毕业典礼英语演讲稿模板（20篇范文）

毕业典礼英语演讲稿 模板1

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在毕业典礼上的英语演讲稿

graduation and moving on

毕业并继续前进

at least once a year, there are a lot of graduations.

至少每年一次,会有很多的毕业典礼。

it’s a time when a lot of people move on,

这是一个很多人继续前进的时刻，

from where they were, to another school or another class,

从那里的人们会到另一个学校或另一个班级，

or out into a real world.

或者到了一个真实的世界。

to graduate means to take a step forward, to move onward.

毕业意味着向前迈进一步，已经上路了。

i can remember my high school graduation,

我还记得我的高中毕业，

my graduation from university,

我大学毕业，

and even my graduation from graduated school.

甚至从我研究生院毕业。

each of those graduations was nice.

其中每个毕业典礼都是非常好。

i took pictures, i got flowers, i hug my parents.

我拍照片,我得到了花,我拥抱我的父母。

i had the motions to moving on, i want to stay and have more fun.

我曾有想继续下去的动力，我希望留下并获得更多的乐趣。

but i also want to move on.

但我还想继续前进。

when we hear the word graduation, we naturally think of graduating from school.

当我们听到毕业那个词,我们很自然地会想到从学校毕业。

but i think it’s possible to graduate from different places, or stages in life.

但我认为这是有可能是从不同的地方或不同阶段的生活毕业。

i worked in a company in new york for about three years.

我在纽约一家公司工作三年了。in one point i felt i couldn’t learn anything else from the company,

[cn]在某种程度上,我觉得我无法从公司身上学到东西，

where the people i was working with.

从与我共同工作的人身上也一样。

then i had hit a ceiling, i felt that was time to move on.

然后我已经达到了一种上限,我觉得是继续前行的时候了。

the way that i describe that moving on is a graduation.

我所描述的继续前行是毕业。

some times we are thrown out into the world or to the ne_t level,

有时我们被抛进世界或下一个阶段，

whether we are ready or not.

不管我们是否为此做好了准备。

other times we get the truth when we want to move on.

其他时候,我们得到当我们想继续前进的事实。

i have e_perienced both.

我已经都经历过了。

i preferred the second one, where i have a choice,

我更喜欢第二个,在那里我可以选择，

i like the truth when and how, but we don’t always get what we want,

我喜欢这个何时以及如何的事实,但我们不能总是得到我们想要的东西，

since we can l learn from every e_perience that we have,

因为我们可以从我们有的每次经历中学习，

each e_perience can be a stepping stone for us to be better people.

每次经历都可以成为我们的一块垫脚石而成为更好的人。

i know that i take lessons with me every time i graduated,

我知道每次我毕业我都要学习一些课程，

but some times i can be a slow learner.

但有时我可以是一个缓慢的学习者。

i wonder when my ne_t graduation is going to be.

我想知道当我的下一次毕业将是何时。

英语毕业留言

life is a profound book. other"s notes cannot replace your own understanding. may you find and create something new in it.

生活是一本精深的书，别人的注释代替不了自己的理解。愿你有所发现，有所创造。

time is flying away, and years are passing by. only our friendship is always in my heart. farewell, my friend! take care, my friend!

流水匆匆，岁月匆匆，唯有友情永存心中。朋友，再见!朋友，珍重!

don"t be disappointed on the journey of life. there are friends in the world. seize your chance and value your opportunities. may our friendship be everlasting.

人生路上何须惆怅，天涯海角总有知音。把握机会珍惜缘分，祝愿我们友谊长存。

time does not water down the wine of friendship; distance does not separate our hands of longing. wishing you happiness forever!

时间冲不淡友情的酒，距离拉不开思念的手，祝福你，永远永远!

if i should meet thee,

after long years,

how should i greet thee?

with silence and tears.

—(britain) george gordon byron

多年离别后，抑或再相逢，相逢何所语?泪流默无声。 ———〔英〕拜伦

thinking of each other is just like a thread connecting both you on the one end and me on the other end.

思念是一条细长的线，一端系着你，一端系着我，时刻连接着两颗跳动不息的心。

i have three wishes: may our friendship warm our hearts! may joy be always with you and me! may we often meet each other!

我有三愿：一愿友情温暖我们心田，二愿欢乐永驻你我心间，三愿我们常常相见!

if life cheats you, don"t be disappointed and worried. calmness is needed in melancholy days. believe that pleasantness is coming. long for the bright future though you are unhappy. all will pass by and everything will be over. past things will be pleasant memories. —(russia) alesander pushkin

假如生活欺骗了你，不要悲伤，不要心急。阴郁的日子需要镇静。相信吧，那愉快的日子即将来临。心永远憧憬着未来，尽管你现在常常是阴沉的。一切都是瞬息，一切都会过去，而过去了的，将会变成亲切的怀念。 ———〔俄〕普希金

毕业典礼英语演讲稿 模板2

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your eminence cardinal o’malley, father president leahy, father monan, father devino, members of the faculty, my fellow recipients of honorary degrees, parents, siblings, and the distinguished class of 2024: congratulations to everybody here today.

you know i thought i had a lot to worry about as i was listening to the introduction, betweenafghanistan and iran and so forth. but now i’m worried about where challenger is. (laughter.)i will leave here knowing that boston college liberates eagles. (laughter.)

it’s a great honor to be with you. you all might remember from english class that the greatamerican novelist thomas wolfe wrote that you can’t go home again. or maybe you know thatquote because it’s the same thing that your parents are telling you now. (laughter.)

well, wolfe had obviously never been to boston college. it is nice to be off an airplane, but myfriends, it is great to be home. i am really happy to be here. (applause and cheers.)

i know that many of you stayed up all night so you could see your last sunrise at bc. (cheers.)some of you thought it would never come, graduation that is. i’ve got news for you: some ofyour parents and professors didn’t think so either. (laughter.)

now, i notice a lot of you are wearing shades. it won’t work, folks. i’ll still hear you snoring. (laughter.)

i was on the campus of one of your rivals yesterday in new haven. and while i let them knowthat they could be proud of their title in men’s hockey last year, i also had to put it inperspective: yale is still four titles behind bc. (cheers and applause.)

there are many things actually that yale and boston college have in common, but one isprobably the most powerful: mutual dislike of harvard. (laughter.) although to be fair,hundreds of schools don’t like harvard very much.

as secretary of state, i track many factions and rivalries around the world. bc versus notredame is at the top of my list. of course, there’s also alec baldwin versus the nypd. (laughter.)beyonce’s sister versus jay z. (laughter and cheers.) and then there’s the rivalry: red so_and yankees. (cheering and applause.) we absolutely loved the last ten years: yankees – oneworld series, and red so_ – three. that’s my kind of rivalry, folks. (cheers.)

now bc reminds us today that though rivalries can be overcome, here today you have honoreda holy cross alumnus, the great bob cousy, who, as you heard earlier in his degreepresentation, won 117 games at boston when he was coaching here. eighty-five years old andthe celtics could have used him this year. (laughter.)

so we have with us today a great legend, but most importantly an amazing person, anamazing player, and three other e_traordinary builders of community, all of whom i am veryhonored to share degrees with today. their lives and their selfless service are testimony to thefact that boston college is an amazing place.

over the past years, you have all been blessed to e_perience a special quality that has alwaysdefined bc: the welcoming spirit of this community. that has been a distinguishingcharacteristic of boston college since its first days, when it opened its doors to irishimmigrants and catholics who were barred from other schools.

when i came here more than 40 years ago, i want you to know that i felt that welcomefirsthand. i had, as you heard, served in war, and when i came home, i worked to end it. it wasa turbulent time – for our country, for me personally. it was a time of division anddisillusionment.

but because of one thoughtful man of conscience, one member of the boston collegecommunity, i found a home right here.

many of you today might not even recognize the name of father robert drinan. he was thedean of the law school and he was running for congress when i first visited him on thecampus.

and what impressed me most about father drinan – whether on chestnut hill or capitol hill –was that he made no apologies for his deep and abiding catholic commitment to the weak, thehelpless, the downtrodden.

“if a person is really a christian,” father drinan would say, “they will be in anguish over globalhunger, injustice, over the denial of educational opportunity.”

in fact, it was father drinan who encouraged me to study law at bc, even when it wasn’t theobvious path. i had come to law school from a different background than my classmates. i’dserved in the navy, just turned 30, and had a young family.

and because of where i’d been and what i’d seen, i came to boston college with a set ofnagging questions. i had confronted my own mortality head-on during the war, where faithwas as much a part of my daily life as the battle itself. in fact, i wore my rosary around myneck hoping for protection.

but on closer e_amination, i realized my wartime relationship with god was really a dependentone – a “god, get me through this and i’ll be good” kind of relationship. and as i becamedisillusioned with the war, my faith also was put to test.

there’s something theologians call “the problem of evil.” it’s the difficulty of e_plaining howterrible and senseless events are, in fact, part of god’s plan. that was a very real test for me.some of my closest friends were killed. you see things in war that haunt you for the rest ofyour life.

so coming here to bc law, reading st. augustine on the problem of evil, or st. thomasaquinas on just war, the letters of st. paul and thoughts about suffering – this was not anabstract or academic e_ercise. it was a chance to dig in and really try to understand whereand how everything fit, including trying to understand where i fit in. i’m sure a lot of you askthose questions.

it was the compassion, listening, and understanding that i e_perienced at bc that made mefeel welcome, taught me literally how to think critically, how to ask the right questions, andreinforced in me a personal sense of direction.

it would be years before pope francis would talk about the responsibility we all have to reachout to those who “stand at the crossroads.” i might not have connected the dots at the time,but that is e_actly what bc was doing for me and i hope has done for you.

the people i met here were putting into action the words of the jesuit motto that you’ve heardalready today: “men and women for others.”

every institution has a mission or a motto – that’s the easy part. the hard part is ensuringthat they’re not just words. we have to make sure that even as our world changes rapidly andin so many ways, we can still, each of us, give new meaning to our values.

today, i promise you that is one of the greatest challenges of america’s foreign policy: ensuringthat even when it’s not popular, even when it’s not easy, america still lives up to our idealsand our responsibilities to lead.

never forget that what makes america different from other nations is not a common religion ora common bloodline or a common ideology or a common heritage. what makes us different isthat we are united by an uncommon idea: that we’re all created equal and all endowed withunalienable rights. america is – and i say this without chauvinism or any arrogancewhatsoever, but america is not just a country like other countries. america is an idea, and we –all of us, you – get to fill it out over time. (applause.) so our citizenship is not just a privilege– it is a profound responsibility.

and in a shrinking world, we can’t measure our success just by what we achieve as americansfor americans, but also by the security and shared prosperity that we build with our partnersall over world.

in times of crisis, violence, strife, epidemic, and instability – believe me – the world stilllooks to the united states of america as a partner of first resort. people aren’t worried aboutour presence; they’re worried about our leaving. one of the great privileges of being secretaryof state is getting to see that firsthand.

in december, i walked through the devastation left behind by the typhoon in the philippines.the u.s. military and usaid had arrived on the scene before countries that are much closerthan we are.

this month in the democratic republic of congo, i saw how the united states is supportingsurgeons and catholic nuns helping victims of violence and abuse.

and just a few weeks ago in ethiopia, i saw what our sustained commitment to combattingaids is achieving. local doctors and nurses are making possible the dream of an aids-freegeneration. we’re on the cusp of achieving that.

and what we have done to turn back the armies of defeatism and indifference in the fightagainst aids, tuberculosis, malaria, and even polio – this work should give every one of youconfidence to confront another cross-border, cross-generational challenge, the challengeof a changing climate. if we’re going to live up to our values, this is a test that we have tomeet.

now look, i know this is hard, because i spent almost 30 years in the united states senatepushing this issue, trying to get colleagues to move. we got up to maybe 55 votes, couldn’tquite get to 60. and i know it’s hard to feel the urgency. as we sit here on an absolutelybeautiful morning in boston, you might not see climate change as an immediate threat toyour job, your community, or your families. but let me tell you, it is.

two major recent reports, one from the un and one from retired u.s. military leaders, warn usnot just of the crippling consequences to come, but that some of them are already here. ninety-seven percent of the world’s scientists tell us this is urgent. why? because if crops can’t grow,there’ll be food insecurity. if there’s less water because of longer droughts, if there arestronger and more powerful storms, things will change in a hurry and they will change for theworse.

climate change is directly related to the potential of greater conflict and greater stability –instability. i’m telling you that there are people in parts of the world – in africa today, theyfight each other over water. they kill each over it. and if glaciers are melting and there’s lesswater available and more people, that is a challenge we have to face. and guess what? it isthe poorest and the weakest who face the greatest risk. as father drinan would say, we shouldbe in anguish over this. (applause.)

what’s frustrating is that this challenge is not without a solution. in fact, not one problem ican think of today that we face in this country is without a solution. it’s a question ofcapacity, willpower. the solution is actually staring us in the face. it is energy policy. makethe right energy policy choices and america can lead a $6 trillion market with 4 billion userstoday and growing to 9 billion users in the ne_t 50 years.

if we make the necessary efforts to address this challenge – and supposing i’m wrong orscientists are wrong, 97 percent of them all wrong – supposing they are, what’s the worst thatcan happen? we put millions of people to work transitioning our energy, creating new andrenewable and alternative; we make life healthier because we have less particulates in the airand cleaner air and more health; we give ourselves greater security through greater energyindependence – that’s the downside. this is not a matter of politics or partisanship; it’s amatter of science and stewardship. and it’s not a matter of capacity; it’s a matter of willpower. (applause.)

but if we do nothing, and it turns out that the critics and the naysayers and the members ofthe flat earth society, if it turns out that they’re wrong, then we are risking nothing less thanthe future of the entire planet. this is not a hard choice, frankly. but still, let me tell you weneed the help of every single one of you to make it.

in the end, all of these global challenges – how to defend against e_tremism, how toeradicate disease, how to provide young people with opportunity, how to protect our planet– all of these questions of whether men and women can live in dignity. what do i mean bydignity? i mean e_actly the same thing that father david hollenbach taught on this campusand brought to the forefront of catholic social teaching: that when families have access toclean water and clean power, they can live in dignity. when people have the freedom to choosetheir government on election day and to engage their fellow citizens every day, they can livein dignity. when all citizens can make their full contribution no matter their ethnicity; nomatter who they love or what name they give to god, they can live in dignity.

and this is where you come in: the struggle for dignity. whether across town or across theworld, it makes demands on your own lives. the diploma that you will receive today isn’t just acertificate of accomplishment. it’s a charge to keep. it’s a powerful challenge to every singleone of you, because you have already been blessed with a world-class education, and with itcomes responsibility. part of that responsibility is taking to heart the values that you’ve learnedhere and sharing them with the world beyond bc. that spirit of service is part of the fabric ofthis school, just as it is part of the fabric of our nation.

i often think of the words of our first secretary of state, thomas jefferson, someone who alsofounded a prestigious university like yours. jefferson spoke about the beauty of a simpleimage: using one candle to light another. and he said that when that happens, both candlesgain light and neither candle loses any. he was talking about the contagious quality ofshared knowledge. as heirs to the jesuit tradition, this is an idea that you know well. twocenturies before jefferson, st. ignatius loyola always closed his letters with a simple charge,and it’s one i pass on to you today. st. ignatius wrote simply, “set the world aflame.”

so graduates of 2024, pass on your light to others. set the world aflame with your service.welcome those who are lost; seek out those at the crossroads. that is how you can fulfill yourresponsibility as a graduate of this great institution. that is how you can answer the call to bea servant, leader, and that is how you can keep faith with and renew the idea of america, andthat is how we all live up to our duty as citizens.

congratulations to all of you. good luck and god bless.

毕业典礼英语演讲稿 模板3

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you all are leaving your alma mater now. i have no gift to present you all e_cept a piece of advice.

what i would like to advise is that "don’t give up your study." most of the courses you have taken are partly for your certificate. you had no choice but to take them. from now on, you may study on your own. i would advise you to work hard at some special field when you are still young and vigorous. your youth will be gone that will never come back to you again. when you are old, and when your energy are getting poorer, you will not be able to as you wish to. even though you have to study in order to make a living, studies will never live up to you. making a living without studying, you will be shifted out in three or five years. at this time when you hope to make it up, you will say it is too late. perhaps you will say, "after graduation and going into the society, we will meet with an urgent problem, that is, to make a living. for this we have no time to study. even though we hope to study, we have no library nor labs, how can we study further?"

i would like to say that all those who wait to have a library will not study further even though they have one and all these who wait to have a lab will not do e_periments even though they have one. when you have a firm resolution and determination to solve a problem, you will naturally economize on food and clothing.

as for time, i should say it’s not a problem. you may know that every day he could do only an hour work, not much more than that because darwin was ill for all his life. you must have read his achievements. every day you spend an hour in reading 10 useful pages, then you will read more than 3650 pages every year. in 30 years you will have read 110,000 pages.

my fellow students, reading 110,000 pages will make you a scholar. but it will take you an hour to read three kinds of small-sized newspapers and it will take you an hour and a half to play four rounds of mahjian pieces. reading small-sized newspapers or playing mahjian pieces, or working hard to be a scholar? it’s up to you all.

henrik ibsen said, "it is your greatest duty to make yourself out."

studying is then as tool as casting. giving up studying will destroy yourself.

i have to say goodbye to you all. your alma mater will open her eyes to see what you will be in 10 years. goodbye!

毕业典礼英语演讲稿 模板4

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大学毕业典礼英语演讲稿

graduates of yale university, i apologize if you have endured this type of prologue before, but i want you to do something for me. please, take a ood look around you. look at the classmate on your left. look at the classmate on your right. now, consider this: five years from now, 10 years from now, even 30 years from now, odds are the person on your left is going to be a loser. the person on your right, meanwhile, will also be a loser. and you, in the middle? what can you e_pect? loser. loserhood. loser cum laude.

"in fact, as i look out before me today, i don"t see a thousand hopes for a bright tomorrow. i don"t see a thousand future leaders in a thousand industries. i see a thousand losers.

"you"re upset. that"s understandable. after all, how can i, lawrence "larry" ellison, college dropout, have the audacity to spout such heresy to the graduating class of one of the nation"s most prestigious institutions? i"ll tell you why. because i, lawrence "larry" ellison, second richest man on the planet, am a college dropout, and you are not.

"because bill gates, richest man on the planet -- for now, anyway -- is a college ropout, and you are not.

"because paul allen, the third richest man on the planet, dropped out of college, and you did not.

"and for good measure, because michael dell, no. 9 on the list and moving up fast, is a college dropout, and you, yet again, are not.

"hmm . . . you"re very upset. that"s understandable. so let me stroke your egos for a moment by pointing out, quite sincerely, that your diplomas were not attained in vain. most of you, i imagine, have spent four to five years here, and in many ways what you"ve learned and endured will serve you well in the years ahead. you"ve established good work habits. you"ve established a network of people that will help you down the road. and you"ve established what will be lifelong relationships with the word "therapy." all that of is good. for in truth, you will need that network. you will need those strong work habits. you will need that therapy.

"you will need them because you didn"t drop out, and so you will never be among the richest people in the world. oh sure, you may, perhaps, work your way up to no. 10 or no. 11, like steve ballmer. but then, i don"t have to tell you who he really works for, do i? and for the record, he dropped out of grad school. bit of a late bloomer.

"finally, i realize that many of you, and hopefully by now most of you, are wondering, "is there anything i can do? is there any hope for me at all?" actually, no. it"s too late. you"ve absorbed too much, think you know too much. you"re not 19 anymore. you have a built-in cap, and i"m not referring to the mortar boards on your heads.

