Commencement speeches have become outlets for sharing some of the most important

life lessons ever. After listening to Steve Jobs Stanford commencement speech, I
was inspired to round up the best graduation speeches of all time, so all of yo
u can enjoy the rich insights of the speakers.
I plunged in, weeded through a good number of different graduation speeches from
different times, and eventually picked these as the top 10. You ll probably recog
nize most of the speakers, who are prominent people in their fields people like
Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Oprah, Ellen, Randy Pausch, JK Rowling, and so on. I thi
nk the schools couldn t have picked better speakers than them, because the most im
portant inspiration anyone can ever get is someone who his living by example. I ve
picked these 10 speeches because they share important wisdom that are applicabl
e to anyone in any time, beyond just graduating students.
The 10 speeches are not ranked in any order. I have included videos and transcri
pts where available. I ve included my thoughts with each speech. My personal favor
ites are the ones by Steve Jobs, Arnold, Randy Pausch and Ellen Degeneres. Enjoy
I surely did!
1) Steve Jobs, Stanford University, 2005
(Read the transcript)
Remembering you re going to die, is the best way I know, to avoid the trap of think
ing you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to
follow your heart. Steve Jobs
Whenever people talk about inspiring graduation speeches, Steve Job s speech insta
ntly comes up. In this speech, Steve shares his life lessons via 3 stories in hi
s life. His birth, when he got fired from Apple, and when he found out about his
cancer. These 3 stories were extremely inspiring most people knew Steve as the
hot-tempered yet charismatic CEO who heads Apple, but who would have known that
his birth parents gave him up for adoption? That he quit college because his col
lege fees were sucking up his parents savings? That he was once fired from the ve
ry company he founded? And that he diagnosed in cancer in 2004, and by a stroke
of fate, survived it?
Your time is limited, so don t waste it living someone else s life. Don t be trapped by
dogma which is living with the results of other people s thinking. Don t let the no
ise of others opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have t
he courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what yo
u truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
Steve reminds us that in life, there is really nothing we have to lose, because
we were born with nothing to begin with. This is what I alluded to in my article
How To Overcome Fear and Pursue Your Dreams. Eventually one day, all of us will
die. Everything that we ve come to see as important, will lose significance on th
at day. What would you wish you could have done then? How would you rather have
lived your life? Take that and start living true to that today. Don t live your li
fe in regret, because life is not meant to be lived in regret. It s meant to be li
ve in passion, with love, with fire, conviction, and purpose. Don t ever settle fo
r what you don t want; keep fighting for what you believe in.
2) Arnold Schwarzenegger, Emory University, 2010
(Read the transcript)
You re going to find naysayers in every turn that you make. Don t listen. Just visual
ize your goal, know exactly where you want to go. Trust yourself. Get out there
and work like hell. Break some of the rules and never ever be afraid of failure.
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold is an international movie star (Conan, Terminator, Commando) and the 38th
Governor of California. I found his speech very inspiring he s living proof of ho
w one can overcome all odds to achieve one s dreams, as long as you set your heart
and mind to it. Arnie shared how important it is to not be afraid of failure. H
e shared his personal stories of how he overcame resistances from everyone and a
chieved his dreams, one after another, by first having that crystal clear vision
of what he wanted, then going all out to achieve them. Truly, there s no such thi
ng as can t be done . If you really want to achieve your dreams, they will be yours f
or the taking.
3) Randy Pausch, Carnegie Mellon University, 2008
Randy Pausch was a professor at Carnegie Mellon. He was best known for The Last
Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, and also co-author of the book
with the same name, which became a New York Times best-seller. He was diagnosed
with pancreatic cancer and was told in Aug 2007 that he only had 3-6 months to l
ive. When he gave this speech at Carnegie Mellon, it was the 9th month. He later
passed away 2 months after that.
Even though Randy s speech was the shortest of the commencement speeches in this l
ist (less than 6 minutes), it is in no way any less impactful. Randy s reminder to
all of us is the importance of living true to our dreams and pursuing them. Tha
t life isn t about how long we live, but about how we live. His passion in living,
teaching, and his relationship with his wife really shows through in his speech
.
We don t beat the reaper by living longer. We beat the reaper by living well and li
ving fully. For the reaper is always going to come for all of us. The question i
s: What do we do between the time we are born, and the time he shows up? Because
when he shows up, it s too late to do all the things that you re always gona, kinda
get around to.
