minutes back, I saw my dadand mum off at the airport. They were about to board a domestic flight toPudong where they would join my sister to fly to Toronto and stay there for another one year. A couple of days before that, I purposely went back to Xiamen, my hometown to see my parents off. I asked my parents to board the airplane first and I would make a second trip to airport and fetch my dad’s bag home. We were so fortunate that my mum kept the passports of both in her handbag.I quickly called the airport and got to the team in charge of security found the bag and verified my identity.
毕业典礼英语演讲稿9
Now, look, I realize no one ever doubts I mean what I say, the problem occasionally is I say all that I mean. (Laughter.) I have a bad reputation for being straight. Sometimes an inappropriate times. (Laughter.) So here it goes. Let’s get a couple things straight right off the bat: Corvettes are better than Porsches; they're quicker and they corner as well. (Laughter and applause.) And sorry, guys, a cappella is not better than rock and roll. (Laughter and applause.) And your pundits are better than Washington pundits, although I’ve noticed neither has any shame at all. (Laughter and applause.) And all roads lead to Toads? Give me a break. (Laughter and applause.) You ever tried it on Monday night? (Laughter.) Look, it’s tough to end a great men’s basketball and football season. One touchdown away from beating Harvard this year for the first time since 20xx -— so close to something you’ve wanted for eight years. I can only imagine how you feel. (Laughter.) I can only imagine. (Applause.) So close. So close.
But I got to be honest with you, when the invitation came, I was flattered, but it caused a little bit of a problem in my extended family. It forced me to face some hard truths. My son, Beau, the attorney general of Delaware, my daughter, Ashley Biden, runs a nonprofit for criminal justice in the state, they both went to Penn. My two nieces graduated from Harvard, one an all-American. All of them think my being here was a very bad idea. (Laughter.)
毕业典礼英语演讲稿10
Dear leaders, teachers, parents and friends, dear children
Good afternoon, everyone! I am Zhang X's mother in class 6 (3). Today, I am very honored to attend the graduation ceremony of Qishuyan experimental primary school as a representative of the parents of the graduates. Here, on behalf of all the parents of the students, I would like to express my high respect and sincere thanks to all the teachers!
After six years in primary school, we are glad to see the children grow up step by step. As a student parent, I sincerely thank the leaders and teachers for their hard work and careful cultivation. Every parent has this feeling: the teachers of Qishuyan experimental primary school not only have good teaching level and noble professional ethics, but also have delicate feelings and selfless love. Dear teachers, you are the most respectable people.
Children, today you are about to graduate. You are about to walk out of this beautiful campus and fly to a wider sky. No matter where you are in the future, please remember: This is the starting point for you to take off, and this is your spiritual home. Here you not only get your first report card, but also get the truth of being a man: Pu Cheng does things, Be honest. Children, the nutrition you get in your alma mater will be used for a lifetime and will support you to achieve greater goals in life.
Finally, on behalf of the parents of all graduates, I sincerely wish that all students can study hard and realize their dreams and wishes with their own efforts in the future! Let your alma mater be proud of you! Heartfelt blessing: school leaders and all teachers, good health, family happiness, prosperity! We sincerely hope that Qishuyan experimental primary school will be better and better!
毕业典礼英语演讲稿11
Distinguished leaders, parents and dear students,
Good morning! I am so excited to stand here, as a representative of the whole G12 students’ parents to make a brief speech to show our greatest honor and respect to the school leaders and teachers who work for our sons and daughters in the past three years. Thank you for your hard work.
Frankly, we were hesitant about our choice at first, but today we beam with happiness. Now all of our children have received the admission letters and scholarship from Canada, the USA, the Switzerland and many other countries. Thank you for your great education!
At the same time, as their parents, we hope every future university student will work even harder and become the backbone of our nation after graduation from university. Last, I wish SCCSC a brighter future and with students all over the world! Thank you all!
尊敬的各位领导，老师，家长，亲爱的同学们：
大家上午好!此时，我真的是心潮澎湃，激动万分，因为我有幸站在这里，代表深圳南山中加学校全体高三毕业生的家长发言。在此，请允许我代表全体家长，向三年来为我们的孩子付出艰辛努力，给与我们孩子最好教育的`学校领导和老师致以最衷心的感谢和深深的敬意!谢谢你们!