"hmm... you"re really very upset. that"s understandable. so perhaps this would be a good time to bring up the silver lining. not for you, class of "00. you are a write-off, so i"ll let you slink off to your pathetic $200,000-a-year jobs, where your checks will be signed by former classmates who dropped out two years ago.

"instead, i want to give hope to any underclassmen here today. i say to you, and i can"t stress this enough: leave. pack your things and your ideas and don"t come back. drop out. start up.

"for i can tell you that a cap and gown will keep you down just as surely as these security guards dragging me off this stage are keeping me down . . ."

(at this point the oracle ceo was ushered off stage.)

中文译文：

耶鲁的毕业生们，我很抱歉——如果你们不喜欢这样的开场。我想请你们为我做一件事。请你---好好看一看周围，看一看站在你左边的同学，看一看站在你右边的同学。

请你设想这样的情况：从现在起5年之后，2024年之后，或30年之后，今天站在你左边的这个人会是一个失败者;右边的这个人，同样，也是个失败者。而你，站在中间的家伙，你以为会怎样?一样是失败者。失败的经历。失败的优等生。

说实话，今天我站在这里，并没有看到一千个毕业生的灿烂未来。我没有看到一千个行业的一千名卓越领导者，我只看到了一千个失败者。你们感到沮丧，这是可以理解的。为什么，我，埃里森，一个退学生，竟然在美国最具声望的学府里这样厚颜地散布异端?我来告诉你原因。因为，我，埃里森，这个行星上第二富有的人，是个退学生，而你不是。因为比尔-盖茨，这个行星上最富有的人——就目前而言---是个退学生，而你不是。因为艾伦，这个行星上第三富有的人，也退了学，而你没有。再来一点证据吧，因为戴尔，这个行星上第九富有的人——他的排位还在不断上升，也是个退学生。而你，不是。

......你们非常沮丧，这是可以理解的。

你们将来需要这些有用的工作习惯。你将来需要这种"治疗"。你需要它们，因为你没辍学，所以你永远不会成为世界上最富有的人。哦，当然，你可以，也许，以你的方式进步到第10位，第11位，就像steve。但，我没有告诉你他在为谁工作，是吧?

根据记载，他是研究生时辍的学，开化得稍晚了些。

现在，我猜想你们中间很多人，也许是绝大多数人，正在琢磨，"我能做什么? 我究竟有没有前途?"当然没有。太晚了，你们已经吸收了太多东西，以为自己懂得太多。你们再也不是19岁了。你们有了"内置"的帽子，哦，我指的可不是你们脑袋上的学位帽。

嗯......你们已经非常沮丧啦。这是可以理解的。所以，现在可能是讨论实质的时候啦——

绝不是为了你们，2024年毕业生。你们已经被报销，不予考虑了。我想，你们就偷偷摸摸去干那年薪20万的可怜工作吧，在那里，工资单是由你两年前辍学的同班同学签字开出来的。事实上，我是寄希望于眼下还没有毕业的同学。我要对他们说，离开这里。收拾好你的东西，带着你的点子，别再回来。退学吧，开始行动。

我要告诉你，一顶帽子一套学位服必然要让你沦落......就像这些保安马上要把我从这个讲台上撵走一样必然......(此时，larry被带离了讲台)

毕业典礼英文演讲稿范文

you all are leaving your alma mater now. i have no gift to present you all e_cept a piece of advice.

what i would like to advise is that "don’t give up your study." most of the courses you have taken are partly for your certificate. you had no choice but to take them. from now on, you may study on your own. i would advise you to work hard at some special field when you are still young and vigorous. your youth will be gone that will never come back to you again. when you are old, and when your energy are getting poorer, you will not be able to as you wish to. even though you have to study in order to make a living, studies will never live up to you. making a living without studying, you will be shifted out in three or five years. at this time when you hope to make it up, you will say it is too late. perhaps you will say, "after graduation and going into the society, we will meet with an urgent problem, that is, to make a living. for this we have no time to study. even though we hope to study, we have no library nor labs, how can we study further?"毕业典礼英文演讲稿

i would like to say that all those who wait to have a library will not study further even though they have one and all these who wait to have a lab will not do e_periments even though they have one. when you have a firm resolution and determination to solve a problem, you will naturally economize on food and clothing.

as for time, i should say it’s not a problem. you may know that every day he could do only an hour work, not much more than that because darwin was ill for all his life. you must have read his achievements. every day you spend an hour in reading 10 useful pages, then you will read more than 3650 pages every year. in 30 years you will have read 110,000 pages.

my fellow students, reading 110,000 pages will make you a scholar. but it will take you an hour to read three kinds of small-sized newspapers and it will take you an hour and a half to play four rounds of mahjian pieces. reading small-sized newspapers or playing mahjian pieces, or working hard to be a scholar? it’s up to you all.

henrik ibsen said, "it is your greatest duty to make yourself out."

studying is then as tool as casting. giving up studying will destroy yourself.

i have to say goodbye to you all. your alma mater will open her eyes to see what you will be in 10 years. goodbye!

毕业典礼英语演讲稿 模板5

阅读小贴士：模板5共计9968个字，预计阅读时长25分钟。朗读需要50分钟，中速朗读67分钟，在庄重严肃场合朗读需要91分钟，有240位用户喜欢。

president faust, members of the harvard corporation and the board of overseers,members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates,

福斯特主席，哈佛公司和监察委员会的各位成员，各位老师、家长、全体毕业生们：

the first thing i would like to say is "thank you." not only has harvard given me an e_traordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea i’ve endured at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. a win-win situation! now all i have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and convince myself that i am at the world’s largest gryffindors" reunion.

首先请允许我说一声谢谢。哈佛不仅给了我无上的荣誉，连日来为这个演讲经受的恐惧和紧张，更令我减肥成功。这真是一个双赢的局面。现在我要做的就是深呼吸几下，眯着眼睛看看前面的大红横幅，安慰自己正在世界上最大的格兰芬多(提示：以防有人没看过《哈利波特》……格兰芬多是小哈利所在的魔法学院的名字)聚会上。

delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so i thought until i cast my mind back to my own graduation. the commencement speaker that day was the distinguished british philosopher baroness mary warnock. reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that i can"t remember a single word she said. this liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that i might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.

发表毕业演说是一个巨大的责任，至少在我回忆自己当年的毕业典礼前是这么认为的。那天做演讲的是英国著名的哲学家 baroness mary warnock，对她演讲的回忆，对我写今天的演讲稿，产生了极大的帮助，因为我不记得她说过的任何一句话了。这个发现让我释然，让我不再担心我可能会无意中影响你放弃在商业，法律或政治上的大好前途，转而醉心于成为一个快乐的魔法师(gay有快乐和同性恋的意思)。

you see? if all you remember in years to come is the "gay wizard" joke, i"ve still come out ahead of baroness mary warnock. achievable goals - the first step to self-improvement.

你们看，如果在若干年后你们还记得"快乐的魔法师"这个笑话，那就证明我已经超越了baroness mary warnock。建立可实现的目标——这是提高自我的第一步。

actually, i have wracked my mind and heart for what i ought to say to you today. i have asked myself what i wish i had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons i have learned in the 21 years that has e_pired between that day and this.

实际上，我为今天应该和大家谈些什么绞尽了脑汁。我问自己什么是我希望早在毕业典礼上就该了解的，而从那时起到现在的 21年间，我又得到了什么重要的启示。

i have come up with two answers. on this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, i have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. and as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called "real life", i want to e_tol the crucial importance of imagination.

我想到了两个答案。在这美好的一天，当我们一起庆祝你们取得学业成就的时刻，我希望告诉你们失败有什么样的益处;在你们即将迈向"现实生活"的道路之际，我还要褒扬想象力的重要性。

these may seem qui_otic or parado_ical choices, but bear with me.

这些似乎是不切实际或自相矛盾的选择，但请先容我讲完。

looking back at the 21-year-old that i was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable e_perience for the 42-year-old that she has become. half my lifetime ago, i was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition i had for myself, and what those closest to me e_pected of me.

回顾21岁刚刚毕业时的自己，对于今天42岁的我来说，是一个稍微不太舒服的经历。可以说，我人生的前一部分，一直挣扎在自己的雄心和身边的人对我的期望之间。

i was convinced that the only thing i wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. however, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.

我一直深信，自己唯一想做的事情，就是写小说。不过，我的父母，他们都来自贫穷的背景，没有任何一人上过大学，坚持认为我过度的想象力是一个令人惊讶的个人怪癖，根本不足以让我支付按揭，或者取得足够的养老金。

i know the irony strikes like with the force of a cartoon anvil now, but…

我现在明白反讽就像用卡通铁砧去打击你，但...

they had hoped that i would take a vocational degree; i wanted to study english literature. a compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and i went up to study modern languages. hardly had my parents" car rounded the corner at the end of the road than i ditched german and scuttled off down the classics corridor.

他们希望我去拿个职业学位，而我想去攻读英国文学。最后，达成了一个双方都不甚满意的妥协：我改学现代语言。可是等到父母一走开，我立刻放弃了德语而报名学习古典文学。

i cannot remember telling my parents that i was studying classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. of all the subjects on this planet, i think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an e_ecutive bathroom.

我不记得将这事告诉了父母，他们可能是在我毕业典礼那一天才发现的。我想，在全世界的所有专业中，他们也许认为，不会有比研究希腊神话更没用的专业了，根本无法换来一间独立宽敞的卫生间。

i would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that i do not blame my parents for their point of view. there is an e_piry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. what is more, i cannot criticise my parents for hoping that i would never e_perience poverty. they had been poor themselves, and i have since been poor, and i quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling e_perience. poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.

我想澄清一下：我不会因为父母的观点，而责怪他们。埋怨父母给你指错方向是有一个时间段的。当你成长到可以控制自我方向的时候，你就要自己承担责任了。尤其是，我不会因为父母希望我不要过穷日子，而责怪他们。他们一直很贫穷，我后来也一度很穷，所以我很理解他们。贫穷并不是一种高贵的经历，它带来恐惧、压力、有时还有绝望，它意味着许许多多的羞辱和艰辛。靠自己的努力摆脱贫穷，确实可以引以自豪，但贫穷本身只有对傻瓜而言才是浪漫的。

what i feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.

我在你们这个年龄，最害怕的不是贫穷，而是失败。

at your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where i had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, i had a knack for passing e_aminations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.

我在您们这么大时，明显缺乏在大学学习的动力，我花了太久时间在咖啡吧写故事，而在课堂的时间却很少。我有一个通过考试的诀窍，并且数年间一直让我在大学生活和同龄人中不落人后。

i am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartache. talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the fates, and i do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an e_istence of unruffled privilege and contentment.

我不想愚蠢地假设，因为你们年轻、有天份，并且受过良好的教育，就从来没有遇到困难或心碎的时刻。拥有才华和智慧，从来不会使人对命运的反复无常有所准备;我也不会假设大家坐在这里冷静地满足于自身的优越感。

however, the fact that you are graduating from harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. you might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person"s idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.

相反，你们是哈佛毕业生的这个事实，意味着你们并不很了解失败。你们也许极其渴望成功，所以非常害怕失败。说实话，你们眼中的失败，很可能就是普通人眼中的成功，毕竟你们在学业上已经达到很高的高度了。

ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. so i think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, i had failed on an epic scale. an e_ceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and i was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern britain, without being homeless. the fears my parents had had for me, and that i had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, i was the biggest failure i knew.

最终，我们所有人都必须自己决定什么算作失败，但如果你愿意，世界是相当渴望给你一套标准的。所以我想很公平的讲，从任何传统的标准看，在我毕业仅仅七年后的日子里，我的失败达到了史诗般空前的规模：短命的婚姻闪电般地破裂，我又失业成了一个艰难的单身母亲。除了流浪汉，我是当代英国最穷的人之一，真的一无所有。当年父母和我自己对未来的担忧，现在都变成了现实。按照惯常的标准来看，我也是我所知道的最失败的人。

now, i am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. that period of my life was a dark one, and i had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. i had no idea how far the tunnel e_tended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

现在，我不打算站在这里告诉你们，失败是有趣的。那段日子是我生命中的黑暗岁月，我不知道它是否代表童话故事里需要历经的磨难，更不知道自己还要在黑暗中走多久。很长一段时间里，前面留给我的只是希望，而不是现实。

so why do i talk about the benefits of failure? simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. i stopped pretending to myself that i was anything other than what i was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. had i really succeeded at anything else, i might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena i believed i truly belonged. i was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and i was still alive, and i still had a daughter whom i adored, and i had an old typewriter and a big idea. and so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which i rebuilt my life.

那么为什么我要谈论失败的好处呢?因为失败意味着剥离掉那些不必要的东西。我因此不再伪装自己、远离自我，而重新开始把所有精力放在对我最重要的事情上。如果不是没有在其他领域成功过，我可能就不会找到，在一个我确信真正属于的舞台上取得成功的决心。我获得了自由，因为最害怕的虽然已经发生了，但我还活着，我仍然有一个我深爱的女儿，我还有一个旧打字机和一个很大的想法。所以困境的谷底，成为我重建生活的坚实基础。

you might never fail on the scale i did, but some failure in life is inevitable. it is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

你们可能永远没有达到我经历的那种失败程度，但有些失败，在生活中是不可避免的。生活不可能没有一点失败，除非你生活的万般小心，而那也意味着你没有真正在生活了。无论怎样，有些失败还是注定地要发生。

failure gave me an inner security that i had never attained by passing e_aminations. failure taught me things about myself that i could have learned no other way. i discovered that i had a strong will, and more discipline than i had suspected; i also found out that i had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies.

失败使我的内心产生一种安全感，这是我从考试中没有得到过的。失败让我看清自己，这也是我通过其他方式无法体会的。我发现，我比自己认为的，要有更强的意志和决心。我还发现，我拥有比宝石更加珍贵的朋友。

the knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. you will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification i ever earned.

从挫折中获得智慧、变得坚强，意味着你比以往任何时候都更有能力生存。只有在逆境来临的时候，你才会真正认识你自己，了解身边的人。这种了解是真正的财富，虽然是用痛苦换来的，但比我以前得到的任何资格证书都有用。

so given a time turner, i would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. your qualifications, your cv, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone"s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

如果给我一部时间机器，我会告诉21岁的自己，人的幸福在于知道生活不是一份漂亮的成绩单，你的资历、简历，都不是你的生活，虽然你会碰到很多与我同龄或更老一点的人今天依然还在混淆两者。生活是艰辛的，复杂的，超出任何人的控制能力，而谦恭地了解这一点，将使你历经沧桑后能够更好的生存。

you might think that i chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. though i will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, i have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. in its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose e_periences we have never shared.

对于第二个主题的选择——想象力的重要性——你们可能会认为是因为它对我重建生活起到了帮助，但事实并非完全如此。虽然我愿誓死捍卫睡前要给孩子讲故事的价值观，我对想象力的理解已经有了更广泛的含义。想象力不仅仅是人类设想还不存在的事物这种独特的能力，为所有发明和创新提供源泉，它还是人类改造和揭露现实的能力，使我们同情自己不曾经受的他人苦难。

one of the greatest formative e_periences of my life preceded harry potter, though it informed much of what i subsequently wrote in those books. this revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. though i was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, i paid the rent in my early 20s by working at the african research department at amnesty international"s headquarters in london.

其中一个影响最大的经历发生在我写哈利波特之前，为我随后写书提供了很多想法。这些想法成形于我早期的工作经历，在20 多岁时，尽管我可以在午餐时间里悄悄写故事，可为了付房租，我做的主要工作是在伦敦总部的国际研究部门。

there in my little office i read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. i saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to amnesty by their desperate families and friends. i read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. i opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and e_ecutions, of kidnappings and rapes.

在我的小办公室，我看到了人们匆匆写的信件，它们是从极权主义政权被偷送出来的。那些人冒着被监禁的危险，告知外面的世界他们那里正在发生的事情。我看到了那些无迹可寻的人的照片，它们是被那些绝望的家人和朋友送来的。我看过拷问受害者的证词和被害的照片。我打开过手写的目击证词，描述绑架和强女干犯的审判和处决。

many of my co-workers were e_-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into e_ile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those who they had left behind.

我有很多的同事是前政治犯，他们已离开家园流离失所，或逃亡流放，因为他们敢于怀疑政府、独立思考。来我们办公室的访客，包括那些前来提供信息，或想设法知道那些被迫留下的同志发生了什么事的人。

i shall never forget the african torture victim, a young man no older than i was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. he trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. he was a foot taller than i was, and seemed as fragile as a child. i was given the job of escorting him to the underground station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with e_quisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.

我将永远不会忘记一个非洲酷刑的受害者，一名当时还没有我大的年轻男子，他因在故乡的经历而精神错乱。在摄像机前讲述被残暴地摧残的时候，他颤抖失控。他比我高一英尺，却看上去像一个脆弱的儿童。我被安排随后护送他到地铁站，这名生活已被残酷地打乱的男子，小心翼翼地握着我的手，祝我未来生活幸福。

and as long as i live i shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as i have never heard since. the door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. she had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country"s regime, his mother had been seized and e_ecuted.

只要我活着，我还会记得，在一个空荡荡的的走廊，突然从背后的门里，传来我从未听过的痛苦和恐惧的尖叫。门打开了，调查员探出头请求我，为坐在她旁边的青年男子，调一杯热饮料。她刚刚给他的消息是，为了报复他对国家政权的批评，他的母亲已经被捕并执行了枪决。

every day of my working week in my early 20s i was reminded how incredibly fortunate i was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.

在我20多岁的那段日子，每一天的工作，都在提醒我自己是多么幸运。生活在一个民选政府的国家，依法申述与公开审理，是所有人的权利。

every day, i saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. i began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things i saw, heard and read.

每一天，我都能看到更多有关恶人的证据，他们为了获得或维持权力，对自己的同胞犯下暴行。我开始做噩梦，真正意义上的噩梦，全都和我所见所闻有关。

and yet i also learned more about human goodness at amnesty international than i had ever known before.

同时在这里我也了解到更多关于人类的善良，比我以前想象的要多很多。

amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. the power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. my small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring e_periences of my life.

大赦动员成千上万没有因为个人信仰而受到折磨或监禁的人，去为那些遭受这种不幸的人奔走。人类同理心的力量，引发集体行动，拯救生命，解放囚犯。个人的福祉和安全有保证的普通百姓，携手合作，大量挽救那些他们素不相识，也许永远不会见面的人。我用自己微薄的力量参与了这一过程，也获得了更大的启发。

unlike any other creature on this planet, human beings can learn and understand, without having e_perienced. they can think themselves into other people"s places.

不同于在这个星球上任何其他的动物，人类可以学习和理解未曾经历过的东西。他们可以将心比心、设身处地的理解他人。

of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. one might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.

当然，这种能力，就像在我虚构的魔法世界里一样，在道德上是中立的。一个人可能会利用这种能力去操纵控制，也有人选择去了解同情。

and many prefer not to e_ercise their imaginations at all. they choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own e_perience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. they can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

而很多人选择不去使用他们的想象力。他们选择留在自己舒适的世界里，从来不愿花力气去想想如果生在别处会怎样。他们可以拒绝去听别人的尖叫，看一眼囚禁的笼子;他们可以封闭自己的内心，只要痛苦不触及个人，他们可以拒绝去了解。

i might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, e_cept that i do not think they have any fewer nightmares than i do. choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. i think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. they are often more afraid.

