Best Commencement Speech, Ever?

Maybe it's cliché, but few have ever been as meaningful to me as David Foster Wallace's speech.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DKYJVV7HuZw

 

Sumner Redstone: " If you want to live till you're ninety tag a lot of ass"
http://apps.npr.org/commencement/speech/sumner-redstone-northwestern-university-2002/

 

Dwight Eisenhower Penn St 1955. This was certainly a prescient comment:

"Of course, you men and women venture forth into a world where human nature differs little, if at all, from human nature in 1915 or in the Age of Pericles…But the age of nuclear energy, in its industrial and economic aspects, will likely bear no more resemblance to the age of steam than a jet-powered plane to an old-fashioned box kite."

 

Trust me on the sunscreen.

Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young

 

John Waters, R.I. School of Design, 2015:

John Waters to Grads: Participate in the Creative World

"Uh, don’t hate all rich people. They’re not all awful. Believe me, I know some evil poor people, too. We need some rich people: Who else is going to back our movies or buy our art? I’m rich! I don’t mean money-wise. I mean that I have figured out how to never be around a——-s at any time in my personal and professional life. That’s rich. And not being around a——s should be the goal of every graduate here today."

 

I'm sure that message has more resonance to Stanford grads with wide options, but for most people that's pie in the sky bad advice more likely to lead to poverty and despair than bliss. Oh if only we could all do only what we love.

 

Hank Azaria gives commencement speech with the help of his “Simpsons” voices (Video)

Hank Azaria and the gang address Tufts graduates.

 

"I don't know what kind of doctor I am. But watching all these beautiful sisters here . . . I'm debating whether I should be a gynecologist."

--Mike Tyson, honorary doctorate, Central State, 1989

 

I like this one:

 

YF just heard a bell, a thunderclap, a howling dog and a foghorn all at the same time.