4) Michael Dell, University of Texas at Austin, 2003
(Read the transcript)
[Now] it s time for you to move on to what s next. But you must not let anything dete
r you from taking those first steps. [D]on t spend so much time trying to choose t
he perfect opportunity, that you miss the right opportunity. Recognize that ther
e will be failures, and acknowledge that there will be obstacles. But you will l
earn from your mistakes and the mistakes of others, for there is very little lea
rning in success.
Michael Dell is the owner of Dell and one of the richest people in the world wit
h a net worth of $14 billion. Michael studied in University of Texas at Austin (
UT) but never graduated he founded Dell when he was 19 and it became successful
enough that he decided to drop out of UT to run it.
I found Dell s speech extremely inspiring. It was filled with concrete, sound and
extremely wise advice. He urges us to pursue our dreams, to listen to our heart,
and to create our journey. Choose what you must, and embark on it right away. D
on t fall into the trap of analysis paralysis, because otherwise you ll just be livi
ng a life of regret. At the same time, the journey is one of exploration and sel
f-discovery:
Then, as you start your journey, the first thing you should do is throw away that
store-bought map and begin to draw your own. When Dell got started, it didn t com
e with a manual on how to become number 1 in the world. We had to figure that ou
t every step of the way. And with each new product and new market, the industry e
xperts said we d fail. Through the chorus of naysayers, we emerged as a world leade
r in servers, and we continue to gain momentum.
Has there ever been a time when you re not sure what you should do, when people gi
ve you conflicting advice, when you feel oppressed to do things that you don t wan
t? Remember, it s up to you to take the step and identify what works best for you
and what doesn t, then adjust accordingly. At the end of the day, as long as you k
eep striving for the best that you can be, and learn every step of the way, you ll
never veer into the wrong track.
5) Bono, University of Pennsylvania, 2004

(Read the transcript)

For four years you ve been buying, trading, and selling everything you ve got in this
marketplace of ideas. The intellectual hustle. Your pockets are full, even if y
our parents are empty, and and now you ve got to figure out what to spend it on. So
my question I suppose is: What s the big idea? What s your big idea? What are you w
illing to spend your moral capital, your intellectual capital, your cash, your s
weat equity in pursuing outside [...]? Bono
Bono is the lead singer in the famous rock band U2 and extremely well-known for
his activism work in Africa. In his humorous yet passionate speech, he first urg
es everyone to find a cause to fight for, then shares the plights and injustice
that people in Africa are facing. While the problems like extreme poverty and AI
Ds are deeply rooted and not going to be changed overnight, there are things tha
t everyone of us can start doing immediately to alleviate the issue.
The world is more malleable than you think and it s waiting for you to hammer it in
to shape. We can t fix every problem corruption, natural calamities are part of th
e picture here but the ones we can we must. And because we can, we must. Because
we can, we must. Amen!
The biggest takeaway I got from Bono s speech is that it s up to each of us to find
a cause we re passionate to fight for. What s your cause? I m most passionate about he
lping others grow. I hate it when I see people who are stifling their true selve
s and not living to who they can be; subsequently this is my life purpose what d
rives me endlessly. How about you? What are you most passionate about? What make
s you come alive? Find it, then go and make it happen. Use your skills, your kn
owledge, everything you ve learned, and make real, meaningful change with them. Th
at s when you come alive, and that s when you make the world come alive.
6) JK Rowling, Harvard, 2008
Part 1 (10 min)
Part 2 (5:16 min)
Part 3 (5 min)
(Read the transcript)
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 cautio
usly that you might as well not have lived at all. In which case, you fail by de
fault. JK Rowling
JK Rowling is the famous author of the highly successful Harry Potter series, an
d is also well known for her rags-to-riches story, where she grew from living in
poverty to a multi-millionaire in 5 years. Today her net worth is estimated to
be at least $1 billion. In this speech, she shares her story of how she fell to
the rock bottom when she was 27. Her marriage had failed after just 1 year, she
was a single parent, she was extremely poor, and she was jobless. It was at her
lowest point in her life, and she contemplated suicide.
Yet this failure had given her the solid foundation to build her life. Because s
he had failed on such an epic scale, there was nothing else there. It helped her
to cut away the inessential, see beyond the unimportant and focus on the import
ant which was (a) her daughter, and (b) writing her fantasy novel (the Harry Pot
ter series, which would later propel her to success). What matters the most to y
ou in life? Are you pursuing that? Or are you letting the fear of failure preven
t you from doing what you love?