我可能会受到诱惑，去嫉妒那样生活的人。但我不认为他们做的噩梦会比我更少。选择生活在狭窄的空间，可以导致不敢面对开阔的视野，给自己带来恐惧感。我认为不愿展开想像的人会看到更多的怪兽，他们往往更感到更害怕。

what is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. for without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

更甚的是，那些选择不去同情的人，可能会激活真正的怪兽。因为尽管自己没有犯下罪恶，我们却通过冷漠与之勾结。

one of the many things i learned at the end of that classics corridor down which i ventured at the age of 18, in search of something i could not then define, was this, written by the greek author plutarch: what we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

我18岁开始从古典文学中汲取许多知识，其中之一当时并不完全理解，那就是希腊作家普鲁塔克所说：我们内心获得的，将改变外在的现实。

that is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. it e_presses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people"s lives simply by e_isting.

那是一个惊人的论断，在我们生活的每一天里被无数次证实。它指明我们与外部世界有无法脱离的联系，我们以自身的存在接触着他人的生命。

but how much more are you, harvard graduates of 2024, likely to touch other people"s lives? your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. even your nationality sets you apart. the great majority of you belong to the world"s only remaining superpower. the way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. that is your privilege, and your burden.

但是，哈佛大学的2024届毕业生们，你们多少人有可能去触及他人的生命?你们的智慧，你们努力工作的能力，以及你们所受到的教育，给予你们独特的地位和责任。甚至你们的国籍也让你们与众不同，你们绝大部份人属于这个世界上唯一的超级大国。你们表决的方式，你们生活的方式，你们抗议的方式，你们给政府带来的压力，具有超乎寻常的影响力。这是你们的特权，也是你们的责任。

if you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your e_istence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped to change. we do not need magic to transform the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

如果你选择利用自己的地位和影响，去为那些没有发言权的人发出声音;如果你选择不仅与强者为伍，还会同情帮扶弱者;如果你会设身处地为不如你的人着想，那么你的存在，将不仅是你家人的骄傲，更是无数因为你的帮助而改变命运的成千上万人的骄傲。我们不需要改变世界的魔法，我们自己的内心就有这种力量：那就是我们一直在梦想，让这个世界变得更美好。

i am nearly finished. i have one last hope for you, which is something that i already had at 21. the friends with whom i sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. they are my children"s godparents, the people to whom i"ve been able to turn in times of real trouble, people who have been kind enough not to sue me when i"ve used their names for death eaters. at our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared e_perience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be e_ceptionally valuable if any of us ran for prime minister.

我的演讲要接近尾声了。对你们，我有最后一个希望，也是我21岁时就有的。毕业那天坐在我身边的朋友现在是我终身的挚交，他们是我孩子的教父母，是在我遇到麻烦时愿意伸出援手，在我用他们的名字给哈利波特中的 "食死徒"起名而不会起诉我的朋友。我们在毕业典礼时坐在了一起，因为我们关系亲密，拥有共同的永远无法再来的经历，当然，也因为假想要是我们中的任何人竞选首相，那照片将是极为宝贵的关系证明。

so today, i can wish you nothing better than similar friendships. and tomorrow, i hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of seneca, another of those old romans i met when i fled down the classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:

所以今天我可以给你们的，没有比拥有知己更好的祝福了。明天，我希望即使你们不记得我说的任何一个字，你们还能记得哲学家塞内加的一句至理明言。我当年没有顺着事业的阶梯向上攀爬，转而与他在古典文学的殿堂相遇，他的古老智慧给了我人生的启迪：

as is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

生活就像故事一样：不在乎长短，而在于质量，这才是最重要的。

i wish you all very good lives.

我祝愿你们都有美好的生活。

thank you very much.

非常感谢大家。

毕业典礼英语演讲稿 模板6

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thank you to acting presidentchenette, my dearest friend and the person who invited megerry laybourne, theboard, the faculty at vassar, all of the proud parents that are here,ouralumnae and our alumni, and all the distinguished guests. and to the vassarclass of 2024 – many congratulations.

vassar truly stands as a beaconof hope and opportunity that continues to inspire all of us.you have shown astrong sense of justice, community, and bold activism. although i knowthere is always more work tobe done, you have shattered many glass ceilings here...womenhave always beenin leadership …you are advancing lgbt equality and acceptance, and you dohavea campus that’s diverse in more ways than ever before!

the education that you receivehere at vassar is a precious opportunity, one that tens ofmillions of youngpeople across the world are denied every single day due to poverty,violence,prejudice and injustice.

but i know that someday we canactually change that – with students like you leading theway. students who stood up to the bigotry of thewestboro baptist church. you did not standquietly by. you created a nationalconversation. you raised over $100,000, and you made yourvoice heard, inspiredaction in others, and produced real results.

my hope for this class is thatthis determined courage, this spirit of activism, this fierceopposition tohate will be the rule, not the e_ception.

so i’ve come here to ask youtoday, each and every one of you, just one question: how areyou going to takethe lessons that you’ve learned here at vassar, and carry on this legacyofmaking a real difference?

i hope that each one of you findsthe opportunity to do public service, and truly have animpact on the lives ofso many others.

so i want to tell you all alittle bit about my own journey to public service. i was very luckybecause igrew up in a family that had a very strong role model. the role model wasmygrandmother. she started her career as a young woman…she never went tocollege…sheworked as a secretary in our state legislature in albany.

she had this very bold idea thatwomen’s voices should be heard. there were very fewwomen in elective office 75years ago. she wanted to have a say, and she wanted to have animpact.

and she knew somethinginstinctively that all of us know now, that to speak in one voice isveryimportant, but to speak along with many voices is far more powerful. she she asked all thewomen in thelegislature and all the women she knew in upstate new york to get involvedinpolitics.

together they created anorganization of activism, where these women ran campaigns forabout fiftyyears. they did all the door to door work, all the envelope stuffing, all thekinds ofthings it takes to win modern day campaigns. and that is why they were able to have avoice.they were able to elect peoplewho shared their values, who shared their concerns, and wantedto have the sameimpact on their community that they did.

so what that taught me as a younggirl watching her is that not only do women’s voicesmatter, but what you dowith your time matters. grassrootsactivism matters. fighting to make adifference matters.

after i went to college and lawschool, i saw myself working in new york city in a big lawfirm, and i watchedour first lady, then hilary rodham clinton, go to china.

now if you remember, she went tochina in 1995, and she gave her historic speech onwomen’s rights. she said,“let it be known that human rights are women’s rights and women’srights arehuman rights once and for all.

now i was incredibly inspired byher at that moment because i’d been to beijing, i hadstudied there, i hadlearned mandarin, and i knew howpowerful it was for her as the first ladyto be giving that speech at that timein that place to that audience. they were still killing girlbabies in thecountryside and i know that she was making a dramatic impact on the worldatthat moment.

and i thought to myself, what ami doing with my life and am i making a difference? and ithought if i was goingto ever be with her at that conference in beijing with her, i would havehad tobe involved in politics. and that’s what spurred me to get off the sidelinesand focus onmaking a difference. and that’s when i engaged in politics.

so of course i followed in mygrandmother’s footsteps. i started working on campaigns. istarted organizingother women and doing the tough work it takes to elect candidates. and themore i got involved, the more irealized that i really love grassroots activism, and i decided iwanted toleave the law and do some form of public service.

i tried all sorts of ways to getthere, and my way wasn’t clear. first i tried the u.s.attorney’s office. i didnot get the job. then i tried a bunch of charities in new york. i didn’tevenget an interview.

the hillary clinton decides torun for senate, and i say, “this is my chance! i will get a jobon her campaign.”i couldn’t get a paid position, so i couldn’t afford it.

so i went to a large event, andour then-secretary of housing and urban development, ournow-governor andrewcuomo, was giving a speech, a speech not unlike this about public service.and i went up to him afterwards and i said,“well, mr. secretary, i’ve been trying to get intopublic service, and it’s notas easy as you say.”

andrew being andrew, our greatgovernor says, “well, would you move to washington?” andof course, determined,i said, “yes, i will move to washington.” truth be told, i had no interestin ever moving to washington. but, i did in fact take that opportunity, andi wound up goingto washington and serving as his special counsel.

now, never in my life have igotten out of bed as quickly as i did over those few months,because i lovedhelping others. and when theadministration lost the ne_t election, there wereno more jobs inwashington. and so i thought long andhard. and i said, “could i run foroffice?could i actually serve?” and over t

why shouldn’t i serve? why shouldn’t i make that jump? so i talked to a friend of minewho is apollster. his name is jeffrey. he’s still my pollster. and i go to him and i say, “jeffrey,couldyou just look up this district for me? i’m thinking of running in upstate new york wherei’m from.” and he looks it up, and he says, “hmmm. that is a two-to-one republicandistrict.you have no chance ofwinning.”

and i thought, really? no chance? “what happens if i run the perfect campaign? can’t iwin then?” he said, “no.” he said that there are more cows thandemocrats in that district. isaid,“well, what happens if i raise two million dollars and really get my messageout?” he said, “no, kirsten, i’msorry. you just can’t win.”

i said, “well, what happens ifthis guy gets indicted? he’s a troublemaker. i could surelywin then.” and he said, “well, it depends what he getsindicted for.”

well, the story goes, i did winthat election. and it was something thatno one thought waspossible. in fact,even the new york times called me a “dragon slayer” because it was such atoughdistrict to win.

so that taught me a few things.it taught me to always challenge conventional thinking.it taught me to think and dream big andcertainly never give up. and the truthis, there’snothing too big for any one of you here to achieve. you just haveto believe in that dream, evenif no one else but your mother believes in itwith you. because you can go as far asyour visionwill take you and as far as your hard work will take you.

so now you’ve heard the beginningof my story. i am far more interested in your story. i’dlike to know what yourpath will be? what will you accomplish in your life? what will you setout tochange?

i challenge you to refuse toaccept that things can’t change simply because others tell youso. i hear thate_cuse every day in washington, and it makes me even more determined to findaway.

i am incredibly humbled to servein a senate seat once occupied by giants in our americanhistory: my mentor,friend and trailblazer hillary rodham clinton, and the brilliantscholar-turned-politician daniel patrick moynihan. and, the iconic civil rightshero, robert f. kennedy.

rfk once quoted george bernardshaw and said, “there are those that look at things theway they are, and askwhy? i dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”

i love those words, and i thinkthey apply so much to all of us here today. there are thosewho look at all ofyou as generation y. i look at you and see generation y-not.

your generation is poised, likenone other in history, to challenge every single notion ofequality, justiceand opportunity for all.

you have a history of saying “whynot!” here at vassar. in 1861, the civilwar was about tocommence when matthew vassar asserted “why not create awomen’s institution for learningequal to men’s” -- a thought that seemedabsolutely revolutionary, even dangerous to some, adream that was fullyrealized here.

by 1969, vassar college, in asign of its strength, made the decision to become acoeducational institution,rejecting an invitation to move to new haven and join forces withyale,declaring: “why not become a coeducational institution where strong women’svoices areheard and men who are comfortable with strong women’s voices areheard equal to them.”

men like bill plapinger, yourboard chair from the class of 1974 sitting right here, thelegendary class of1974 that led you to this important ne_t stage. and bill seems to havesurvivedthe e_periment more or less.

so because of such groundbreakingleadership, we have actually achieved educational parityin this country. morethan half of our college graduates and our advanced degrees are given towomen.but the question is, how far have we come in reaching our goal of economic orpoliticalparity for women.

looking from my commencement in1988 to now, there were only two women in thesenate when i graduated. todaythere are 20. there are only 18 percentwomen in the house ofrepresentatives.

when i graduated from college,there were three women ceos in fortune 500 companies.today there are 20--only4 percent.

frankly, these numbers pathetic.so what are we missing? is it leadership? vision? a call toaction?

this has prompted none other thanwarren buffet to recently call on both men and womento address the imbalances– saying there is not just an ethical argument, but a verypragmatic one:everyone will benefit when we fully tap into the underutilized talents ofhalfour population.

and it’s true. when women serveon corporate boards, the return on investment and returnon equity are higher

ime, i said, “why not?”

when there’s at least one womanon a corporate board, that company is 40 percent lesslikely to have to restatetheir earnings. i wonder why?

when women are at the table inwashington, there are a whole set of issues that are raisedand very differentsolutions that are offered. there’soften much more common ground foundand more consensus built, and it’s notsurprising that it took a woman as the chair of thepersonnel subcommittee onthe armed services committee to hold the first hearing in tenyears on se_ualassault in the military.

clearly, women’s equality is notjust about women. lgbt equality is not just about our lgbtcommunity. povertydoes not only impact the poor. immigration reform is not just an issueforimmigrants.

when you approach the world withan eye towards justice, equality, and opportunity ascore, common values,suddenly we start to look at something that is better for thegreaterwhole. the whole becomes larger than thesum of its parts, and we become a strongernation for it.

fighting for women’s equality notonly challenges the status quo but compels thefundamental question, “why notseek justice for all and opportunity for everyone?”

in the u.s. today, nearly 50million americans are living below the poverty line, includingone-in-fiveamerican children, and more than a quarter of black and hispaniccommunities. athird of householdsheaded by single women are below the poverty line. it’s unbelievable andunacceptable that thisis the world we’re in today.

even as women are out-earning menin college degrees and advanced degrees, and are agrowing share of primary householdearners – men still out-earn women in salary.

the key to a growing economy… thekey to a thriving middle class… the key to an americawhere every family has achance at the american dream… is unleashing the potential of all ofus,including women.

that’s why i’m fighting so hardin the senate. in honor of today and in honor of thisgeneration, we arecalling it our why not agenda – it will equip anyone with an americandreamwith the tools to reach it and guarantees that opportunity for all.

why not increase the minimumwage?

why not e_pand paid familymedical leave?

why not provide universal pre-k?

why not make quality affordabledaycare accessible?

why not equal pay for equal work?

if we just paid a woman a dollaron the dollar for the e_act same work, america’s gdp couldgrow by up to 9percent.

if we just took the time to raisethe minimum wage and get so many wage earners out ofpoverty, our gdp will growby another $30 billion in just three years, creating up to 100,000new jobs.

when every woman has paid familyleave, 40,000 more new mothers will stay in their jobsand continue to advance their careersthroughout their lifetime.

you, as vassar’s great heirs totheir revolutionary e_periment, can realize this vision andturn this opportunityinto a bold, powerful reality.

standing so close to where shemade her home, i am very inspired by the words of eleanorroosevelt, who said,“you gain strength, courage, and confidence by every e_perience in whichyoureally stop and look at fear in the face….you must do the thing you think youcannot do.”

so i’m asking you to find it inyourselves not just to meet the demands of a new era, but tolead usthere. lead us to new discoveries andnew ideas. lead us to the dream that vassar wasfounded on. and when met with a challenge of tired,outdated, status-quo thinking, it is myhope that you will not see the world asit is, but you will see it as it could, and should, be, andsay, “why not?”

thank you, and congratulations!

毕业典礼英语演讲稿 模板7

阅读小贴士：模板7共计2802个字，预计阅读时长8分钟。朗读需要15分钟，中速朗读19分钟，在庄重严肃场合朗读需要26分钟，有281位用户喜欢。

想必大家一定都还记得randy pausch那篇曾经感动过无数人的《真正实现你的童年梦想》的演讲吧。我这里推荐的是他2024年5月19号(大约在他去世前的两多月)，在其母校卡内基梅隆大学毕业典礼上的演讲。这篇演讲只有6分钟左右，而且风格和之前的那篇很不同。在这篇演讲里，他少了些幽默，却多了些真诚的忠告。相信大家看后一定会受益匪浅。

最后，谨以此文献给randy pausch。

september 18, 2024

兰迪·波许在卡内基梅隆大学毕业典礼上的演讲 演讲稿中英文对照

i am glad to be here today, hell, i am glad to be anywhere today.

很高兴今天能够来到这里。天啊，今天不论在哪里我都很高兴。

president cohon asked me to come and give the charge to the graduates. i assure you, it"snothing compared to the charge you have just given me.

柯汉校长邀请我来给毕业生一些鼓励。我向诸位保证，你们刚刚给我的鼓励更多。

this is an incredible place. i have seen it through so many lenses. i saw it when i was agraduate student that didn"t get admitted and then somebody invited me back and said, ok,we"ll change our mind.

这所学校棒极了!我可从很多方面了解它。我也曾从这里毕业，遗憾的是并没有申请上研究生。然而一位恩师邀我回来并说：我们改变主意啦，你被录取了。

and i saw it as a place that hired me back to be on the faculty many years later and gave methe chance to do what anybody wants to do, which is ,follow their passion, follow their heartand do the things they they"re e_cited about.

许多年以后，我被聘回到这里执教。这是一个所有人都梦寐以求的机会。在这里，你可以追随热情，听从心灵的召唤，并能够做自己感到刺激的事。

and the great thing about this university unlike almost all the other ones i know of is thatnobody gets in your way when you try to do it. and that"s just fantastic.

这所学校胜过其他学校的地方在于当你尝试实现梦想时，没有人会阻拦你。这太美妙了!

and to the degree that a human being can love an institution. i love this place and i love all ofthe people and i am very grateful to jerry cohon and everyone else for all the kindness thathave shown me.

我无比的热爱这所学校，也爱这里的所有人。我十分感激柯汉校长和我的同事，感谢他们给我的温暖。

last august i was told that in all likelihood i had three to si_ months left to live. i am onmonth nine now and i am gonna get down and do any push-ups…but there will be a short pick-up basketball game later.

去年8月，我被告知只能再活3到6个月了。可现在已是第九个月了。我想低下身来做俯地挺身(他在人生最后一课时，小试身手，还幽默地说不要同情他，除非也能做那麽多下的俯地挺身)…但一会将有来一小段报队篮球赛(一般打半场，三对三，先进十一分或十五赢)。

somebody said to me, in light of those numbers, wow, so you aer really beating the grimreaper. and what i said without even thinking about is that we don"t beat the reaper by livinglonger. we beat the reaper by living well, and living fully.

当我说完前面的那些数字后，有些人对我说：天啊，你真的战神了冷酷的死神。而我毫不犹疑的回答他：仅靠多活几天是不能战胜死神的。战胜死神最好的方式是活得好，活得充实。

for the reaper will come for all of us, the question is what do we do between the time we areborn and the time he shows up.

人终会有一死，关键是从出生的那一刻起到死神降临的这一段时间内，我们都做了什麽。

"cause he shows up it is too late to do all the things that you"re always gonna kind of "get roundto". so i think the only advice i can give you on how to live your life well is, first off, remember,it"s a cliche, but love cliche, "it is not the things we do in life that we regret on our deathbed,it is the things we do not".

当死神降临时，想要做些我们一直想做而没时间去做的事，却已为时晚矣。因此，关于如何才能活的好，我给大家的唯一建议是，马上去做，请千万牢记，虽说这是老生常谈，但我喜欢老生常谈，"临终时我们不会后悔做过某些事，而是后悔没有去做某些事。"

"cause i assure you i"ve done a lot of stupid things and none of them bother me. all themistakes, all the dopy things and all the times i was embarrassed they don"t matter. whatmatter is that, i can kind of look back and say, "pretty much anytime i got a chance to dosomething cool, i tried to grab for it." and that"s where my solace come from.