回顾三年的历程，我们每一位家长都经历了当初选择时的犹豫 和今天收获时的喜悦。在各位领导和老师的辛勤培养下，中加学校的孩子们都顺利地收到了加拿大等国外大学的录取通知书，并且许多同学还得到了国外大学的入学奖学金，这使我们每一位家长都感到自豪与欣慰。今天的喜悦是各级领导重视关心及学校各位老师辛勤劳动和培养教育的结果!谢谢你们!
同时，作为家长，我们期望每一个中加学子今后要勤奋笃学，修身养性，厚德载物，以便长大之后成为国之栋梁，人之俊杰，了却天下父母望子成龙的一片苦心。最后，祝中加学校桃李满天下，基业更长青!谢谢大家!
毕业典礼英语演讲稿12
I was raised by a tough, compassionate Irish lady named Catherine Eugenia Finnegan Biden. And she taught all of her children that, but for the grace of God, there go you -- but for the grace of God, there go you.
And a father who lived his motto that, family was the beginning, the middle, and the end. And like many of you and your parents, I was fortunate. I learned early on what I wanted to do, what fulfilled me the most, what made me happy -— my family, my faith, and being engaged in the public affairs that gripped my generation and being inspired by a young President named Kennedy -- civil rights, the environment, trying to end an incredibly useless and divisive war, Vietnam.
The truth is, though, that neither I, nor anyone else, can tell you what will make you happy, help you find success.
You each have different comfort levels. Everyone has different goals and aspirations. But one thing I’ve observed, one thing I know, an expression my dad would use often, is real. He used to say, it’s a lucky man or woman gets up in the morning -- and I mean this sincerely. It was one of his expressions. It’s a lucky man or woman gets up in the morning, puts both feet on the floor, knows what they’re about to do, and thinks it still matters.
毕业典礼英语演讲稿13
When I was in middle school, a poisonous spider bit my right hand. I ran to my mom for help—but instead of taking me to a doctor, my mom set my hand on fire.After wrapping my hand withseveral layers of cotton, then soaking it in wine, she put a chopstick into my mouth,and ignited the cotton. Heat quickly penetrated the cotton and began to roast my hand. The searing pain made me want to scream, but the chopstick prevented it. All I could do was watch my hand burn - one minute, then two minutes –until mom put out the fire.
You see, the part of China I grew up in was a rural village, and at that time pre-industrial. When I was born, my village had no cars, no telephones, no electricity, not even running water. And we certainly didn’t have access to modern medical resources. There was no doctor my mother could bring me to see about my spider bite.
For those who study biology, you may have grasped the science behind my mom’s cure: heat deactivates proteins, and a spider’s venom is simply a form of protein. It’s coolhow that folk remedy actually incorporates basic biochemistry, isn’t itBut I am a PhD student in biochemistry at Harvard, I now know that better, less painful and less risky treatments existed. So I can’t help but ask myself, why I didn’t receive oneat the time.
Fifteen years have passed since that incident. I am happy to report that my hand is fine. But this question lingers, and I continue to be troubled by the unequal distribution of scientific knowledge throughout the world. We have learned to edit the human genome and unlock many secrets of how cancer progresses. We can manipulate neuronal activity literally with the switch of a light. Each year brings more advances in biomedical research-exciting, transformative accomplishments. Yet, despite the knowledge we have amassed, we haven’t been so successful in deploying it to where it’s needed most. According to the World Bank, twelve percent of the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day. Malnutrition kills more than 3 million children annually. Three hundred million peopleare afflicted by malaria globally. All over the world, we constantly see these problems of poverty, illness, and lack of resources impeding the flow of scientific information. Lifesaving knowledge we take for granted in the modern world is often unavailable in these underdeveloped regions.And in far too many places, people are still essentially trying to cure a spider bite with fire.
While studying at Harvard, I saw how scientific knowledge can help others in simple, yet profound ways. The bird flu pandemic in the 20xxs looked to my village like a spell cast by demons. Our folk medicine didn’t even have half-measures to offer. What’s more, farmers didn’t know the difference between common cold and flu; they didn’t understand that the flu was much more lethal than the common cold. Most people were also unaware that the virus could transmit across different species.So when I realized that simple hygiene practices like separating different animal species could contain the spread of the disease, and that I could help make this knowledge available to my village, that was my first ―Aha‖ moment as a budding scientist. But it was more than that: it was also a vital inflection point in my own ethical development, my own self-understanding as a member of the global community.
Harvard dares us to dream big, to aspire to change the world. Here on this Commencement Day, we are probably thinking of grand destinations and big adventures that await us. As for me, I am also thinking of the farmers in my village. My experiencehere reminds me how important it is for researchersto communicateour knowledge to those who need it. Because by using the sciencewe already have, we
could probably bring my village and thousands like it into the world you and I take for granted every day. And that’s an impact every one of us can make!