We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside
ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
Rowling also shared about her experience working at Amnesty International, where
she witnessed the darkest as well as the best sides of humanity. The biggest ma
gic we have is the ability to touch others lives, and it s something that we alread
y have the power to do. If you re reading this, that means you re more privileged th
an a big part of the world out there, who have difficulty even getting the bare
essentials to live. Will you waste away this power? Or will you use this power t
o a better cause? The power of choice lies in us.
7) Ellen Degeneres, Tulane University, 2009
If you don t know Ellen, she is one of the most famous talkshow hosts in the world
(right up there with Oprah). She started out as a standup comedian and had her
own TV sitcoms back in 1990s to early 200s, though I haven t seen them before. Her
show, The Ellen Degeneres Show, has been won 12 Emmys. Her show and Tyra (Bank) s
 shows are part of my inspiration to have my own show in the future too. It s so i
ncredibly inspiring to see her amazing work and how it has influenced millions o
f lives around the world.
Ellen s speech is filled with her trademark characteristics her wit, humor as well
as her dancing (at the end). This is probably the funniest graduation speech ev
er and the only one where you ll find the students dancing! I m a big fan of Ellen
and her work, so naturally I loved her speech here.
Really when I look back at it I wouldn t change a thing. I mean it was so important
to me to lose everything because I found out what the most important thing is T
o be true to yourself. Ultimately that s what s gotten me to this place. I don t live
in fear, I m free, I have no secrets, I know I ll always be okay because no matter w
hat, I know who I am. - Ellen
While Ellen s speech was humorous, she also weaved in important lessons from her l
ife. She talked how she had no direction and no ambition when she was young, and
it wasn t until a tragic event that things changed. Her girlfriend (Ellen is gay)
died in a car accident when she was 21, and for a while after that she did some
deep soul searching, and realizing how fragile life was. She decided she wanted
to do stand-up (comedy) afterward, and set out to be the first woman to be on J
ohnny Carson s show (the biggest comedian at that time). Several years later it ha
ppened, and her TV career took off, only to come crashing down when she came out
in 1997 that she was gay. For 3 whole years, she did not get booked for any job
s, and in the end she rebuilt her career to be bigger and better than it ever is
before. And today we know Ellen as she is.
The key message in Ellen s speech is to be true to yourself. Find your inner self,
know who he/she is, and embrac e him/her. Be free, have no secrets, and be who
you want to be, because life is too beautiful to be experienced otherwise. Live
with integrity, and be an honest and compassionate person. If you are true to yo
urself and follow your passion, nothing can ever stop you in your way.
8) Bill Gates, Harvard, 2007
Part 1 (5:56min)
Part 2 (4:13min)
Part 3 (6:05min)
Part 4 (4:56min)
Part 4 (5:11min)
(Read the transcript)
Bill Gates needs no introduction he s one of the wealthiest men in the world (seco
nd wealthiest as of 2010, right after Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim Helu). He owns
Microsoft, which earns $62 billion a year, and is also a highly influential phil
anthropist, having donated billions to health causes through his foundation Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation.
If you believe that every life has equal value, it s revolting to learn that some l
ives are seen as worth saving and others are not. We said to ourselves: This can t
be true. But if it is true, it deserves to be the priority of our giving. Bill Ga
tes
In his heartfelt speech, he shared his passion about the inequities of the world
referring to the injustices and unfairness, such as poverty, suffering in third
world countries, diseases, lack of healthcare support, etc. I applaud Bill Gate
s for making this the topic of his commencement speech and bringing awareness to
the issue of inequities, because (a) It s not what one would expect in a commence
ment speech. Most were probably looking for advice on achieving success in life.
(b) He took the risk of boring the audience, since it was not a topic most peop
le were interested in. I had a deeper respect for him after reading his speech.
Even with the advent of the Internet and 24-hour news, it is still a complex ente
rprise to get people to truly see the problems. When an airplane crashes, offici
als immediately call a press conference. They promise to investigate, determine
the cause, and prevent similar crashes in the future.
But if the officials were brutally honest, they would say: Of all the people in t
he world who died today from preventable causes, one half of one percent of them
were on this plane. We re determined to do everything possible to solve the probl
em that took the lives of the one half of one percent.
The bigger problem is not the plane crash, but the millions of preventable death
s.
The media today dramatizes on specific incidents and events which are just a fra
ction of what s occurring around the world today. Stop using media as the filter t
o our world, and instead look out there to understand what s happening around. The
n pick a cause that you re most passionate about, and pursue that in full throttle
. That s how we start making that difference.