坦率地说，我也曾做过很多蠢事，但它们中没有一件令我烦恼。所有那些犯过的错，做过的蠢事，还有令我尴尬的时刻，其实它们都不重要。真正重要的是，当我回首往事时，我会说：「只要有机会去做那些很酷的事，我将会毫不犹豫的去争取。」这才让我足堪告慰。

the second thing i would add to that, and i didn"t coordinate on the subject of this word but ithink it"s the right word that comes up, is passion. and you will need to find you passion.many of you have already done it, many of you will later, many of you will take till your 30s or40s. but don"t give up on finding it. alright? "cause then all you"re doing is waiting for thereaper. find you passion and follow it.

第二件我想说的事就是，我并没有规划用这个字眼。但我想这个字眼很合适，那就是“热情”二字。你们必须要找到自己的热情所在。你们当中有些人已经找到了，许多人将来也会找到，也许很多人要到三、四十岁时才找得到。但千万不要放弃寻找你的激情。好吗?因为你若放弃了，那你所能做的仅是等待死亡而已。去寻找你的热情所在，并追随它的脚步!

and if there"s anything i have learned in my life, you will not find passion in things. and youwill not find that passion in money. because the more things and the more money you have,the more you will just look around and use that as the metric, and there will always be someonewith more.

如果说我这一生中学到了什麽的话，那就是你不可能在物质中找到热情。你不会在金钱中找到热情。因为你拥有的财富越多，你就越有可能用它去衡量你周围的世界，然而总是有人比你更富有。

so your passion must come from the things that fuel you from the inside. and honors andawards are nice things but only to be the e_tent that they regard the real respect from yourpeers. and to be thought well of by other people that you think even more highly of is atremendous honor that i"ve been granted.

因此，热情必须来自于能从内在激发你。荣誉和奖赏是好事，但仅限于出于同行们真心的尊敬。或是像我一样能够被自己所尊敬的人所认同，这才是最大的荣幸。

find you passion and in my e_perience, no matter what you do at work or what you do inofficial settings, that passion would be grounded in people. and it will be grounded in therelationships you have with people, and what they think of you, when you time comes. and ifyou can gain the respect of those around you, and the passion and true love, and i"ve said thisbefore, but i waited till 39 to get married because i had to wait that long to find someonewhere her happiness was more important than mine. and if nothing else i hope that all of youcan find that kind of passion and that kind of love in your life.

去寻找你的热情吧。在我看来，无论你从事什麽样工作，处在怎样的环境当中，激情都是和人有关的。热情基于人与人之间的关係，基于当你离开人世时，人们对你的看法。如果你能赢的身边人的尊敬，正如我之前所说的你有热情和真爱。我等到39岁才结婚，是因为我必须等这麽久才能找到一位她的幸福比我的更重要的人。抛开一切其他不谈，我祝在座的各位，此生都能够找到那样的热情和真爱。

thank you!

谢谢!

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毕业典礼英语演讲稿范文：

i take with me the memory of friday afternoon acm happy hours, known not for kegs of beer, but rather bowls of rainbow sherbet punch. over the several years that i attended these happy hours they enjoyed varying degrees of popularity, often proportional to the quality and quantity of the accompanying refreshments - but there was always the rainbow sherbert punch.

i take with me memories of purple parking permits, the west campus shuttle, checking my pendafle_, over-due library books, trying to print from cec, lunches on delmar, friends who slept in their offices, miniature golf in lopata hall, the greenway talk, division iii basketball, and trying to convince dean russel that yet another engineering school rule should be changed.毕业典礼英语演讲稿

finally, i would like to conclude, not with a memory, but with some advice. what would a graduation speech be without a little advice, right? anyway, this advice comes in the form of a verse delivered to the 1977 graduating class of lake forest college by theodore seuss geisel, better known to the world as dr. seuss - here"s how it goes:

my uncle ordered popovers from the restaurant"s bill of fare. and when they were served, he regarded them with a penetrating stare . . . then he spoke great words of wisdom as he sat there on that chair: "to eat these things," said my uncle, "you must e_cercise great care. you may swallow down what"s solid . . . but . . . you must spit out the air!"

and . . . as you partake of the world"s bill of fare, that"s darned good advice to follow. do a lot of spitting out the hot air. and be careful what you swallow.

thank you.

毕业典礼英语演讲稿 模板9

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dean ellis, honored guests, faculty, family, friends, and the class of 2024,

i cannot begin to e_press my gratitude for your generosity today. thank you so much forinviting me to join you in celebrating your graduation! three years ago, i could never havecomprehended such an opportunity. thank you, thank you, thank you.

about three years ago today, i was right where you are. i was sitting in a folding chair, justlike that one, and i was wearing my cap and gown, waiting to walk on stage. but i wasn"tgraduating. when they shook my hand and took my picture, they handed me an empty folder.you see at stanford, they let you "walk" through graduation even if you haven"t actually finishedthe requirements necessary to get your diploma. you get to pretend that you are graduatingjust like everyone else, even though you aren"t. the university had created this program forstudents who were using the summer term to finish up their degrees. i was using it because iwas embarrassed, and i didn"t want to be left out of the celebrations. what was i going to do?stay in my dorm room while all of my friends processed into the stadium and tossed their capsinto the air without me? so i sat in the hot sun and i listened to cory booker talk for what feltlike quite a while, and i waved to my family who had traveled all the way to stanford to watchme not to graduate. by the way, hi, mom!

it only recently occurred to me, while preparing this address, how totally absurd this wholecharade was. it reminded me that oftentimes we do all sorts of silly things to avoid appearingdifferent. conforming happens so naturally that we can forget how powerful it is – we want tobe accepted by our peers – we want to be a part of the group. it"s in our biology. but the thingsthat make us human are those times we listen to the whispers of our soul and allow ourselves tobe pulled in another direction. conformity is so fascinating and so pervasive that it has beenstudied for a very long time. see, it turns out there are two things that can dramatically reduceconformity in a group setting. the first is a single dissenting voice, and the second is theability to communicate privately with other members of the group. our government gives usthe right to privacy and the right to e_press ourselves freely in the hope that we mightmitigate conformity. democracy wasn"t designed to promote popular thought. it wasarchitected to protect dissent. for, as president kennedy said, "conformity is the jailer offreedom and the enemy of growth."

i recently fell in love with a story about a great piece of american art. and it"s about a guynamed bob rauschenberg. he was a young artist, and he went to go visit his idol. you know, hereally loved this guy and he was totally terrified. he was so nervous that he was clutching abottle of jack daniels for liquid courage. and the truth is: he actually wasn"t just visiting. hewas visiting bill de kooning to ask for something. he wanted one of bill de kooning"s drawings.you see, bill de kooning, he was a dumb guy, he knew e_actly what rauschenberg was up to,because rauschenberg had recently been e_perimenting with his own art. he had been creatingthese drawings and then erasing them. but that wasn"t enough for bob rauschenberg, becausebob rauschenberg didn"t want to just erase his own art, he wanted to erase the art of hishero. so de kooning obliged but he took his time, and he tortured the young artist as hewandered around his studio in search of the perfect drawing. he didn"t want to just give him arandom drawing. he wanted it to be something really great, something that he really loved.and he finally settled on a drawing that was very, very hard to erase. it was comprised oflayers of lead and charcoal. and he generously gave it to bob rauschenberg. according to bob,it took nearly two months to erase the drawing. but it was jasper johns who came along andframed it and he gave that drawing a title, called "erased de kooning by bob rauschenberg." itwas jasper johns who recognized that in the process of erasing de kooning"s work, bobrauschenberg had actually created something new, his own new work of art.

i love this story because bill de kooning had the humility to recognize that the greatest thingwe can do is provide the best possible foundation for those who come after us. we mustwelcome our own erasure. so i"m asked one question most often: "why didn"t you sell yourbusiness? it doesn"t even make money. it"s a fad. you could be on a boat right now. everybodyloves boats. what is wrong with you?" and i am now convinced that the fastest way to figureout if you are doing something that is truly important to you is to find someone who offers youa bunch of money to part with it. so the best thing is that no matter whether or not you sell,you will learn something very valuable about yourself. if you sell, you will know immediatelythat it wasn"t the right dream anyways. and if you don"t sell, you"re probably onto something.maybe you have the beginning of something meaningful. but don"t feel bad if you sell out. justdon"t stop there. i mean, gosh, we would have sold our first company, for sure. but no onewanted to buy it. when we decided not to sell our business, people called us a lot of thingsbesides crazy – things like arrogant and entitled. the same words that i"ve heard used todescribe our generation time and time again. the millennial generation. the "me" generation.well, it"s true. we do have a sense of entitlement, a sense of ownership, because, after all,this is the world we were born into, and we are responsible for it.

the funny thing about "erased de kooning" is that it isn"t for sale. it"s safe and sound in thesan francisco museum of modern art. it"s tremendously valuable, but it bears no price. youalready have inside of you all of the amazing things you need to follow the dreams that youhave. and if you get stuck along the way, there"s a ton of free information available on theinternet. have faith in yourself and the person you are going to become. know that you arecapable of all of the growth that will be e_pected of you and that you e_pect from yourself. youwill tackle every challenge headed your way – and if you don"t – it won"t be for lack of trying.someone will always have an opinion about you. whatever you do won"t ever be enough. so findsomething important to you. find something that you love. you are going to make a lot ofmistakes. i"ve already made a ton of them – some of them very publicly – and it will feelterrible, but it will be okay. just apologize as quickly as you can and pray for forgiveness.

when you leave here, you"re going to face a great challenge: a full-time job. and the hardestpart is going to be getting used to solving problems that don"t yet have answers. in times ofdespair, you may believe the cynic who tells you that one person cannot make a difference –and there are times it may be hard to see your own impact. i beg you to remember that it isnot possible at this time or at any time to know the end results of our efforts. that is for ourgod alone. please voice your dissent, anticipate your erasure, and find something you aren"twilling to sell.

congratulations to the class of 2024! fight on!

毕业典礼英语演讲稿 模板10

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hi! how are you all doing? are you sure?well, let me just tell you, it is beyond a pleasure and an honor to be here with all of you today.

i want to start by thanking president krislov for that very kind introduction, as well as all of thetrustees, the faculty, the staff here at oberlin. i also want to tell you how proud and how movedi am to receive this honorary degree from this particular school – the first college in americato officially embrace the admission of black students, and the first co-ed school to grantbachelor"s degrees to women. (applause.)

i should be here today. oberlin is likely the only college in america that i could have attendednearly two centuries ago, and i am honored to be part of the e_traordinary legacy of thisgreat institution. (applause.)

i also want to take a moment on this memorial day to pay tribute to all of the brave men andwomen who have sacrificed their lives so that we could sit here today, at peace, with rights andfreedoms that others around the world can only dream of. i am so proud to honor theseamerican heroes today – and every day – for their e_traordinary service to our nation. (applause.)

and i"m also a little giddy to be joined on stage by another one of my heroes, marian wrightedelman. (applause.) her moral leadership on behalf of children in this country has inspiredme throughout my career, as well as my husband, the president of the united states. (applause.)

and, graduates, i think we should give another shout-out to your families, of course, all thefamilies. (applause.) these are the folks who pushed you and supported you. they answeredyour late-night phone calls even when you were just calling for money. (laughter.) so on behalfof your students, i just want to show you all some love today, as well. thank you for creatingthese fabulous individuals. well done. (applause.)

and finally, most of all, i want to congratulate the oberlin class of __! (applause.) look atyou! you made it! you"re here! you"re looking good! (applause.) and i know you worked hard tomake it to this moment, didn"t you? (laughter.) staying up late writing those papers, studyingfor e_ams. spent hours practicing and performing. you went to countless happy hours, andhappy-happy hours at the feve i hear – (laughter) – i"m going to try one of those burgers forlunch today; that"s all i"m going to have – (laughter) – where of course, parents, that"s wherethey studied some more.

and on top of all of that, you spent thousands of hours giving back to this community –tutoring kids, playing music for seniors, serving food to folks in need, and of course, mentoringthe local young people back there – i see you all – through the ninde scholars program. soproud of you all back there.

and that"s, as the president said, why i"m here today. (applause.) as he mentioned, my officedid this wonderful competition to highlight colleges that are helping underserved youngpeople graduate from high school and then go on to higher education. so by providing tutoringand act prep classes, financial aid workshops, and so much more, your ninde scholars programstood out as a shining e_ample of how schools like oberlin can lift first-generation students intocollege.

so i"m here today because i"m proud of you all. i really am. i"m inspired by yourcommitment to service and social justice. and i"m impressed by the community that youall have created here – a warm, supportive, inclusive community that embodies the valuesthat define this school.

and even amidst the joy and e_citement of graduation, i know that you may be feeling somereal sadness about leaving this community behind. you may also be feeling some real an_ietyabout venturing out into the world beyond these walls. and i"m not going to lie to you – formany of you, this is going to be a pretty big transition. in fact, i think dr. martin luther kingdescribed it well in his commencement address in "65 when he declared, “today you bidfarewell to the safe security of the academic environment. you prepare to continue yourjourney on the clamorous highways of life.”

and the truth is, graduates, after four years of thoughtful, respectful discussion and debatehere at oberlin – those seminars where you e_plored new ideas together, those late-nightconversations where you challenged each other and learned from each other – after all of that,you might find yourself a little dismayed by the clamor outside these walls – the name-calling,the negative ads, the folks yelling at each other on tv. after being surrounded by people whoare so dedicated to serving others and making the world a better place, you might feel a littlediscouraged by the polarization and gridlock that too often characterize our politics and civiclife.

and in the face of all of that clamor, you might have an overwhelming instinct to just runthe other way as fast as you can. you might be tempted to just recreate what you had here atoberlin – to find a community of like-minded folks and work with them on causes you careabout, and just tune out all of the noise. and that"s completely understandable. in fact, isometimes have that instinct myself – run! (laughter.)

but today, graduates, i want to urge you to do just the opposite. today, i want to suggest thatif you truly wish to carry on the oberlin legacy of service and social justice, then you need torun to, and not away from, the noise. (applause.) today, i want to urge you to actively seekout the most contentious, polarized, gridlocked places you can find. because so often,throughout our history, those have been the places where progress really happens – the placeswhere minds are changed, lives transformed, where our great american story unfolds.

for e_ample, think back to the struggle for women"s suffrage and the story of a leadingsuffragist and oberlin alum named lucy stone. (applause.) people screamed at her. they spaton her. they even threw prayer books at her as she tried to speak. her opponents declaredthat letting women vote was “unnatural,” would lead to child neglect and all kinds of social ills.so i"d say that debate was pretty polarized, wouldn"t you?

and think about president roosevelt"s struggle to pass the new deal a few decades later. fdr"splan for social security was called “socialist,” a “fraud on the workingman.” one opponenteven stated that it would “end the progress of a great country.” so that debate was prettycontentious, too.

and in the years before dr. king addressed those oberlin graduates in ‘65, he and hiscolleagues faced fire hoses and dogs in montgomery, beatings on a bridge in selma, insults andassaults as they sat quietly at lunch counters and marched peacefully down public streets.

and if you think today"s gridlock is bad, let me remind you that it was a good century betweenthe signing of the emancipation proclamation and the passage of the civil rights legislation ofthe 1960s. and of all the women at the seneca falls women"s suffrage convention in 1848,just one lived to see women cast their votes. just one.

but these folks didn"t let the ugliness and the obstacles deter them. they didn"t just give upand retreat to the comfortable company of like-minded folks, because they understood that thisis how democracy operates. it is loud and messy, and it"s not particularly warm and fuzzy. andbelieve me, i know this from personal e_perience. (laughter.) over the years, i"ve occasionallyrun into the noise myself. but i"ve come to realize that most of that clamor is really comingfrom just a handful of very loud folks out on the fringes.

see, the truth is that the overwhelming majority of people in this country are open-mindedand big-hearted. they are smart enough to see through that noise, and they are so hungry forvoices that rise above it – smart, compassionate, thoughtful voices like yours.

now, the process of democracy might not always be as fast or as smooth as we"d like. but thefact is, it works. generation after generation, this country has become more equal, moreinclusive, more fair, more free. my life and so many of your lives are a testament of that truth.but that has only happened because folks like all of you left their comfort zones and madetheir voices heard.

just look at the story of oberlin college. the founders of this school didn"t just decide to admitwomen and african american students and then pat themselves on the back and say “job welldone.” no, even in those early days, folks here at oberlin were attending anti-slavery meetings,shivering on rough wooden benches in unheated, unfinished buildings. they were joining theequal suffrage league and speaking out for women"s right to vote.

they were leading civil rights marches and sit-ins, organizing e_change programs withhistorically black colleges and universities, and so much more. because they knew it wasn"tenough to welcome women and african american students to oberlin if they would onlygraduate in four years to be second-class citizens in their own country. they knew that ourpolicies matter. they knew that our laws matter. and i know, as president krislov understands,that electing the right folks matters – it matters a lot.

now, i don"t know whether your president knows what i was going to say today, but i know thathe had some kind words for you all about this issue. but it"s no coincidence that we"re bothurging you to get involved in civic life. because we both know that you cannot fully achieveyour goals of service and social justice if you turn away from politics and public policy.

you see, it"s wonderful to volunteer at your local homeless shelter – please do that – but youalso need to attend the city council meetings and make sure the zoning laws don"t shut thatshelter down. (applause.) are you thinking of teaching in an under-served school? if so, i"mglad to hear that. so many kids need you. but you"ve also got to elect good people to yourschool board and state legislature, because they decide whether you have the resources youneed to inspire and empower your students. (applause.)

are you planning to rally for marriage equality on the steps of the supreme court? i certainlyhope so. (applause.) but i also hope you will knock on doors and make some calls to elect apresident who shares your values. because that president will ultimately choose the justiceswho decide those cases in the first place. (applause.)

and finally, while peaceful protest can be powerful, if we truly want to reform our criminaljustice system, then we need to come together and do the hard work of changing our laws andpolicies to reflect our values. (applause.)

now, will this be easy? no, of course not. it will be hard. it will be stressful and frustrating,and you"ll probably have to make some painful compromises along the way. after all, lucystone spent years speaking out for partial suffrage – for allowing women to vote only onthings like school issues and local issues – because she realized that full suffrage was just toocontroversial.

and fdr? well, after facing all kinds of opposition, he eventually agreed to a social securityplan that covered only 60 percent of workers. was he thrilled about that? probably not. but inthe end, fdr realized that 60 percent was a whole lot better than zero percent.

now, did these compromises make these leaders sellouts? traitors to their cause? i don"t thinkso. instead, i think they knew that if they could just get everyone to take that first step, thenfolks would keep on moving in the right direction. and they also understood that often, thebiggest, most dramatic change happens incrementally, little by little, through compromisesand adjustments over years and decades.

and i know that these days, that can seem counterintuitive, because we live in such aninstantaneous age. we want everything right away – whether it"s an uber or your favorite tvshow – and we want it tailored to our e_act preferences and beliefs. we fill our twitter feed withvoices that confirm, rather than challenge, our views. if we dislike someone"s facebook post,we just un-follow them, we un-friend them.

and even here at oberlin, most of the time you"re probably surrounded by folks who share yourbeliefs. but out in the real world, there are plenty of people who think very differently than youdo, and they hold their opinions just as passionately. so if you want to change their minds, ifyou want to work with them to move this country forward, you can"t just shut them out. youhave to persuade them, and you have to compromise with them. that is what so many of ourheroes of history have done.

folks like lucy stone and fdr, they didn"t get caught up in their egos or their ideology. theydidn"t say “it"s my way or the highway.” instead, they knew where they wanted to go, and theywere strategic and pragmatic about getting there. because in the end, they understood, asthe political scientist joseph nye once said, that “the absolutist may avoid the problem of dirtyhands, but often at the cost of having no hands at all.”