But the question is, will we make the effort or not
More than ever before,our society emphasizes science and innovation. But an equally important emphasis should be on distributing the knowledge we have to where it’s needed. Changing the world doesn’t mean thateveryone has to find the next big thing. It can be as simple as becoming better communicators, and finding more creative ways to pass on the knowledge we have to people like my mom and the farmers in their local community. Our society also needs to recognize that the equal distribution of knowledge is a pivotal step of human development, and work to bring this into reality.
And if we do that, then perhaps a teenager in rural China who is bitten by a spider will not have to burn his hand, but will know to seek a doctor instead.
毕业典礼英语演讲稿14
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Eden, I'm 9 years y, I'm going to tell you about my first special memory. It wasunforgettable, because it was my first flying on a plane.
When I got on the huge, white thing with two big ‘fans’, I was so scared. I was thinking what if the big thing couldn’t balance itself? What if in the middle of the trip, the airplane ran out of oil? What if the airplane crashed onto the ground when it landed? I was scared that I would falldown and smash into pieces!
Just then, the plane started to take off, and my ear started tohurt as , I closed my eyes for a long long time. What a surprise! WhenI woke up, I didn't smash into pieces, and neither did I have an ear , I looked outside the window. How amazing it was!
The sun was orange, and all the cloud turning into golden color, just like the toasted marshmallows and chicken. I could still rememberthat they looked very tasty and inviting! Furthermore, there were the golden lions,dancing bears, and more, just like the cloud zoo! I couldn’t take my eyes offthose impressive views, but it was time to land.
Never would I forget my first amazing flight, my first specialmemory! From then on, I was not afraid of flight any more, instead, I enjoyedhaving the trip in the sky. Thank you!
毕业典礼英语演讲稿15
Chancellor Wrighton, members of the Board of Trustees and the Administration, distinguished faculty, Class of 1965, hard-working staff, my fellow honorees, proud and relieved parents, calm and serene grandparents, distracted but secretly pleased siblings, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, graduating students, good morning. I am deeply honored that you have asked me here to say a few words at this momentous occasion, that you might find what I have to say worthy of your attention on so important a day at this remarkable institution.
It had been my intention this morning to parcel out some good advice at the end of theseremarks – the "goodness" of that being of course subjective in the extreme – but then Irealized that this is the land of Mark Twain, and I came to the conclusion that anycommentary today ought to be framed in the sublime shadow of this quote of his: "It's notthat the world is full of fools, it's just that lightening isn't distributed right." … More on Mr.Twain later.
I am in the business of history. It is my job to try to discern some patterns and themes fromthe past to help us interpret our dizzyingly confusing and sometimes dismaying present.Without a knowledge of that past, how can we possibly know where we are and, mostimportant, where we are going? Over the years I've come to understand an important fact, Ithink: that we are not condemned to repeat, as the cliché goes and we are fond of quoting,what we don't remember. That's a clever, even poetic phrase, but not even close to the truth.Nor are there cycles of history, as the academic community periodically promotes. The Bible,Ecclesiastes to be specific, got it right, I think: "What has been will be again. What has beendone will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun."
What that means is that human nature never changes. Or almost never changes. We havecontinually superimposed our complex and contradictory nature over the random course ofhuman events. All of our inherent strengths and weaknesses, our greed and generosity, ourpuritanism and our prurience parade before our eyes, generation after generation aftergeneration. This often gives us the impression that history does repeat itself. It doesn't. Itjust rhymes, Mark Twain is supposed to have said…but he didn't (more on him later).
Over the many years of practicing, I have come to the realization that history is not a fixedthing, a collection of precise dates, facts and events (even cogent commencement quotes)that add up to a quantifiable, certain, confidently known, truth. It is a mysterious andmalleable thing. And each generation rediscovers and re-examines that part of its past thatgives its present, and most important, its future new meaning, new possibilities and new power.
Listen. For most of the forty years I've been making historical documentaries, I have beenhaunted and inspired by a handful of sentences from an extraordinary speech I came acrossearly in my professional life by a neighbor of yours just up the road in Springfield, Illinois. InJanuary of 1838, shortly before his 29th birthday, a tall, thin lawyer, prone to bouts ofdebilitating depression, addressed the Young Men's Lyceum. The topic that day was nationalsecurity. "At what point shall we expect the approach of danger?" he asked his audience. "…Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the Earth and crush us at a blow?"Then he answered his own question: "Never. All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa … couldnot by force take a drink from the Ohio [River] or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of athousand years … If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As anation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide." It is a stunning,remarkable statement.