9) Oprah Winfrey, Stanford University, 2008
(Read the transcript)
I consider the world, this Earth, to be like a school. And our life, the classroo
ms, and sometimes on this planet Earth school, the lessons often come dressed up
as detours, or roadblocks, and sometimes, as full blown crises. And the secret
I ve learned to getting ahead, is being open to the lessons lessons from the grand
est universe of all, that is the universe itself. Oprah Winfrey
Everyone knows Oprah She s arguably the most influential woman in the world, and o
wner of the most successful TV talkshow in the world, The Oprah Winfrey Show. In
Oprah s speech, she shares 3 powerful lessons from her life (If you want to skip
straight to Oprah s speech, fast forward to 3:24min in the video). The first is ab
out the importance of being true to who we are. When she started her TV career a
t 22, she never felt she was at home. She tried to emulate Barbara Walters (anot
her TV host). There were differing expectations from her manager and her father
on what she should be. Her news director wanted to change her name to Susie becaus
e Oprah didn t seem marketable.
In the end she decided to stay true to who she was, and just be herself. Her fee
lings became her GPS in assessing whether a decision was right or wrong. She lea
rned to listen to her intuition and tune out what others around her were asking
her to do. It turned out to be the best thing she could ever do. If you ever fee
l that you re at a loss of what to do, get still, very still , and the answer will co
me to you eventually.
Don t react against a bad situation; Merge with that situation instead. And the sol
ution will arise from the challenge. Because surrendering yourself doesn t mean gi
ving up, it means acting with responsibility. Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth
The second lesson is to learn lessons from failure. Every failure, every experie
nce is there to teach you something. In Oprah s case, she was starting a new schoo
l in Africa, and was very focused on creating a beautiful environment for the ki
ds, until one day she was told that one of the girls was sexually abused. She br
oke down, and rather than let the incident take over her, she thought about what
there was to learn from the situation. She learned that she had been focusing o
n the wrong things trying to build the school from outside in, rather than insid
e out, and this led her to change her approach from there on. If you lose yourse
lf with the bad situations that hit you, you d have lost there and then. But if yo
u take a lesson, at least one lesson with every experience, you d have emerged a s
tronger and better person.
The third lesson is on finding happiness. What makes you happy? In Oprah s speech,
she shared that happiness is achieved when you give something back to others. D
id you know how Stanford came to be? The university was founded in 1885 when the
Stanfords lost their child a year earlier, and decided in their grief to build
a school, and treat the children in the school as theirs. Because of their kindn
ess, they have forever changed ten thousands of lives directly, and millions as
a corollary to that. For me happiness is when I help others to achieve their hig
hest potentials and live their best lives. This is why I dedicated my life to th
is cause, and I know I m happiest than I ve ever been just doing this.
However, I believe that service is not necessarily everyone s calling, and it s most
important to do what makes you happy, vs. blindly serving others just because t
hat s what other people say. That s no different from an unconscious life. Think abo
ut what makes you happy In your ideal life, what will you be doing? What s your pa
ssion? Pursue that, because it s the most important thing you can ever do in your
life.
10) Larry Page, University of Michigan, 2009
(Read the transcript)
Larry Page is the co-founder of Google, the #1 search engine in the world. He s pa
rt of the reason why all of us get such seamless web searching experience today
:D. In his heartfelt speech, he shared how he created Google. It all started out
with a dream literally, a dream while he was sleeping. When he woke up in the m
iddle of the night, he had a sudden idea to download the web. He immediately wro
te down the idea and approached his advisor later. From there, Google was born.
He had a dream, and rather than brush it aside, he took action on it.
I think it is often easier to make progress on mega-ambitious dreams. I know that
sounds completely nuts. But, since no one else is crazy enough to do it, you ha
ve little competition. There are so few people this crazy that I feel like I kno
w them all by first name. They all travel as if they are pack dogs and stick to
each other like glue. The best people want to work the big challenges. Larry Page
Larry also shared the importance of treasuring our families and friends. He lost
his dad to polio when he was 23, which left him devastated. Where are your fami
lies and friends? How s your relationships with them? While we re pursuing our dream
s and ambitions, don t forget our relationships. As I wrote in the Life Wheel, our
life is made up of 11 segments, including family, social and love. Our lives ca
n never truly the best if we neglect any one segment, so make sure you use the w
heel as your guide every step of the way.