and, graduates, with a degree from this amazing school, and all the status and connectionsthat degree confers, you don"t get to have no hands. no, you don"t get to be precious orcautious or cynical. no, not when the earth is warming and the oceans are rising. you don"tget to be cynical. not when too many young people still languish in communities ripped apartby violence and despair. not when women still make less than men for the same work. notwhen millions of girls across the globe never set foot inside a school. (applause.) no, not whenmany young people just like you – the men and women we honor this memorial day – havesacrificed their lives for your freedom to make your voice heard. you don"t get to have no hands.

you see, in his speech to those oberlin graduates 50 years ago, dr. king urged them, as juliasaid, not to sleep through the civil rights revolution that was raging across this country. and,graduates, climate change, economic inequality, human rights, criminal justice – these arethe revolutions of your time. and you have as much responsibility and just as much power towake up and play your part in our great american story. because it is absolutely still possibleto make a difference. the great moments of our history are not decades in our past; they"rehappening right now, today, in our lifetimes.

just think about the folks who are winning those battles state by state, city by city to ensurethat everyone in this country can marry the person they love. (applause.) think about how just10 years ago, gay marriage was legal in just one state in this country – just one – and today, itis legal in 37 states and washington, d.c. (applause.)

think about those elections in __ and __ when idealistic young people like all of youworked long hours for little money and less sleep, pounding the pavement for months, talkingto folks about what was at stake. think about the millions of folks who got out to vote onelection day, waiting in the cold and rain in lines that stretched for hours, refusing to leaveuntil they made their voices heard.

and finally, think about how even with all the gridlock and polarization in washington, we havemade so much change these past si_ years: 12 million new jobs. si_teen million people whofinally have health insurance. historic agreements to fight climate change. epic increases incollege financial aid. more progress on lgbt rights than any time in our history. (applause.)and today, it is no longer remarkable to see two beautiful black girls walking their dogs on thesouth lawn of the white house lawn. that"s just the way things are now. (applause.)

see, graduates, this is what happens when you turn your attention outward and decide to bravethe noise and engage yourself in the struggles of our time. and that"s why, in his remarks 50years ago, dr. king urged the class of ‘65 to “stand up” and “be a concerned generation.” and,graduates, that call to action applies just as much to all of you today.

and i want to be very clear: every city ordinance, every ballot measure, every law on the booksin this country – that is your concern. what happens at every school board meeting, everylegislative session – that is your concern. every elected official who represents you, from dogcatcher all the way to president of the united states – they are your concern.

so get out there and volunteer on campaigns, and then hold the folks you elect accountable.follow what"s happening in your city hall, your statehouse, washington, d.c. better yet, run foroffice yourself. get in there. shake things up. don"t be afraid. (applause.) and get out and votein every election – not just the big national ones that get all the attention, but every singleelection. make sure the folks who represent you share your values and aspirations.

see, that is how you will rise above the noise and shape the revolutions of your time. that ishow you will have a meaningful journey on those clamorous highways of life. and, graduates,that is how you will carry on the proud legacy of this great institution for generations to come.

so, again, i"m proud of you all. i am confident in your ability to do amazing things. and i"mhonored to be here to share the beginning of the ne_t phase of that journey with you. we willbe there with you every step of the way. so go out there and make it happen.

thank you all. i wish you the best of luck. god bless. (applause.)

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chairman, principal,ladies and gentlemen,

i couldn"t be more pleased to be back at this greatinstitution and to be with you on such a special dayin all your careers. i now realize i have beenpresident of the college for the last thirty years,which makes me feel somewhat ancient, but it alsomeans that i have seen some remarkable changes,including the introduction of a much wider range ofland management courses, achievement of fulluniversity status, and the development of thesplendid rural innovation centre – which i visited two years ago.

but some things don"t change. the careers that you are embarking on are as important now asthey were for your predecessors when this institution was established in 1845, with my greatgreat great grandfather, prince albert, as the first patron. then, as now, there was a pressingneed to provide the best possible education for the people who were going to look after theland. and whichever aspect of farming or land management you have chosen to specialize in,that is, as the principal was saying, a huge responsibility.

it is absolutely clear, i think, that the most fundamental challenges the world faces over thecoming years will need to be solved by those working in agriculture. feeding an unsustainablygrowing global population of some nine billion people with limited natural resources, whilecoping with the inevitable impacts of climate change and, at the same time, sustainingnature"s capacity to sustain us, will be no mean feat. we are now pushing nature"s life-support systems so far that they are struggling to cope with what we ask of them. soils arebeing depleted, demand for water is growing ever more voracious and the entire system is atthe mercy of an increasingly fluctuating price of oil.

when we talk about agriculture and food production, we are talking about a comple_ andinterrelated system and it is simply not possible to single out just one objective, such asma_imizing production, without also ensuring that the system which delivers those increasedyields meets society"s other needs. these must surely include the maintenance of publichealth, the safeguarding of rural employment and small holder farming, the protection of theenvironment and vital natural ecosystems.

dealing with such daunting challenges will require a different approach – an approach thatputs the protection of natural ecosystems back at the heart of the whole process, so as to seea dramatic improvement in soil health and organic matter and to ensure genuine foodsecurity, not to mention long-term human health. it will also require the very best of humaningenuity, dedication and resourcefulness. and that, to me, is why farming and landmanagement can never be ‘just another industry".

you, ladies and gentlemen, will very soon be acting as custodians, or stewards, of a preciousnatural asset on which all of humanity depends and taking decisions in your daily lives that willhave long-term consequences. now i know only too well that you will be faced by endlessfinancial and economic pressures pulling you in the opposite direction, but if i could just ask onething of you, it would be that amidst all the e_citement of starting your new jobs you maketime to look around you and try to understand the bigger picture. what has happened in thepast to shape the land the way it is? are you looking at a healthy, diverse and resilientecosystem? and is the balance right between short-term production and long-term health andsustainability? i know those may not be the most obvious things to ask as you start to findyour way around, but they might well be among the most important, at the end of the day.

in managing rural assets you will also, of course, be playing important roles in ruralcommunities. and i do hope you will also think hard about this human dimension, because thehealth of the agricultural sector and the health of what is left of the rural community aredirectly connected in so many fundamental ways. and i e_pect this is something you allunderstand very well, but the wider population certainly doesn"t.

for what it"s worth, that is why i set up my countryside fund five years ago, to raise money tohelp provide a somewhat more secure future for the most vulnerable people who look afterthe countryside, as well as to begin to tell a story about where our food actually comes from andwho is responsible for producing it. i know that your students union has helped raise money forthe fund and i couldn"t be more grateful. it really is an important cause when every part ofthe agricultural sector is confronted by volatility, uncertainty and un-economic returns, so iam delighted to say that the grants we have given out over the last 5 years have just e_ceeded£6 million, all helping towards the process of maintaining living, productive, workinglandscapes that are better able to support resilient local businesses and strong ruralcommunities.

ladies and gentlemen, you have my warmest congratulations on being awarded your degreestoday. farming sustains life and is the foundation of any healthy civilization, so you have greatresponsibilities ahead of you, as well as e_citing opportunities – as long as you remember to putnature back at the center of all your thinking and professional activities. only that way intoday"s world can we hope to create a genuinely sustainable and durable future on this, wehave to remember, our only, miraculous planet. i can only wish you all every possible successin the future.

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food and clothing.

as for time, i should say it’s not a problem. you may know that every day he could do only an hour work, not much more than that because darwin was ill for all his life. you must have read his achievements. every day you spend an hour in reading 10 useful pages, then you will read more than 3650 pages every year. in 30 years you will have read 110,000 pages.

my fellow students, reading 110,000 pages will make you a scholar. but it will take you an hour to read three kinds of small-sized newspapers and it will take you an hour and a half to play four rounds of mahjian pieces. reading small-sized newspapers or playing mahjian pieces, or working hard to be a scholar? it’s up to you all.

henrik ibsen said, "it is your greatest duty to make yourself out."

studying is then as tool as casting. giving up studying will destroy yourself.

i have to say goodbye to you all. your alma mater will open her eyes to see what you will be in 10 years. goodbye!

……………………

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president hanlon, faculty, staff, honored guests, parents, students, families and friends—good morning and congratulations to the dartmouth graduating class of 2024!

so.

this is weird.

me giving a speech. in general, i do not like giving speeches. giving a speech requires standingin front of large groups of people while they look at you and it also requires talking. i can do thestanding part ok. but the you looking and the me talking ... i am not a fan. i get thisoverwhelming feeling of fear. terror, really. dry mouth, heart beats superfast, everythinggets a little bit slow motion. like i might pass out. or die. or poop my pants or something. imean, don’t worry. i’m not going to pass out or die or poop my pants. mainly because just bytelling you that it could happen, i have somehow neutralized it as an option. like as if saying itout loud casts some kind of spell where now it cannot possibly happen now. vomit. i couldvomit. see. vomiting is now also off the table. neutralized it. we’re good.

anyway, the point is. i do not like to give speeches. i’m a writer. i’m a tv writer. i like to writestuff for other people to say. i actually contemplated bringing ellen pompeo or kerrywashington here to say my speech for me ... but my lawyer pointed out that when you dragsomeone across state lines against their will, the fbi comes looking for you, so...

i don’t like giving speeches, in general, because of the fear and terror. but this speech? thisspeech, i really did not want to give.

a dartmouth commencement speech? dry mouth. heart beats so, so fast. everything in slowmotion. pass out, die, poop.

look, it would be fine if this were, 20 years ago. if it were back in the day when i graduatedfrom dartmouth. twenty-three years ago, i was sitting right where you are now. and i waslistening to elizabeth dole speak. and she was great. she was calm and she was confident. itwas just ... different. it felt like she was just talking to a group of people. like a fireside chatwith friends. just liddy dole and like 9,000 of her closest friends. because it was 20 years ago.and she was just talking to a group of people.

now? twenty years later? this is no fireside chat. it’s not just you and me. this speech is filmedand streamed and tweeted and uploaded. npr has like, a whole site dedicated tocommencement speeches. a whole site just about commencement speeches. there are sitesthat rate them and mock them and dissect them. it’s weird. and stressful. and kind ofvicious if you’re an introvert perfectionist writer who hates speaking in public in the firstplace.

when president hanlon called me—and by the way, i would like to thank president hanlon forasking me way back in january, thus giving me a full si_ months of terror and panic to enjoy.when president hanlon called me, i almost said no. almost.

dry mouth. heart beats so, so fast. everything in slow motion. pass out, die, poop.

but i’m here. i am gonna do it. i’m doing it. you know why?

because i like a challenge. and because this year i made myself a promise that i was going todo the stuff that terrifies me. and because, 20-plus years ago when i was trudging uphill fromthe river cluster through all that snow to get to the hop for play rehearsal, i never imaginedthat i would one day be standing here, at the old pine lectern. staring out at all of you. aboutto throw down on some wisdom in the dartmouth commencement address.

so, you know, yeah. moments.

also, i’m here because i really, really wanted some ebas.

ok.

i want to say right now that every single time someone asked me what i was going to talkabout in this speech, i would boldly and confidently tell them that i had all kinds wisdom toshare. i was lying. i feel wildly unqualified to give you advice. there is no wisdom here. so alli can do is talk about some stuff that could maybe be useful to you, from one dartmouth gradto another. some stuff that won’t ever show up in a meredith grey voiceover or a papa popemonologue. some stuff i probably shouldn’t be telling you here now because of the uploadingand the streaming and the tweeting. but i am going to pretend that it is 20 years ago. thatit’s just you and me. that we’re having a fireside chat. screw the outside world and what theythink. i’ve already said "poop" like five times already anyway ... things are getting real up inhere.

ok, wait. before i talk to you. i want to talk to your parents. because the other thing about itbeing 20 years later is that i’m a mother now. so i know some things, some very differentthings. i have three girls. i’ve been to the show. you don’t know what that means, but yourparents do. you think this day is all about you. but your parents ... the people who raised you... the people who endured you ... they potty trained you, they taught you to read, theysurvived you as a teenager, they have suffered 21 years and not once did they kill you. this day... you call it your graduation day. but this day is not about you. this is their day. this is theday they take back their lives, this is the day they earn their freedom. this day is theirindependence day. so, parents, i salute you. and as i have an eight-month-old, i hope to joinyour ranks of freedom in 20 years!

ok. so here comes the real deal part of the speech, or you might call it, some random stuffsome random alum who runs a tv show thinks i should know before i graduate:

you ready?

when people give these kinds of speeches, they usually tell you all kinds of wise and heartfeltthings. they have wisdom to impart. they have lessons to share. they tell you: follow yourdreams. listen to your spirit. change the world. make your mark. find your inner voice andmake it sing. embrace failure. dream. dream and dream big. as a matter of fact, dream anddon’t stop dreaming until all of your dreams come true.

i think that’s crap.

i think a lot of people dream. and while they are busy dreaming, the really happy people, thereally successful people, the really interesting, engaged, powerful people, are busy doing.

the dreamers. they stare at the sky and they make plans and they hope and they talk about itendlessly. and they start a lot of sentences with "i want to be ..." or "i wish."

"i want to be a writer." "i wish i could travel around the world."

and they dream of it. the buttoned-up ones meet for cocktails and they brag about theirdreams, and the hippie ones have vision boards and they meditate about their dreams. maybeyou write in journals about your dreams or discuss it endlessly with your best friend or yourgirlfriend or your mother. and it feels really good. you’re talking about it, and you’re planningit. kind of. you are blue-skying your life. and that is what everyone says you should be doing.right? i mean, that’s what oprah and bill gates did to get successful, right?

no.

dreams are lovely. but they are just dreams. fleeting, ephemeral, pretty. but dreams do notcome true just because you dream them. it’s hard work that makes things happen. it’s hardwork that creates change.

so, lesson one, i guess is: ditch the dream and be a doer, not a dreamer. maybe you knowe_actly what it is you dream of being, or maybe you’re paralyzed because you have no idea whatyour passion is. the truth is, it doesn’t matter. you don’t have to know. you just have to keepmoving forward. you just have to keep doing something, seizing the ne_t opportunity, stayingopen to trying something new. it doesn’t have to fit your vision of the perfect job or the perfectlife. perfect is boring and dreams are not real. just ... do. so you think, "i wish i could travel."great. sell your crappy car, buy a ticket to bangkok, and go. right now. i’m serious.

you want to be a writer? a writer is someone who writes every day, so start writing. you don’thave a job? get one. any job. don’t sit at home waiting for the magical opportunity. who areyou? prince william? no. get a job. go to work. do something until you can do something else.

i did not dream of being a tv writer. never, not once when i was here in the hallowed halls ofthe ivy league, did i say to myself, "self, i want to write tv."

you know what i wanted to be? i wanted to be nobel prize-winning author toni morrison. thatwas my dream. i blue sky’ed it like crazy. i dreamed and dreamed. and while i was dreaming, iwas living in my sister’s basement. dreamers often end up living in the basements of relatives,fyi. anyway, there i was in that basement, and i was dreaming of being nobel prize-winningauthor toni morrison. and guess what? i couldn’t be nobel prize-winning author toni morrison,because toni morrison already had that job and she wasn’t interested in giving it up. so oneday i was sitting in that basement and i read an article that said—it was in the new yorktimes—and it said it was harder to get into usc film school than it was to get into harvardlaw school. and i thought i could dream about being toni morrison, or i could do.

at film school, i discovered an entirely new way of telling stories. a way that suited me. a waythat brought me joy. a way that flipped this switch in my brain and changed the way i saw theworld. years later, i had dinner with toni morrison. all she wanted to talk about was grey’sanatomy. that never would have happened if i hadn’t stopped dreaming of becoming her andgotten busy becoming myself.

lesson two. lesson two is that tomorrow is going to be the worst day ever for you.

when i graduated from dartmouth that day in 1991, when i was sitting right where you areand i was staring up at elizabeth dole speaking, i will admit that i have no idea what she wassaying. couldn’t even listen to her. not because i was overwhelmed or emotional or any ofthat. but because i had a serious hangover. like, an epic painful hangover because (and here iswhere i apologize to president hanlon because i know that you are trying to build a better andmore responsible dartmouth and i applaud you and i admire you and it is very necessary) buti was really freaking drunk the night before. and the reason i’d been so drunk the night before,the reason i’d done upside down margarita shots at bones gate was because i knew that aftergraduation, i was going to take off my cap and gown, my parents were going to pack my stuffin the car and i was going to go home and probably never come back to hanover again. andeven if i did come back, it wouldn’t matter because it wouldn’t be the same because i didn’tlive here anymore.

on my graduation day, i was grieving.

my friends were celebrating. they were partying. they were e_cited. so happy. no more school,no more books, no more teachers’ dirty looks. and i was like, are you freaking kidding me? youget all the fro-yo you want here! the gym is free. the apartments in manhattan are smallerthan my suite in north mass. who cared if there was no place to get my hair done? all myfriends are here. i have a theatre company here. i was grieving. i knew enough about how theworld works, enough about how adulthood plays out, to be grieving.

here’s where i am going to embarrass myself and make you all feel maybe a little bit betterabout yourselves. i literally lay down on the floor of my dorm room and cried while my motherpacked up my room. i refused to help her. like, hell no i won’t go. i nonviolent-protestedleaving here. like, went limp like a protestor, only without the chanting—it was really pathetic.if none of you lie down on a dirty hardwood floor and cry today while your mommy packs upyour dorm room, you are already starting your careers out ahead of me. you are winning.

but here’s the thing. the thing i really felt like i knew was that the real world sucks. and it isscary. college is awesome. you’re special here. you’re in the ivy league, you are at the pinnacleof your life’s goals at this point—your entire life up until now has been about getting into somegreat college and then graduating from that college. and now, today, you have done it. themoment you get out of college, you think you are going to take the world by storm. all doorswill be opened to you. it’s going to be laughter and diamonds and soirees left and right.

what really happens is that, to the rest of the world, you are now at the bottom of the heap.maybe you’re an intern, possibly a low-paid assistant. and it is awful. the real world, it suckedso badly for me. i felt like a loser all of the time. and more than a loser? i felt lost.

which brings me to clarify lesson number two.

tomorrow is going to be the worst day ever for you. but don’t be an asshole.

here’s the thing. yes, it is hard out there. but hard is relative. i come from a middle-classfamily, my parents are academics, i was born after the civil rights movement, i was a toddlerduring the women’s movement, i live in the united states of america, all of which means i’mallowed to own my freedom, my rights, my voice, and my uterus; and i went to dartmouth andi earned an ivy league degree.

the lint in my navel that accumulated while i gazed at it as i suffered from feeling lost abouthow hard it was to not feel special after graduation ... that navel lint was embarrassed for me.

elsewhere in the world, girls are harmed simply because they want to get an education. slaverystill e_ists. children still die from malnutrition. in this country, we lose more people tohandgun violence than any other nation in the world. se_ual assault against women inamerica is pervasive and disturbing and continues at an alarming rate.

so yes, tomorrow may suck for you—as it did for me. but as you stare at the lint in your navel,have some perspective. we are incredibly lucky. we have been given a gift. an incredibleeducation has been placed before us. we ate all the fro-yo we could get our hands on. weskied. we had ebas at 1 a.m. we built bonfires and got frostbite and had all the free treadmills.we beer-ponged our asses off. now it’s time to pay it forward.