That young man was, of course, Abraham Lincoln, and he would go on to preside over theclosest this country has ever come to near national suicide, our Civil War – fought over themeaning of freedom in America. And yet embedded in his extraordinary, disturbing andprescient words is a fundamental optimism that implicitly acknowledges the geographicalforce-field two mighty oceans and two relatively benign neighbors north and south haveprovided for us since the British burned the White House in the War of 1812.
We have counted on Abraham Lincoln for more than a century and a half to get it right whenthe undertow in the tide of those human events has threatened to overwhelm and capsize us.We always come back to him for the kind of sustaining vision of why we Americans still agree tocohere, why unlike any other country on earth, we are still stitched together by words and, mostimportant, their dangerous progeny, ideas. We return to him for a sense of unity, conscienceand national purpose. To escape what the late historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., said is ourproblem today: "too much pluribus, not enough unum."
It seems to me that Lincoln gave our fragile experiment a conscious shock that enabled it tooutgrow the monumental hypocrisy of slavery inherited at our founding and permitted us all,slave owner as well as slave, to have literally, as he put it at Gettysburg, "a new birth offreedom."
Lincoln's Springfield speech also suggests what is so great and so good about the people whoinhabit this lucky and exquisite country of ours (that's the world you now inherit): our workethic, our restlessness, our innovation and our improvisation, our communities and ourinstitutions of higher learning, our suspicion of power; the fact that we seem resolutelydedicated to parsing the meaning between individual and collective freedom; that we arededicated to understanding what Thomas Jefferson really meant when he wrote thatinscrutable phrase "the pursuit of Happiness."
But ladies and gentlemen, the isolation of those two mighty oceans has also helped toincubate habits and patterns less beneficial to us: our devotion to money and guns; ourcertainty – about everything; our stubborn insistence on our own exceptionalism, blinding usto that which needs repair, our preoccupation with always making the other wrong, at anindividual as well as global level.
And then there is the issue of race, which was foremost on the mind of Lincoln back in 1838. Itis still here with us today. The jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis told me that healing thisquestion of race was what "the kingdom needed in order to be well." Before the enormousstrides in equality achieved in statutes and laws in the 150 years since the Civil War thatLincoln correctly predicted would come are in danger of being undone by our still imperfecthuman nature and by politicians who now insist on a hypocritical color-blindness – after fourcenturies of discrimination. That discrimination now takes on new, sometimes subtler, lessobvious but still malevolent forms today. The chains of slavery have been broken, thank God,and so too has the feudal dependence of sharecroppers as the vengeful Jim Crow era recedes(sort of) into the distant past. But now in places like – but not limited to – your otherneighbors a few miles as the crow flies from here in Ferguson, we see the ghastly remnants ofour great shame emerging still, the shame Lincoln thought would lead to national suicide, ourinability to see beyond the color of someone's skin. It has been with us since our founding.
When Thomas Jefferson wrote that immortal second sentence of the Declaration that begins, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…," he owned more thana hundred human beings. He never saw the contradiction, he never saw the hypocrisy, andmore important never saw fit in his lifetime to free any one of those human beings, ensuring aswe went forward that the young United States – born with such glorious promise – would bebedeviled by race, that it would take a bloody, bloody Civil War to even begin to redress theimbalance.
But the shame continues: prison populations exploding with young black men, young black menkilled almost weekly by policemen, whole communities of color burdened by corruptmunicipalities that resemble more the predatory company store of a supposedly bygone erathan a responsible local government. Our cities and towns and suburbs cannot become modernplantations.
It is unconscionable, as you emerge from this privileged sanctuary, that a few miles fromhere – and nearly everywhere else in America: Baltimore, New York City, North Charleston,Cleveland, Oklahoma, Sanford, Florida, nearly everywhere else – we are still playing out, sadly,an utterly American story, that the same stultifying conditions and sentiments that brought onour Civil War are still on such vivid and unpleasant display. Today, today. There's nothingnew under the sun.
Many years after our Civil War, in 1883, Mark Twain took up writing in earnest a novel he hadstarted and abandoned several times over the last half-dozen years. It would be a different kindof story from his celebrated Tom Sawyer book, told this time in the plain language of hisMissouri boyhood – and it would be his masterpiece.