find a cause you love. it’s ok to pick just one. you are going to need to spend a lot of time outin the real world trying to figure out how to stop feeling like a lost loser, so one cause is good.devote some time every week to it.

oh. and while we are discussing this, let me say a thing. a hashtag is not helping. #yesallwomen#takebackthenight#notallmen#bringbackourgirls#stoppretendinghashtagsarethesameasdoingsomething

hashtags are very pretty on twitter. i love them. i will hashtag myself into ne_t week. but ahashtag is not a movement. a hashtag does not make you dr. king. a hashtag does notchange anything. it’s a hashtag. it’s you, sitting on your butt, typing on your computer andthen going back to binge-watching your favorite show. i do it all the time. for me, it’s game ofthrones.

volunteer some hours. focus on something outside yourself. devote a slice of your energiestowards making the world suck less every week. some people suggest doing this will increaseyour sense of well-being. some say it’s good karma. i say that it will allow you to rememberthat, whether you are a legacy or the first in your family to go to college, the air you arebreathing right now is rare air. appreciate it. don’t be an asshole.

lesson number three.

so you’re out there, and you’re giving back and you’re doing, and it’s working. and life is good.you are making it. you’re a success. and it’s e_citing and it’s great. at least it is for me. i lovemy life. i have three tv shows at work and i have three daughters at home. and it’s allamazing, and i am truly happy. and people are constantly asking me, how do you do it?

and usually, they have this sort of admiring and amazed tone.

shonda, how do you do it all?

like i’m full of magical magic and special wisdom-ness or something.

how do you do it all?

and i usually just smile and say like, "i’m really organized." or if i’m feeling slightly kindly, isay, "i have a lot of help."

and those things are true. but they also are not true.

and this is the thing that i really want to say. to all of you. not just to the women out there.although this will matter to you women a great deal as you enter the work force and try tofigure out how to juggle work and family. but it will also matter to the men, who i thinkincreasingly are also trying to figure out how to juggle work and family. and frankly, if youaren’t trying to figure it out, men of dartmouth, you should be. fatherhood is being redefinedat a lightning-fast rate. you do not want to be a dinosaur.

so women and men of dartmouth: as you try to figure out the impossible task of jugglingwork and family and you hear over and over and over again that you just need a lot of help oryou just need to be organized or you just need to try just a little bit harder ... as a verysuccessful woman, a single mother of three, who constantly gets asked the question "how doyou do it all?" for once i am going to answer that question with 100 percent honesty here foryou now. because it’s just us. because it’s our fireside chat. because somebody has to tell youthe truth.

shonda, how do you do it all?

the answer is this: i don’t.

whenever you see me somewhere succeeding in one area of my life, that almost certainlymeans i am failing in another area of my life.

if i am killing it on a scandal script for work, i am probably missing bath and story time athome. if i am at home sewing my kids’ halloween costumes, i’m probably blowing off a rewritei was supposed to turn in. if i am accepting a prestigious award, i am missing my baby’s firstswim lesson. if i am at my daughter’s debut in her school musical, i am missing sandra oh’slast scene ever being filmed at grey’s anatomy. if i am succeeding at one, i am inevitablyfailing at the other. that is the tradeoff. that is the faustian bargain one makes with the devilthat comes with being a powerful working woman who is also a powerful mother. you never feela hundred percent ok; you never get your sea legs; you are always a little nauseous.something is always lost.

something is always missing.

and yet. i want my daughters to see me and know me as a woman who works. i want thate_ample set for them. i like how proud they are when they come to my offices and know thatthey come to shondaland. there is a land and it is named after their mother. in their world,mothers run companies. in their world, mothers own thursday nights. in their world, motherswork. and i am a better mother for it. the woman i am because i get to run shondaland,because i get write all day, because i get to spend my days making things up, that woman is abetter person—and a better mother. because that woman is happy. that woman is fulfilled.that woman is whole. i wouldn’t want them to know the me who didn’t get to do this all daylong. i wouldn’t want them to know the me who wasn’t doing.

lesson number three is that anyone who tells you they are doing it all perfectly is a liar.

ok.

i fear i’ve scared you or been a little bit bleak, and that was not my intention. it is my hopethat you run out of here, e_cited, leaning forward, into the wind, ready to take the world bystorm. that would be so very fabulous. for you to do what everyone e_pects of you. for you tojust go be e_actly the picture of hardcore dartmouth awesome.

my point, i think, is that it is ok if you don’t. my point is that it can be scary to graduate. thatyou can lie on the hardwood floor of your dorm room and cry while your mom packs up yourstuff. that you can have an impossible dream to be toni morrison that you have to let go of.that every day you can feel like you might be failing at work or at your home life. that the realworld is hard.

and yet, you can still wake up every single morning and go, "i have three amazing kids and ihave created work i am proud of, and i absolutely love my life and i would not trade it foranyone else’s life ever."

you can still wake up one day and find yourself living a life you never even imagined dreamingof.

my dreams did not come true. but i worked really hard. and i ended up building an empire outof my imagination. so my dreams? can suck it.

you can wake up one day and find that you are interesting and powerful and engaged. you canwake up one day and find that you are a doer.

you can be sitting right where you are now. looking up at me. probably—hopefully, i pray foryou—hung over. and then 20 years from now, you can wake up and find yourself in the hanoverinn full of fear and terror because you are going to give the commencement speech. drymouth. heart beats so, so fast. everything in slow motion. pass out, die, poop.

which one of you will it be? which member of the 2024 class is going to find themselvesstanding up here? because i checked and it is pretty rare for an alum to speak here. it’s prettymuch just me and robert frost and mr. rogers, which is crazy awesome.

which one of you is going to make it up here? i really hope that it’s one of you. seriously.

when it happens, you’ll know what this feels like.

dry mouth. heart beats so, so fast. everything moves in slow motion.

graduates, every single one of you, be proud of your accomplishments. make good on yourdiplomas.

you are no longer students. you are no longer works in progress. you are now citizens of thereal world. you have a responsibility to become a person worthy of joining and contributing tosociety. because who you are today ... that’s who you are.

so be brave.

be amazing.

be worthy.

and every single time you get a chance?

stand up in front of people.

let them see you. speak. be heard.

go ahead and have the dry mouth.

let your heart beat so, so fast.

watch everything move in slow motion.

so what?

you what?

you pass out, you die, you poop?

no.

and this is really the only lesson you’ll ever need to know...

you take it in.

you breathe this rare air.

you feel alive.

you be yourself.

you truly finally always be yourself.

thank you. good luck.

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初中毕业典礼演讲稿英语带翻译

初中毕业典礼演讲稿英语例一

first of all, we must cultivate students" interest in english study. let students in learning to find joy in joy in the interest of interest, found in the determination of decision and perseverance, namely train drivers + + to + perserve = interest. of course started to learn english, don"t be too hard. guiding students from the simple, funny, funny began to enable students to find suitable for their interest in learning. and they decide to "light" surveys. and allow students to go wrong, don"t pursue every word is correct. ,

secondly, the students have interest, help them to plan. watch english materials and listen to english radio, looking for learning environment, life is much, learn english and have much broader, take every chance to e_posure to english. in class, students try to speak in english, usually between classmates e_change, encourage students to use english, don"t be afraid of making mistakes the wrong. to establish weekly learning new words in the target, the vocabulary, records recorded all sorts of new words and phrases. because learning english must have vocabulary as the foundation, will play a protracted war, remembering words to guerrilla warfare. can make them more "to" surveys.

learning english as friends, in different occasions contact might remember, not isolated words and remember its neighbors. it is necessary to guide students to read, this of learning english is very important to have more understanding of western culture and western learning habit, master of language background is also an important way of learning. then two chinese ppc to achieve. we finally achieved the goal ", two surveys to two chinese to spending."

首先，我们要培养学生学习英语的兴趣。让学生在学习中去寻找欢乐，在欢乐中找到兴趣，在兴趣中下决心，在决心中培养毅力，即动因+兴趣+决心+持之以恒=成绩。当然开始学英语时不要追求太高，太难。指导学生从简单的，有趣的，好笑的开始使学生找出适合自己的学习兴趣。同时引导他们。并允许学生出错，不要追求每个单词都正确。

其次，学生有了兴趣，帮助他们制定计划。每天看英语材料和听英语广播，寻找学习环境，生活范围有多大，学英语的天地就有多宽广，利用一切机会去接触英语。在课堂上让学生试着讲英语，平时同学之间交流时多用英语，鼓励学生不要怕出错，错了没关系。同时要建立每周学习生词的目标，在记录词汇本里，记录各种各样的生词，短语。因为学好英语必须要有词汇作基础，要打持久战;记单词要打游击战。就能做到

学英语如同交朋友，在不同的场合接触就可能记牢，不能孤立的记单词，要记住它的左邻右舍。同时很有必要指导学生大量的`阅读，这对学习英语有是非常重要的，多了解西方文化，学习西方习惯，掌握大量的语言背景是学习的又一条重要途径。那么就达到。我们最终要达到目的

初中毕业典礼演讲稿英语例二

my dear teachers and classmates ,good evening !today i stand here to stand for all our graduates to say good bye to our beloved school ,to this unforgettable memory and to our dear teachers and classmates .and this is the time to say thank you to all my teachers .

how time flies ,it has been 3 years since we entered the school .but there are so many things is worth to cherishing ,such as the bright classroom ,tall trees and beautiful flowers .

we spent these 3 years with hardship and happiness ,fully and meaningful ,sorrow and happy and during this time we learned a lot . up to now ,we not only learned chinese , maths,physics ,chemistry, but also learned how to write articles etc .

above all ,it makes me know what is love.it is the result of our teachers" hardworking .even though we will left our mother school ,we will never give up receiving advanced education .take it easy ,my dear teachers !i won"t let you in the future .

各位敬爱老师，同学们：

大家好!今天，我站在这里，代表全体初三毕业生向我们的母校道别，向×三中的老师们道别，向朝夕相处的同窗们道别，也向这段不能忘怀的岁月道别!让我们真诚的向老师们说一声：谢谢

三年的学习时光，弹指一挥间，但很多事情值得我们珍惜，明亮的教室，高大的树木和美丽的鲜花。

这三年的路，我们走的辛苦而快乐，三年的生活，我们过的充实而美丽，我们流过眼泪，却伴着欢笑，我们踏着荆棘，却嗅得万里花香。现在，我们不仅学会了语文、数学，而且学会了物理和化学，不仅提笔能写文章，最重要的一点在于，使我更清楚地知道爱的含义，这是老师们心血的结晶。虽然我们离开了母校，但学习的脚步不会停下，我们还会接受更好的教育。

毕业典礼英语演讲稿 模板15

阅读小贴士：模板15共计5317个字，预计阅读时长14分钟。朗读需要27分钟，中速朗读36分钟，在庄重严肃场合朗读需要49分钟，有109位用户喜欢。

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 e_treme – 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 comple_ 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 fi_edthing, 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-e_amines 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 e_traordinary 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 e_pect the approach of danger?" he asked his audience. "…shall we e_pect 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 e_traordinary, 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 e_periment 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 e_quisite 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 e_ceptionalism, 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 e_ploding 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 clima_ 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, betwi_t 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 e_pressing 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 fi_ 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 e_cellence. 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 betwi_t 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.

毕业典礼英语演讲稿 模板16

阅读小贴士：模板16共计5594个字，预计阅读时长14分钟。朗读需要28分钟，中速朗读38分钟，在庄重严肃场合朗读需要51分钟，有225位用户喜欢。

thank you bevan, thank you all!

i brought one of my paintings to show you today. hope you guys are gonna be able see it okay.it’s not one of my bigger pieces. you might wanna move down front — to get a good look at it. (kidding)

faculty, parents, friends, dignitaries... graduating class of 2024, and all the dead baseballplayers coming out of the corn to be with us today. (laughter) after the harvest there’s noplace to hide — the fields are empty — there is no cover there! (laughter)

i am here to plant a seed that will inspire you to move forward in life with enthusiastic heartsand a clear sense of wholeness. the question is, will that seed have a chance to take root, or willi be sued by monsanto and forced to use their seed, which may not be totally “ayurvedic.” (laughter)

e_cuse me if i seem a little low energy tonight — today — whatever this is. i slept with myhead to the north last night. (laughter) oh man! oh man! you know how that is, right kids?woke up right in the middle of pitta and couldn’t get back to sleep till vata rolled around, but ididn’t freak out. i used that time to eat a large meal and connect with someone special ontinder. (laughter)

life doesn’t happen to you, it happens for you. how do i know this? i don’t, but i’m makingsound, and that’s the important thing. that’s what i’m here to do. sometimes, i think that’sone of the only things that are important. just letting each other know we’re here, remindingeach other that we are part of a larger self. i used to think jim carrey is all that i was...

just a flickering light

a dancing shadow

the great nothing masquerading as something you can name

dwelling in forts and castles made of witches – wishes! sorry, a freudian slip there

seeking shelter in caves and fo_holes, dug out hastily

an archer searching for his target in the mirror

wounded only by my own arrows

begging to be enslaved

pleading for my chains

blinded by longing and tripping over paradise – can i get an “amen”?! (applause)

you didn’t think i could be serious did ya’? i don"t think you understand who you"re dealingwith! i have no limits! i cannot be contained because i’m the container. you can’t containthe container, man! you can’t contain the container! (laughter)

i used to believe that who i was ended at the edge of my skin, that i had been given this littlevehicle called a body from which to e_perience creation, and though i couldn’t have asked for asportier model, (laughter) it was after all a loaner and would have to be returned. then, ilearned that everything outside the vehicle was a part of me, too, and now i drive aconvertible. top down wind in my hair! (laughter)

i am elated and truly, truly, truly e_cited to be present and fully connected to you at thisimportant moment in your journey. i hope you’re ready to open the roof and take it all in?! (audience doesn’t react) okay, four more years then! (laughter)

i want to thank the trustees, administrators and faculty of mum for creating an institutionworthy of maharishi’s ideals of education. a place that teaches the knowledge and e_periencenecessary to be productive in life, as well as enabling the students, through transcendentalmeditation and ancient vedic knowledge to slack off twice a day for an hour and a half!! (laughter) — don’t think you’re fooling me!!! — (applause) but, i guess it has some benefits.it does allow you to separate who you truly are and what’s real, from the stories that runthrough your head.

you have given them the ability to walk behind the mind’s elaborate set decoration, and tosee that there is a huge difference between a dog that is going to eat you in your mind and anactual dog that’s going to eat you. (laughter) that may sound like no big deal, but many neverlearn that distinction and spend a great deal of their lives living in fight or flight response.

i’d like to acknowledge all you wonderful parents — way to go for the fantastic job you’vedone — for your tireless dedication, your love, your support, and most of all, for the attentionyou’ve paid to your children. i have a saying, “beware the unloved,” because they willeventually hurt themselves... or me! (laughter)

but when i look at this group here today, i feel really safe! i do! i’m just going to say it — myroom is not locked! my room is not locked! (laughter) no doubt some of you will turn out to becrooks! but white-collar stuff — wall st. ya’ know, that type of thing — crimes committed bypeople with self-esteem! stuff a parent can still be proud of in a weird way. (laughter)

and to the graduating class of 2024 — minus 3! you didn"t let me finish! (laughter) —congratulations! (applause) yes, give yourselves a round of applause, please. you are thevanguard of knowledge and consciousness; a new wave in a vast ocean of possibilities. on theother side of that door, there is a world starving for new leadership, new ideas.

i’ve been out there for 30 years! she’s a wild cat! (laughter) oh, she’ll rub up against your legand purr until you pick her up and start pettin’ her, and out of nowhere she’ll swat you in theface. sure it’s rough sometimes but that’s ok, ‘cause they’ve got soft serve ice cream withsprinkles! (laughter) i guess that’s what i’m really here to say; sometimes it’s okay to eat yourfeelings! (laughter)

fear is going to be a player in your life, but you get to decide how much. you can spend yourwhole life imagining ghosts, worrying about your pathway to the future, but all there will everbe is what’s happening here, and the decisions we make in this moment, which are based ineither love or fear.

so many of us choose our path out of fear disguised as practicality. what we really want seemsimpossibly out of reach and ridiculous to e_pect, so we never dare to ask the universe for it.i’m saying, i’m the proof that you can ask the universe for it — please! (applause) and if itdoesn"t happen for you right away, it’s only because the universe is so busy fulfilling my order.it’s party size! (laughter)

my father could have been a great comedian, but he didn’t believe that was possible for him,and so he made a conservative choice. instead, he got a safe job as an accountant, and wheni was 12 years old, he was let go from that safe job and our family had to do whatever we couldto survive.

i learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which was that you can fail atwhat you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love. (applause)

that’s not the only thing he taught me though: i watched the affect my father’s love andhumor had on the world around me, and i thought, “that’s something to do, that’s somethingworth my time.”

it wasn’t long before i started acting up. people would come over to my house and they wouldbe greeted by a 7 year old throwing himself down a large flight of stairs. (laughter) they wouldsay, “what happened?” and i would say, “i don"t know — let’s check the replay.” and i wouldgo back to the top of the stairs and come back down in slow motion. (jim reenacts coming downthe stairs in slow-mo) it was a very strange household. (laughter)

my father used to brag that i wasn’t a ham — i was the whole pig. and he treated my talent asif it was his second chance. when i was about 28, after a decade as a professional comedian,i realized one night in la that the purpose of my life had always been to free people fromconcern, like my dad. when i realized this, i dubbed my new devotion, “the church offreedom from concern” — “the church of ffc”— and i dedicated myself to that ministry.

what’s yours? how will you serve the world? what do they need that your talent can provide?that’s all you have to figure out. as someone who has done what you are about to go do, i cantell you from e_perience, the effect you have on others is the most valuable currency there is. (applause)

everything you gain in life will rot and fall apart, and all that will be left of you is what was inyour heart. my choosing to free people from concern got me to the top of a mountain. lookwhere i am — look what i get to do! everywhere i go – and i’m going to get emotionalbecause when i tap into this, it really is e_traordinary to me — i did something that makespeople present their best selves to me wherever i go. (applause) i am at the top of themountain and the only one i hadn’t freed was myself and that’s when my search for identitydeepened.

i wondered who i’d be without my fame. who would i be if i said things that people didn’t wantto hear, or if i defied their e_pectations of me? what if i showed up to the party without mymardi gras mask and i refused to flash my breasts for a handful of beads? (laughter) i’ll giveyou a moment to wipe that image out of your mind. (laughter)

but you guys are way ahead of the game. you already know who you are and that peace, thatpeace that we’re after, lies somewhere beyond personality, beyond the perception of others,beyond invention and disguise, even beyond effort itself. you can join the game, fight thewars, play with form all you want, but to find real peace, you have to let the armor fall. yourneed for acceptance can make you invisible in this world. don’t let anything stand in the wayof the light that shines through this form. risk being seen in all of your glory. (a sheet dropsand reveals jim’s painting. applause.)

(re: the painting) it’s not big enough! (kidding) this painting is big for a reason. this paintingis called “high visibility.” (laughter) it’s about picking up the light and daring to be seen. here’sthe tricky part. everyone is attracted to the light. the party host up in the corner (refers topainting) who thinks unconsciousness is bliss and is always offering a drink from the bottlesthat empty you; misery, below her, who despises the light — can’t stand when you’re doing well— and wishes you nothing but the worst; the queen of diamonds who needs a king to build herhouse of cards; and the hollow one, who clings to your leg and begs, “please don’t leave mebehind for i have abandoned myself.”

even those who are closest to you and most in love with you; the people you love most in theworld can find clarity confronting at times. this painting took me thousands of hours tocomplete and — (applause) thank you — yes, thousands of hours that i’ll never get back, i’llnever get them back (kidding) — i worked on this for so long, for weeks and weeks, like a madman alone on a scaffolding — and when i was finished one of my friends said, “this would be acool black light painting.” (laughter)

so i started over. (all the lights go off in the dome and the painting is showered with blacklight.) whooooo! welcome to burning man! (applause) some pretty crazy characters right?better up there than in here. (points to head) painting is one of the ways i free myself fromconcern, a way to stop the world through total mental, spiritual and physical involvement.

but even with that, comes a feeling of divine dissatisfaction. because ultimately, we’re notthe avatars we create. we’re not the pictures on the film stock. we are the light that shinesthrough it. all else is just smoke and mirrors. distracting, but not truly compelling.

i’ve often said that i wished people could realize all their dreams of wealth and fame so theycould see that it’s not where you’ll find your sense of completion. like many of you, i wasconcerned about going out in the world and doing something bigger than myself, untilsomeone smarter than myself made me realize that there is nothing bigger than myself! (laughter)

my soul is not contained within the limits of my body. my body is contained within thelimitlessness of my soul — one unified field of nothing dancing for no particular reason,e_cept maybe to comfort and entertain itself. (applause) as that shift happens in you, youwon’t be feeling the world you’ll be felt by it — you will be embraced by it. now, i’m always atthe beginning. i have a reset button called presence and i ride that button constantly.

once that button is functional in your life, there’s no story the mind could create that will beas compelling. the imagination is always manufacturing scenarios — both good and bad —and the ego tries to keep you trapped in the multiple_ of the mind. our eyes are not onlyviewers, but also projectors that are running a second story over the picture we see in front ofus all the time. fear is writing that script and the working title is, ‘i’ll never be enough.’

you look at a person like me and say, (kidding) “how could we ever hope to reach those kinds ofheights, jim? how can i make a painting that"s too big for any reasonable home? how do youfly so high without a special breathing apparatus?” (laughter)

this is the voice of your ego. if you listen to it, there will always be someone who seems to bedoing better than you. no matter what you gain, ego will not let you rest. it will tell you thatyou cannot stop until you’ve left an indelible mark on the earth, until you’ve achievedimmortality. how tricky is the ego that it would tempt us with the promise of something wealready possess.

so i just want you to rela_—that’s my job—rela_ and dream up a good life! (applause) i had asubstitute teacher from ireland in the second grade that told my class during morning prayerthat when she wants something, anything at all, she prays for it, and promises something inreturn and she always gets it. i’m sitting at the back of the classroom, thinking that my familycan’t afford a bike, so i went home and i prayed for one, and promised i would recite therosary every night in e_change. broke it—broke that promise. (laughter)

two weeks later, i got home from school to find a brand new mustang bike with a banana seatand easy rider handlebars — from fool to cool! my family informed me that i had won the bikein a raffle that a friend of mine had entered my name in, without my knowledge. that type ofthing has been happening ever since, and as far as i can tell, it’s just about letting theuniverse know what you want and working toward it while letting go of how it might come topass. (applause)

your job is not to figure out how it’s going to happen for you, but to open the door in yourhead and when the doors open in real life, just walk through it. don’t worry if you miss yourcue. there will always be another door opening. they keep opening.

and when i say, “life doesn’t happen to you, it happens for you.” i really don’t know if that’strue. i’m just making a conscious choice to perceive challenges as something beneficial sothat i can deal with them in the most productive way. you’ll come up with your own style,that’s part of the fun!

oh, and why not take a chance on faith as well? take a chance on faith — not religion, but faith.not hope, but faith. i don’t believe in hope. hope is a beggar. hope walks through the fire.faith leaps over it.

you are ready and able to do beautiful things in this world and after you walk through thosedoors today, you will only ever have two choices: love or fear. choose love, and don’t ever letfear turn you against your playful heart.

thank you. jai guru dev. i’m so honored. thank you.

毕业典礼英语演讲稿 模板17

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thank you, katie – and thank you to president faust, the fellows of harvard college, the boardof overseers, and all the faculty, alumni, and students who have welcomed me back to campus.

i’m e_cited to be here, not only to address the distinguished graduates and alumni atharvard university’s 363rd commencement but to stand in the e_act spot where oprah stoodlast year. omg.

let me begin with the most important order of business: let’s have a big round of applause forthe class of 2024! they’ve earned it!

as e_cited as the graduates are, they are probably even more e_hausted after the past fewweeks. and parents: i’m not referring to their final e_ams. i’m talking about the seniorolympics, the last chance dance, and the booze cruise – i mean, the moonlight cruise.

the entire year has been e_citing on campus: harvard beat yale for the seventh straight timein football. the men’s basketball team went to the second round of the ncaa tournament forthe second straight year. and the men’s squash team won national championship.

who’d a thunk it: harvard, an athletic powerhouse! pretty soon they’ll be asking whether youhave academics to go along with your athletic programs.

my personal connection to harvard began in 1964, when i graduated from johns hopkinsuniversity in baltimore and matriculated here at the b-school.

you’re probably asking: how did i ever get into harvard business school, given my stellaracademic record, where i always made the top half of the class possible? i have no idea. andthe only people more surprised than me were my professors.

anyway, here i am again back in cambridge. and i have noticed that a few things havechanged since i was a student here. elsie’s – a sandwich spot i used to love near the square –is now a burrito shop. the wursthaus – which had great beer and sausage – is now an artisanalgastro-pub, whatever the heck that is. and the old holyoke center is now named the smithcampus center.

don’t you just hate it when alumni put their names all over everything? i was thinking aboutthat this morning as i walked into the bloomberg center on the harvard business schoolcampus across the river.

but the good news is, harvard remains what it was when i first arrived on campus 50 yearsago: america’s most prestigious university. and, like other great universities, it lies at theheart of the american e_periment in democracy.

their purpose is not only to advance knowledge, but to advance the ideals of our nation. greatuniversities are places where people of all backgrounds, holding all beliefs, pursuing allquestions, can come to study and debate their ideas – freely and openly.

today, i’d like to talk with you about how important it is for that freedom to e_ist for everyone,no matter how strongly we may disagree with another’s viewpoint.

tolerance for other people’s ideas, and the freedom to e_press your own, are inseparable valuesat great universities. joined together, they form a sacred trust that holds the basis of ourdemocratic society.

but that trust is perpetually vulnerable to the tyrannical tendencies of monarchs, mobs, andmajorities. and lately, we have seen those tendencies manifest themselves too often, both oncollege campuses and in our society.

that’s the bad news – and unfortunately, i think both harvard, and my own city of new york,have been witnesses to this trend.

first, for new york city. several years ago, as you may remember, some people tried to stopthe development of a mosque a few blocks from the world trade center site.

it was an emotional issue, and polls showed that two-thirds of americans were against amosque being built there. even the anti-defamation league – widely regarded as the country’smost ardent defender of religious freedom – declared its opposition to the project.

the opponents held rallies and demonstrations. they denounced the developers. and theydemanded that city government stop its construction. that was their right – and we protectedtheir right to protest. but they could not have been more wrong. and we refused to cave in totheir demands.

the idea that government would single out a particular religion, and block its believers – andonly its believers – from building a house of worship in a particular area is diametricallyopposed to the moral principles that gave rise to our great nation and the constitutionalprotections that have sustained it.

our union of 50 states rests on the union of two values: freedom and tolerance. and it is thatunion of values that the terrorists who attacked us on september 11th, 2024 – and on april15th, 2024 – found most threatening.

to them, we were a god-less country.

but in fact, there is no country that protects the core of every faith and philosophy known tohuman kind – free will – more than the united states of america. that protection, however,rests upon our constant vigilance.

we like to think that the principle of separation of church and state is settled. it is not. and itnever will be. it is up to us to guard it fiercely – and to ensure that equality under the lawmeans equality under the law for everyone.

if you want the freedom to worship as you wish, to speak as you wish, and to marry whom youwish, you must tolerate my freedom to do so – or not do so – as well.

what i do may offend you. you may find my actions immoral or unjust. but attempting torestrict my freedoms – in ways that you would not restrict your own – leads only to injustice.

we cannot deny others the rights and privileges that we demand for ourselves. and that is truein cities – and it is no less true at universities, where the forces of repression appear to bestronger now than they have been since the 1950s.

when i was growing up, u.s. senator joe mccarthy was asking: ‘are you now or have you everbeen?’ he was attempting to repress and criminalize those who sympathized with an economicsystem that was, even then, failing.

mccarthy’s red scare destroyed thousands of lives, but what was he so afraid of? an idea – inthis case, communism – that he and others deemed dangerous.

but he was right about one thing: ideas can be dangerous. they can change society. they canupend traditions. they can start revolutions. that’s why throughout history, those in authorityhave tried to repress ideas that threaten their power, their religion, their ideology, or theirreelection chances.

that was true for socrates and galileo, it was true for nelson mandela and václav havel, and ithas been true for ai wei wei, pussy riot, and the kids who made the ‘happy’ video in iran.

repressing free e_pression is a natural human weakness, and it is up to us to fight it at everyturn. intolerance of ideas – whether liberal or conservative – is antithetical to individualrights and free societies, and it is no less antithetical to great universities and first-ratescholarship.

there is an idea floating around college campuses – including here at harvard – that scholarsshould be funded only if their work conforms to a particular view of justice. there’s a word forthat idea: censorship. and it is just a modern-day form of mccarthyism.

think about the irony: in the 1950s, the right wing was attempting to repress left wing ideas.today, on many college campuses, it is liberals trying to repress conservative ideas, even asconservative faculty members are at risk of becoming an endangered species. and perhapsnowhere is that more true than here in the ivy league.

in the 2024 presidential race, according to federal election commission data, 96 percent of allcampaign contributions from ivy league faculty and employees went to barack obama.

ninety-si_ percent. there was more disagreement among the old soviet politburo than there isamong ivy league donors.

that statistic should give us pause – and i say that as someone who endorsed president obamafor reelection – because let me tell you, neither party has a monopoly on truth or god on itsside.

when 96 percent of ivy league donors prefer one candidate to another, you have to wonderwhether students are being e_posed to the diversity of views that a great university shouldoffer.

diversity of gender, ethnicity, and orientation is important. but a university cannot be great ifits faculty is politically homogenous. in fact, the whole purpose of granting tenure to professorsis to ensure that they feel free to conduct research on ideas that run afoul of university politicsand societal norms.

when tenure was created, it mostly protected liberals whose ideas ran up against conservativenorms.

today, if tenure is going to continue to e_ist, it must also protect conservatives whose ideasrun up against liberal norms. otherwise, university research – and the professors who conductit – will lose credibility.

great universities must not become predictably partisan. and a liberal arts education mustnot be an education in the art of liberalism.

the role of universities is not to promote an ideology. it is to provide scholars and studentswith a neutral forum for researching and debating issues – without tipping the scales in onedirection, or repressing unpopular views.

requiring scholars – and commencement speakers, for that matter – to conform to certainpolitical standards undermines the whole purpose of a university.

this spring, it has been disturbing to see a number of college commencement speakerswithdraw – or have their invitations rescinded – after protests from students and – to me,shockingly – from senior faculty and administrators who should know better.

it happened at brandeis, haverford, rutgers, and smith. last year, it happened at swarthmoreand johns hopkins, i’m sorry to say.

in each case, liberals silenced a voice – and denied an honorary degree – to individuals theydeemed politically objectionable. that is an outrage and we must not let it continue.

if a university thinks twice before inviting a commencement speaker because of his or herpolitics censorship and conformity – the mortal enemies of freedom – win out.

and sadly, it is not just commencement season when speakers are censored.

last fall, when i was still in city hall, our police commissioner was invited to deliver a lecture atanother ivy league institution – but he was unable to do so because students shouted himdown.

isn’t the purpose of a university to stir discussion, not silence it? what were the studentsafraid of hearing? why did administrators not step in to prevent the mob from silencingspeech? and did anyone consider that it is morally and pedagogically wrong to deprive otherstudents the chance to hear the speech?

i’m sure all of today’s graduates have read john stuart mill’s on liberty. but allow me to read ashort passage from it: ‘the peculiar evil of silencing the e_pression of an opinion is, that it isrobbing the human race; posterity as well as the e_isting generation; those who dissent fromthe opinion, still more than those who hold it.’

he continued: ‘if the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of e_changingerror for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perceptionand livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.’

mill would have been horrified to learn of university students silencing the opinions of others. hewould have been even more horrified that faculty members were often part of thecommencement censorship campaigns.

for tenured faculty members to silence speakers whose views they disagree with is the heightof hypocrisy, especially when these protests happen in the northeast – a bastion of self-professed liberal tolerance.

i’m glad to say, however, that harvard has not caved in to these commencement censorshipcampaigns. if it had, colorado state senator michael johnston would not have had the chanceto address the education school yesterday.

some students called on the administration to rescind the invitation to johnston becausethey opposed some of his education policies. but to their great credit, president faust anddean ryan stood firm.

as dean ryan wrote to students: ‘i have encountered many people of good faith who share mybasic goals but disagree with my own views when it comes to the question of how best toimprove education. in my view, those differences should be e_plored, debated, challenged, andquestioned. but they should also be respected and, indeed, celebrated.’

he could not have been more correct, and he could not have provided a more valuable finallesson to the class of 2024.

as a former chairman of johns hopkins, i strongly believe that a university’s obligation is notto teach students what to think but to teach students how to think. and that requires listeningto the other side, weighing arguments without prejudging them, and determining whether theother side might actually make some fair points.

if the faculty fails to do this, then it is the responsibility of the administration and governingbody to step in and make it a priority. if they do not, if students graduate with ears and mindsclosed, the university has failed both the student and society.

and if you want to know where that leads, look no further than washington, d.c.

down in washington, every major question facing our country – involving our security, oureconomy, our environment, and our health – is decided.

yet the two parties decide these questions not by engaging with one another, but by trying toshout each other down, and by trying to repress and undermine research that runs counterto their ideology. the more our universities emulate that model, the worse off we will be as asociety.

and let me give you an e_ample: for decades, congress has barred the centers for diseasecontrol from conducting studies of gun violence, and recently congress also placed thatprohibition on the national institute of health. you have to ask yourself: what are they afraidof?

this year, the senate has delayed a vote on president obama’s nominee for surgeon general –dr. vivek murthy, a harvard physician – because he had the audacity to say that gunviolence is a public health crisis that should be tackled. the gall of him!

let’s get serious: when 86 americans are killed with guns every single day, and shootingsregularly occur at our schools and universities – including last week’s tragedy at santa barbara– it would be almost medical malpractice to say anything else.

but in politics – as it is on too many college campuses – people don’t listen to facts that runcounter to their ideology. they fear them. and nothing is more frightening to them thanscientific evidence.

earlier this year, the state of south carolina adopted new science standards for its publicschools – but the state legislature blocked any mention of natural selection. that’s liketeaching economics – without mentioning supply and demand.

again, you have to ask: what are they afraid of?

the answer, of course, is obvious: just as members of congress fear data that underminestheir ideological beliefs, these state legislators fear scientific evidence that undermines theirreligious beliefs.

and if you want proof of that, consider this: an 8-year old girl in south carolina wrote tomembers of the state legislature urging them to make the woolly mammoth the official statefossil. the legislators thought it was a great idea, because a woolly mammoth fossil was foundin the state way back in 1725. but the state senate passed a bill defining the woolly mammothas having been ‘created on the 6th day with the beasts of the field.’

you can’t make this stuff up.

here in 21st century america, the wall between church and state remains under attack – andit’s up to all of us to man the barricades.

unfortunately, the same elected officials who put ideology and religion over data and sciencewhen it comes to guns and evolution are often the most unwilling to accept the scientificdata on climate change.

now, don’t get me wrong: scientific skepticism is healthy. but there is a world of differencebetween scientific skepticism that seeks out more evidence and ideological stubbornness thatshuts it out.

given the general attitude of many elected officials toward science it’s no wonder that thefederal government has abdicated its responsibility to invest in scientific research, much ofwhich occurs at our universities.

today, federal spending on research and development as a percentage of gdp is lower than ithas been in more than 50 years which is allowing the rest of the world to catch up – and evensurpass – the u.s. in scientific research.

the federal government is flunking science, just as many state governments are.

we must not become a country that turns our back on science, or on each other. and yougraduates must help lead the way.

on every issue, we must follow the evidence where it leads and listen to people where theyare. if we do that, there is no problem we cannot solve. no gridlock we cannot break. nocompromise we cannot broker.

the more we embrace a free e_change of ideas, and the more we accept that politicaldiversity is healthy, the stronger our society will be.

now, i know this has not been a traditional commencement speech, and it may keep mefrom passing a dissertation defense in the humanities department, but there is no easy timeto say hard things.

graduates: throughout your lives, do not be afraid of saying what you believe is right, nomatter how unpopular it may be, especially when it comes to defending the rights of others.

standing up for the rights of others is in some ways even more important than standing up foryour own rights. because when people seek to repress freedom for some, and you remainsilent, you are complicit in that repression and you may well become its victim.

do not be complicit, and do not follow the crowd. speak up, and fight back.

you will take your lumps, i can assure you of that. you will lose some friends and make someenemies. but the arc of history will be on your side, and our nation will be stronger for it.

now, all of you graduates have earned today’s celebration, and you have a lot to be proud ofand a lot to be grateful for. so tonight, as you leave this great university behind, have one lastscorpion bowl at the kong – on second thought, don’t – and tomorrow, get to work making ourcountry and our world freer than ever, for everyone.

good luck and god bless.

毕业典礼英语演讲稿 模板18

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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!

高中毕业典礼英语演讲稿带翻译

毕业典礼英语演讲稿 模板19

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president powers, provost fenves, deans, members of the faculty, family and friends and mostimportantly, the class of 2024. congratulations on your achievement.

it"s been almost 37 years to the day that i graduated from ut.

i remember a lot of things about that day.

i remember i had throbbing headache from a party the night before. i remember i had aserious girlfriend, whom i later married-that"s important to remember by the way-and iremember that i was getting commissioned in the navy that day.

but of all the things i remember, i don"t have a clue who the commencement speaker wasthat evening and i certainly don"t remember anything they said.

so…acknowledging that fact-if i can"t make this commencement speech memorable-i will atleast try to make it short.

the university"s slogan is,

"what starts here changes the world."

i have to admit-i kinda like it.

"what starts here changes the world."

tonight there are almost 8,000 students graduating from ut.

that great paragon of analytical rigor, ask.com says that the average american will meet10,000 people in their life time.

that"s a lot of folks.

but, if every one of you changed the lives of just ten people-and each one of those folkschanged the lives of another ten people-just ten-then in five generations-125 years-the class of2024 will have changed the lives of 800 million people.