Set near here, before the Civil War and emancipation, ‘the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' isthe story of two runaways – a white boy, Tom Sawyer's old friend Huck, fleeing civilization, anda black man, Jim, who is running away from slavery. They escape together on a raft goingdown the Mississippi.The novel reaches its moral climax when Huck is faced with a terrible choice. He believes he has committed a grievous sin in helping Jim escape, and he finally writes out a letter, telling Jim's owner where her runaway property can be found. Huck feels good about doing this at first, he says, and marvels at "how close I came to being lost and going to hell."
But then he hesitates, thinking about how kind Jim has been to him during their adventure. "…Somehow," Huck says, "I couldn't seem to strike no place to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, ‘stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see how glad he was when I come back out of the fog;…and such like times; and would always call me honey…and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was…"
Then, Huck remembers the letter he has written. "I took it up, and held it in my hand," he says. "I was a-trembling because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: ‘All right then, I'll go to hell' – and tore it up."
That may be the finest moment in all of American literature. Ernest Hemingway thought all of American literature began at that moment.
Twain, himself, writing after the Civil War and after the collapse of Reconstruction, a misunderstood period devoted to trying to enforce civil rights, was actually expressing his profound disappointment that racial differences still persisted in America, that racism still festered in this favored land, founded as it was on the most noble principle yet advanced by humankind – that all men are created equal. That civil war had not cleansed our original sin, a sin we continue to confront today, daily, in this supposedly enlightened "post-racial" time.
It is into this disorienting and sometimes disappointing world that you now plummet, I'm afraid, unprotected from the shelter of family and school. You have fresh prospects and real dreams and I wish each and every one of you the very best. But I am drafting you now into a new Union Army that must be committed to preserving the values, the sense of humor, the sense of cohesion that have long been a part of our American nature, too. You have no choice, you've been called up, and it is your difficult, but great and challenging responsibility to help change things and set us right again.
Let me apologize to you in advance on behalf of all the people up here. We broke it, but you've got to fix it. You're joining a movement that must be dedicated above all else – career and personal advancement – to the preservation of this country's most enduring ideals. You have to learn, and then re-teach the rest of us that equality – real equality – is the hallmark and birthright of ALL Americans. Thankfully, you will become a vanguard against a new separatism that seems to have infected our ranks, a vanguard against those forces that, in the name of our great democracy, have managed to diminish it. Then, you can change human nature just a bit, to appeal, as Lincoln also implored us, to appeal to "the better angels of our nature." That's the objective. And I know, I know you can do it.
Ok. Rounding third.
Let me speak directly to the graduating class. (Watch out. Here comes the advice.)
Remember: Black lives matter. All lives matter.
Reject fundamentalism wherever it raises its ugly head. It's not civilized. Choose to live in theBedford Falls of "It's a Wonderful Life," not its oppressive opposite, Pottersville.
Do not descend too deeply into specialism. Educate all of your parts. You will be healthier.
Replace cynicism with its old-fashioned antidote, skepticism.
Don't confuse monetary success with excellence. The poet Robert Penn Warren once warnedme that "careerism is death."
Try not to make the other wrong.
Be curious, not cool.
Remember, insecurity makes liars of us all.
Listen to jazz. A lot, a lot. It is our music.
Read. The book is still the greatest manmade machine of all – not the car, not the TV, not thecomputer or the smartphone.
Do not allow our social media to segregate us into ever smaller tribes and clans, fiercely andsometimes appropriately loyal to our group, but also capable of metastasizing into profounddistrust of the other.
Serve your country. By all means serve your country. But insist that we fight the right wars.Governments always forget that.
Convince your government that the real threat, as Lincoln knew, comes from within.Governments always forget that, too. Do not let your government outsource honesty,transparency or candor. Do not let your government outsource democracy.
Vote. Elect good leaders. When he was nominated in 1936, Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, "Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than theconsistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference." We alldeserve the former. And insist on it.
Insist that we support science and the arts, especially the arts. They have nothing to do withthe actual defense of the country – they just make our country worth defending.
Be about the "unum," not the "pluribus."
Do not lose your enthusiasm. In its Greek etymology, the word enthusiasm means simply, "God in us."
And even though lightning still isn't distributed right, try not to be a fool. It just gets MarkTwain riled up a bit.
And if you ever find yourself in Huck's spot, if you've "got to decide betwixt two things," do theright thing. Don't forget to tear up the letter. He didn't go to hell – and you won't either.
So we come to an end of something today – and for you also a very special beginning. Godspeed to you all.
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