800 million people-think of it-over twice the population of the united states. go one moregeneration and you can change the entire population of the world-8 billion people.

if you think it"s hard to change the lives of ten people-change their lives forever-you"re wrong.

i saw it happen every day in iraq and afghanistan.

a young army officer makes a decision to go left instead of right down a road in baghdad andthe ten soldiers in his squad are saved from close-in ambush.

in kandahar province, afghanistan, a non-commissioned officer from the female engagementteam senses something isn"t right and directs the infantry platoon away from a 500 poundied, saving the lives of a dozen soldiers.

but, if you think about it, not only were these soldiers saved by the decisions of one person, buttheir children yet unborn-were also saved. and their children"s children-were saved.

generations were saved by one decision-by one person.

but changing the world can happen anywhere and anyone can do it.

so, what starts here can indeed change the world, but the question is…what will the world looklike after you change it?

well, i am confident that it will look much, much better, but if you will humor this old sailorfor just a moment, i have a few suggestions that may help you on your way to a better a world.

and while these lessons were learned during my time in the military, i can assure you that itmatters not whether you ever served a day in uniform.

it matters not your gender, your ethnic or religious background, your orientation, or yoursocial status.

our struggles in this world are similar and the lessons to overcome those struggles and tomove forward-changing ourselves and the world around us-will apply equally to all.

i have been a navy seal for 36 years. but it all began when i left ut for basic seal training incoronado, california.

basic seal training is si_ months of long torturous runs in the soft sand, midnight swims in thecold water off san diego, obstacles courses, unending calisthenics, days without sleep andalways being cold, wet and miserable.

it is si_ months of being constantly harassed by professionally trained warriors who seek tofind the weak of mind and body and eliminate them from ever becoming a navy seal.

but, the training also seeks to find those students who can lead in an environment ofconstant stress, chaos, failure and hardships.

to me basic seal training was a life time of challenges crammed into si_ months.

so, here are the ten lesson"s i learned from basic seal training that hopefully will be of value toyou as you move forward in life.

every morning in basic seal training, my instructors, who at the time were all vietnamveterans, would show up in my barracks room and the first thing they would inspect was yourbed.

if you did it right, the corners would be square, the covers pulled tight, the pillow centered justunder the headboard and the e_tra blanket folded neatly at the foot of the rack-rack-that"snavy talk for bed.

it was a simple task-mundane at best. but every morning we were required to make our bedto perfection. it seemed a little ridiculous at the time, particularly in light of the fact thatwere aspiring to be real warriors, tough battle hardened seals-but the wisdom of this simpleact has been proven to me many times over.

if you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day. itwill give you a small sense of pride and it will encourage you to do another task and anotherand another.

by the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed.making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter.

if you can"t do the little things right, you will never do the big things right.

and, if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made-thatyou made-and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.

if you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.

during seal training the students are broken down into boat crews. each crew is sevenstudents-three on each side of a small rubber boat and one co_swain to help guide the dingy.

every day your boat crew forms up on the beach and is instructed to get through the surfzoneand paddle several miles down the coast.

in the winter, the surf off san diego can get to be 8 to 10 feet high and it is e_ceedinglydifficult to paddle through the plunging surf unless everyone digs in.

every paddle must be synchronized to the stroke count of the co_swain. everyone must e_ertequal effort or the boat will turn against the wave and be unceremoniously tossed back on thebeach.

for the boat to make it to its destination, everyone must paddle.

you can"t change the world alone-you will need some help- and to truly get from your startingpoint to your destination takes friends, colleagues, the good will of strangers and a strongco_swain to guide them.

if you want to change the world, find someone to help you paddle.

over a few weeks of difficult training my seal class which started with 150 men was down tojust 35. there were now si_ boat crews of seven men each.

i was in the boat with the tall guys, but the best boat crew we had was made up of the thelittle guys-the munchkin crew we called them-no one was over about 5-foot five.

the munchkin boat crew had one american indian, one african american, one polish american,one greek american, one italian american, and two tough kids from the mid-west.

they out paddled, out-ran, and out swam all the other boat crews.

the big men in the other boat crews would always make good natured fun of the tiny littleflippers the munchkins put on their tiny little feet prior to every swim.

but somehow these little guys, from every corner of the nation and the world, always had thelast laugh- swimming faster than everyone and reaching the shore long before the rest of us.

seal training was a great equalizer. nothing mattered but your will to succeed. not your color,not your ethnic background, not your education and not your social status.

if you want to change the world, measure a person by the size of their heart, not the size oftheir flippers.

several times a week, the instructors would line up the class and do a uniform inspection. itwas e_ceptionally thorough.

your hat had to be perfectly starched, your uniform immaculately pressed and your belt buckleshiny and void of any smudges.

but it seemed that no matter how much effort you put into starching your hat, or pressingyour uniform or polishing your belt buckle-- it just wasn"t good enough.

the instructors would fine "something" wrong.

for failing the uniform inspection, the student had to run, fully clothed into the surfzone andthen, wet from head to toe, roll around on the beach until every part of your body was coveredwith sand.

the effect was known as a "sugar cookie." you stayed in that uniform the rest of the day-cold,wet and sandy.

there were many a student who just couldn"t accept the fact that all their effort was in vain.that no matter how hard they tried to get the uniform right-it was unappreciated.

those students didn"t make it through training.

those students didn"t understand the purpose of the drill. you were never going to succeed.you were never going to have a perfect uniform.

sometimes no matter how well you prepare or how well you perform you still end up as asugar cookie.

it"s just the way life is sometimes.

if you want to change the world get over being a sugar cookie and keep moving forward.

every day during training you were challenged with multiple physical events-long runs, longswims, obstacle courses, hours of calisthenics-something designed to test your mettle.

every event had standards-times you had to meet. if you failed to meet those standards yourname was posted on a list and at the end of the day those on the list were invited to-a "circus."

a circus was two hours of additional calisthenics-designed to wear you down, to break yourspirit, to force you to quit.

no one wanted a circus.

a circus meant that for that day you didn"t measure up. a circus meant more fatigue-andmore fatigue meant that the following day would be more difficult-and more circuses werelikely.

but at some time during seal training, everyone-everyone-made the circus list.

but an interesting thing happened to those who were constantly on the list. overtime thosestudents--who did two hours of e_tra calisthenics-got stronger and stronger.

the pain of the circuses built inner strength-built physical resiliency.

life is filled with circuses.

you will fail. you will likely fail often. it will be painful. it will be discouraging. at times it willtest you to your very core.

but if you want to change the world, don"t be afraid of the circuses.

at least twice a week, the trainees were required to run the obstacle course. the obstaclecourse contained 25 obstacles including a 10-foot high wall, a 30-foot cargo net, and a barbedwire crawl to name a few.

but the most challenging obstacle was the slide for life. it had a three level 30 foot tower atone end and a one level tower at the other. in between was a 200-foot long rope.

you had to climb the three tiered tower and once at the top, you grabbed the rope, swungunderneath the rope and pulled yourself hand over hand until you got to the other end.

the record for the obstacle course had stood for years when my class began training in 1977.

the record seemed unbeatable, until one day, a student decided to go down the slide for life-head first.

instead of swinging his body underneath the rope and inching his way down, he bravelymounted the top of the rope and thrust himself forward.

it was a dangerous move-seemingly foolish, and fraught with risk. failure could mean injuryand being dropped from the training.

without hesitation-the student slid down the rope-perilously fast, instead of several minutes,it only took him half that time and by the end of the course he had broken the record.

if you want to change the world sometimes you have to slide down the obstacle head first.

during the land warfare phase of training, the students are flown out to san clemente islandwhich lies off the coast of san diego.

the waters off san clemente are a breeding ground for the great white sharks. to pass sealtraining there are a series of long swims that must be completed. one-is the night swim.

before the swim the instructors joyfully brief the trainees on all the species of sharks thatinhabit the waters off san clemente.

they assure you, however, that no student has ever been eaten by a shark-at least notrecently.

but, you are also taught that if a shark begins to circle your position-stand your ground. donot swim away. do not act afraid.

and if the shark, hungry for a midnight snack, darts towards you-then summons up all yourstrength and punch him in the snout and he will turn and swim away.

there are a lot of sharks in the world. if you hope to complete the swim you will have to dealwith them.

so, if you want to change the world, don"t back down from the sharks.

as navy seals one of our jobs is to conduct underwater attacks against enemy shipping. wepracticed this technique e_tensively during basic training.

the ship attack mission is where a pair of seal divers is dropped off outside an enemy harborand then swims well over two miles-underwater-using nothing but a depth gauge and acompass to get to their target.

during the entire swim, even well below the surface there is some light that comes through. itis comforting to know that there is open water above you.

but as you approach the ship, which is tied to a pier, the light begins to fade. the steelstructure of the ship blocks the moonlight-it blocks the surrounding street lamps-it blocks allambient light.

to be successful in your mission, you have to swim under the ship and find the keel-thecenterline and the deepest part of the ship.

this is your objective. but the keel is also the darkest part of the ship-where you cannot seeyour hand in front of your face, where the noise from the ship"s machinery is deafening andwhere it is easy to get disoriented and fail.

every seal knows that under the keel, at the darkest moment of the mission-is the time whenyou must be calm, composed-when all your tactical skills, your physical power and all yourinner strength must be brought to bear.

if you want to change the world, you must be your very best in the darkest moment.

the ninth week of training is referred to as "hell week." it is si_ days of no sleep, constantphysical and mental harassment and-one special day at the mud flats-the mud flats are areabetween san diego and tijuana where the water runs off and creates the tijuana slue"s-aswampy patch of terrain where the mud will engulf you.

it is on wednesday of hell week that you paddle down to the mud flats and spend the ne_t 15hours trying to survive the freezing cold mud, the howling wind and the incessant pressureto quit from the instructors.

as the sun began to set that wednesday evening, my training class, having committed some"egregious infraction of the rules" was ordered into the mud.

the mud consumed each man till there was nothing visible but our heads. the instructors toldus we could leave the mud if only five men would quit-just five men and we could get out of theoppressive cold.

looking around the mud flat it was apparent that some students were about to give up. it wasstill over eight hours till the sun came up-eight more hours of bone chilling cold.

the chattering teeth and shivering moans of the trainees were so loud it was hard to hearanything and then, one voice began to echo through the night-one voice raised in song.

the song was terribly out of tune, but sung with great enthusiasm.

one voice became two and two became three and before long everyone in the class was singing.

we knew that if one man could rise above the misery then others could as well.

the instructors threatened us with more time in the mud if we kept up the singing-but thesinging persisted.

and somehow-the mud seemed a little warmer, the wind a little tamer and the dawn not so faraway.

if i have learned anything in my time traveling the world, it is the power of hope. the power ofone person-washington, lincoln, king, mandela and even a young girl from pakistan-malala-oneperson can change the world by giving people hope.

so, if you want to change the world, start singing when you"re up to your neck in mud.

finally, in seal training there is a bell. a brass bell that hangs in the center of the compoundfor all the students to see.

all you have to do to quit-is ring the bell. ring the bell and you no longer have to wake up at 5o"clock. ring the bell and you no longer have to do the freezing cold swims.

ring the bell and you no longer have to do the runs, the obstacle course, the pt-and you nolonger have to endure the hardships of training.

just ring the bell.

if you want to change the world don"t ever, ever ring the bell.

to the graduating class of 2024, you are moments away from graduating. moments away frombeginning your journey through life. moments away starting to change the world-for the better.

it will not be easy.

but, you are the class of 2024-the class that can affect the lives of 800 million people in thene_t century.

start each day with a task completed.

find someone to help you through life.

respect everyone.

know that life is not fair and that you will fail often, but if take you take some risks, step upwhen the times are toughest, face down the bullies, lift up the downtrodden and never, evergive up-if you do these things, then ne_t generation and the generations that follow will live ina world far better than the one we have today and-what started here will indeed have changedthe world-for the better.

thank you very much. hook "em horns.

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it is always a pleasure to greeta sea of alumni on commencement afternoon—even thoughmy role is that of thewarm-up act for the feature to come. today i am especially aware of thetreatwe have in store as i look out on not a sea, but a veritable ocean ofanticipation.

but it is my customary assignmentand privilege to offer each spring a report to thealumni on the year that isending. and this was a year that for a number of reasons demandsspecial note.

“the world is too much with us”—the lines of wordsworth’s well-known poem echoed in mymind as i thoughtabout my remarks today, for the world has intruded on us this year in wayswenever would have imagined. the university had not officially closed for a daysince 1978. thisyear it closed three times. twice it was for cases of e_tremeweather—first for superstorm sandyand then for nemo, the record-breakingfebruary blizzard. the third was of course the day ofboston’s lockdown in theaftermath of the tragic marathon bombings. this was a year thatchallengedfundamental assumptions about life’s security, stability and predictability.

yet as i reflected on theseintrusions from a world so very much with us, i was struck by howwe at harvardare so actively engaged in shaping that world and indeed in addressing somanyof the most important and trying questions that these recent events have posed.

just two weeks ago, climatescientists and disaster relief workers gathered here for a two-day conferenceco-sponsored by the harvard humanitarian initiative and the harvarduniversitycenter for the environment. they came to e_plore the very issues presentedbysandy and nemo and to consider how academic researchers and workers on theground cancollaborate more effectively.

this gathering represents justone e_ample of the wide range of activities across theuniversity dedicated toaddressing the challenges of climate change. how can we advance thesciencethat helps us understand climate change—and perhaps avert it? how can wedevisesolutions—from new technologies to principles of urban design—that mightmitigate it?how can we envision the public policies to manage and respond toit? harvard is deeplyengaged with the broad issues of energy andenvironment—offering more than 250 courses inthis area, gathering 225 facultythrough our environment center and its programs, enrolling100 doctoralstudents from 7 schools and many different disciplines in a graduateconsortiumdesigned to broaden their understanding of environmental issues. our facultyarestudying atmospheric composition and working to develop renewable energysources; theyare seeking to manage rising oceans and to reimagine cities foran era of increasinglythreatening weather; they are helping to fashionenvironmental regulations and internationalclimate agreements.

so the weather isn’t somethingthat simply happens at harvard, even though it may haveseemed that way when wehad to close twice this year. it is a focus of study and of research, aswework to confront the implications of climate change and help shape nationalandinternational responses to its e_tremes.

when boston e_perienced thetragedy of the marathon bombings last month, the city andsurroundingmunicipalities went into lockdown on april 19 to help ensure the capture oftheescaped suspect, and harvard responded in e_traordinary ways. within ourowncommunity, students, faculty and staff went well beyond their ordinaryresponsibilities tosupport one another and keep the university operatingsmoothly and safely underunprecedented circumstances. but we also witnessedour colleagues’ magnificent efforts tomeet the needs of boston and our other neighborsin the crisis. the harvard police worked withother law enforcement agencies,and several of our officers played a critical role in saving thelife of thetransit officer wounded in watertown. doctors, nurses and other staff, manyfrom ouraffiliated hospitals, performed a near-miracle in ensuring that everyinjured person who arrivedat a hospital survived. years of disaster planningand emergency readiness enabled theseinstitutions to act in a stunninglycoordinated and effective manner. i am deeply proud of thecontributions madeby members of the harvard community in the immediate aftermath of thebombings.

but our broader and ongoingresponsibility as a university is to ask and address the largerquestions anysuch tragedy poses: to prepare for the ne_t crisis and the one after that, evenaswe work to prevent them; to help us all understand the origins and themeaning of suchterrible events in human lives and societies. we do this workin the teaching and research towhich we devote ourselves every day.

investigators at the harvardhospitals are e_ploring improved techniques for managinginjury. researchers atbrigham and women’s, for instance, are pursuing the prospect of legtransplantsfor amputees. a faculty member in our school of engineering and appliedsciences isstudying traumatic brain injury. faculty in the business andkennedy schools are teaching andlearning about leadership in times ofcrisis—analyzing historic and contemporary e_amples,from shackleton inantarctica to katrina in new orleans—in order to search for lessons forthefuture. the very day of the lockdown, the mahindra humanities center and theharvard lawschool program on negotiation had scheduled a conference on“confronting evil,” e_aminingthe cognitive, behavioral and social implicationsof both what it called “everyday evils” and“e_traordinary crimes.” a few dayslater, the harvard divinity school assembled a panel ofe_perts to discuss“religion and terror,” e_ploring sources of violence in bosnia, in themiddleeast, and during the troubles in ireland, which served as a formativee_perience for ourdivinity school dean in his youth. at the institute ofpolitics at the kennedy school, lawenforcement, emergency management and othere_perts gathered to consider lessons learnedfrom the bombings. as we struggledto understand the events that shook our city and ourregion, members of ourcommunity were already engaged in interpreting the world that hadproduced suchtragedy and in seeking ways to prevent its recurrence.

three unusual days, making for anunusual year. yet these three unusual daysunderscore and illuminate the usualwork of this university: calling on knowledge andresearch to addressfundamental challenges and dilemmas with resources drawn from the widestscopeof human inquiry—from the insights of the natural and social sciences to thereflectionson meaning and values at the heart of the humanities. universitiesurge us towards a betterfuture and equip us as individuals and societies toget there.

yet other events this past yearremind us we cannot take what universities do for granted.this year hasbrought home not just the threats of e_treme weather and of terror andviolence.it has also been a year that has challenged fundamental assumptions undergirdingamericanhigher education and the foundations of our nation’s researchenterprise. i have just offerede_amples of how our research and teaching cancontribute to addressing urgent problems facingour world. we live in an era inwhich knowledge is more vital than ever to nations, economiesand societies.knowledge is, i often say, the most important currency of the twenty-firstcentury.and universities are the places that, more than any other, generateand disseminate thatknowledge.

in the united states, thepartnership between universities and the federal governmentestablished afterworld war ii has been a powerful engine of scientific discovery andprosperity.yet that partnership, now more than half a century old, is threatened by theerosionof federal support for research—a situation made acute by the sequester. anestimatedalmost $10 billion will be cut from the federal government’s researchbudget in 2024. thenational institutes of health calculates that cuts to itsresources could mean the loss of morethan 20,000 jobs in the life sciencessector. here at harvard, we receive appro_imately 16% ofour operating budgetfrom federal research funding. we anticipate we may see declines of asmuch as$40 million annually in federal support for research.

what does all this mean? facultyare finding that even grant applications with perfect scoresin peerevaluations are not getting funded. they see e_isting awards being reduced.aspiringyounger scientists are fearful they will not receive career-launchinggrants on which their futuredepends. some are entertaining overtures fromcountries outside the united states wherescience investment is robust ande_panding. students contemplating graduate training arewondering if theyshould pursue other options. great ideas that could lead to improvedhumanlives and opportunities, and improved understanding, are left without supportor themeans for further development.

the world and the nation need thekind of research that harvard and other americanresearch universitiesundertake. we need the knowledge and understanding thatresearchgenerates—knowledge about climate change, or crisis management, or melanoma,oreffective mental health interventions in schools, or hormones that might treatdiabetes, orany of a host of other worthy projects our faculty are currentlypursuing. we need the supportand encouragement for the students who willcreate our scientific future. we need theeconomic vitality—the jobs andcompanies—that these ideas and discoveries produce. we needthe nation toresist imposing a self-inflicted wound on its intellectual and human capital.weneed a nation that believes in, and invests in, its universities because werepresent aninvestment in the ideas and the people that will build and will bethe future.

so as i report to you on the yearwe now bring to a close, i want to underscore the threatto universities and toour national infrastructure of knowledge and discovery that thesequesterrepresents. even in a year when sometimes the world felt too much with us, wehavenever lost sight of how much what we do here has to do with the world. andfor the world. tosequester the search for knowledge, to sequester discovery,to sequester the unrelentingdrive of our students and faculty to envision andpursue this endless frontier—such a strategydoes more than threatenuniversities. it puts at risk the capacity and promise of universitiestofulfill our commitment to the public good, our commitment to our childrenandgrandchildren and to the future we will leave them. the challenges facing theworld are tooconsequential, the need for knowledge, imagination andunderstanding is too great, theopportunity for improving the human conditiontoo precious for us to do anything less thanrise to the occasion. with thedevotion of our alumni, with the inspiration of our new graduatesand—ihope—with the support of our nation’s leaders, we must and we will.