Famous Graduation Speech

Learn from the messages, values, style and length of each great famous graduation speech. Use them to help make your speech a big success.

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Graduation Jokes

Great jokes to add to your speech. They may even relax you and help you deliver a strong speech.

Lots of jokes....

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Funny Stories

Relax and laugh at these funny stories. They will give you ideas and help you add a funny element to your speech.

Lots of great funny stories....

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Graduation Poems

Add in a selected poem to enhance your speech. The right poem can give a professional edge and really help make your point!

Great poems....

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Quotes

"An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest" by Benjamin Franklin.

The right quote in the right place gives a speech a brilliance. Have a look at this extensive page.

Lots of great quotes....

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Free Graduation Speeches

With some simple tips Free Speeches gives you lots of speeches designed to give you a head start. Criticise, change, copy, indeed just do what you want with them. It all helps!

Free speeches to get you started....

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Inspirational Speeches

Take a good look at these inspirational speeches. Learn from the messages, values and language. Be inspired to create your own masterpiece!

Inspirational Speeches....

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High School Graduation Speeches

You'll be able to hear that audience applause already as you write and deliver a great speech. Themes, tips and techniques covered for you.

High School Speeches....

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College Graduation Speeches

Tips, adivice and help on writing and delivering a great speech. You'll love it when the audience applaud!

College Speeches....

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Kindergarten Graduation Speeches

There will not be a dry eye in the audience when you deliver an excellent, heartfelt kindergarten speech. Everything you need to write and deliver a fabulous speech.

Kindergarten Speeches....

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Student Graduation Speeches

A great chance for students to step forward to write and deliver a great graduation speech. Tips, techniques and themes.

Student Speeches....

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Graduation Speech Topics

Lots of great topics and how to brainstorm the right one for you!

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Graduation Gifts

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Graduation Party Favors

Graduation Autograph Hound
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These famous graduation speech is freely available. Notice how personal and heartfelt they are. This grabs the audience.

Take a good look at each famous graduation speech and decide for yourself what you think are:

By taking a good look at each successful famous graduation speech it hopefully will give you some ideas for your own.

Oprah Winfrey's Famous Graduation Speech

Oprah Winfrey's Commencement Address Wellesley College May 30, 1997 My hat's off to you! My hat's off to you! [crowd cheers: Go Girl!] You all have "gone" girls! I want to say thank you, Dr. Walsh and to the esteemed faculty, to those of you parents--what you have been through, God Bless you--and to the greatest class that has ever graduated from Wellesley. I must say--you are my heart, Dr. Walsh is right. I saw you walking in and I started to weep, and I don't consider myself a weeper, but I guess I must be if I started to weep, because I know what it takes to get through here and I am so proud of all of you for getting through.

Thanks for inviting me to this party, this celebration. I told Dr. Walsh as we were walking in, my graduation was nothing like this. Nobody was having this much fun. When Wendy, Stedman's daughter (Stedman is my beau, my fiance, don't ask me when we're going to get married) when Stedman's daughter, Wendy, was looking for a school four years ago, no doubt I was far more delighted than she when she chose Wellesley `cause I knew what she was in for. I had wanted to come to this school. I wanted to be here but I could get no scholarship. I wanted to be here and have lived these past years vicariously through her. I was, as Dr. Walsh said, here with Wendy's father, Stedman, and Wendy's mother, Glenda, on Parents' Day and I was in awe of this place because, see, you all seem to have so much fun, without a keg or anything, and yet you all seemed so serious, so committed to this place with guts and with grace and I saw your sense of integrity and felt your intellect and realized that this was a very special, giving place. Wellesley is a gift to any woman who is willing to open her mind and her heart to it. It is! You are so blessed to have had this, although I know your first year you maybe didn't think it was such a gift because I was there for a lot of those phone calls that Wendy made home. "Daddy [in small girl's voice], this is hard, they just want you to study all the time." Yes, they do. That was the Freshmen Year. About mid-Sophomore Year, though, I think she had several epiphanies and realized what all of you had come to realize here, that you do this for yourself, you don't do this for anybody else and that everything you heard about this institution is true--it is a prestigious and powerful place that will wear you out, but what happens is something--that Woman Thing starts to kick in around mid-Sophomore Year. We saw it kick in with Wendy, that Woman Thing that happens. She came here a naive girl from Dallas and Stedman and Glenda, I, and all of those who loved Wendy, are grateful to you Wellesley for the woman in process that you gave us back. We are grateful for that.

You could feel the change about a year and a half after her being here because she went from "Daddy [small girl's voice], this is hard," to "Daddy [adult voice], I won't be able to go on the trip to Africa because I have to study, Daddy." That Woman Thing!

You all know this, that life is a journey and I want to share with you just for a few moments about five things (aren't you glad they aren't ten) five things that have made this journey for me exciting. Five lessons that I've learned that if I had gone to Wellesley I could have not made as many mistakes, but five lessons that I've learned that have helped me to make my life better.

First of all, life is a journey. I've learned to become more fully who you are and that is what I love about this institution, it allows women to come to the fullest extent of their possibilities who they really are and that's what life does--teach you to be who you are. It took me a while to get that lesson, that it really is just about everyday experiences, teaching you, moment in, moment out, who you really are. That every experience is here to teach you more fully how to be who you really are. Because, for a long time I wanted to be somebody else. I mean growing up I didn't have a lot of role models. I was born in l954. On TV there was only Buckwheat, and I was ten years old before I saw Diana Ross on "The Ed Sullivan Show" with the Supremes and said I want to be like that. It took me a long time to realize I was never going to have Diana Ross' thighs, no matter how many diets I went on, and I was not going to have her hair neither unless I bought some. I came to the realization after being in television and having the news director trying to make me into something that I wasn't and going to New York and allowing myself to be treated less than I should have been--going to a beauty salon, you all know there is a difference between Black hair and White hair. That is the one thing you learn the first week at Wellesley: how did you get your hair to do that? What I learned going to a beauty salon and asking them, after the news director told me that my hair was too thick and my eyes were too far apart and I needed a makeover, sitting in a French beauty salon, allowing them to put a French perm on my Black hair and having the perm burn through my cerebral cortex and not being the woman that I am now, so not having the courage to say, "this is burning me," and coming out a week later bald and having to go on the air. You learn a lot about yourself when you are Black, and a woman and bald and trying to be an anchor woman. You learn you are not Diana Ross and that you are not Barbara Walters who I was trying to be at the time.

I had a lot of lessons. I remember going on the air many times and not reading my copy ahead of time. I was on the air one night and ran across the word "Barbados," that may be Barbados to you but it was " Barb-a-does" to me that night and telling the story as an anchor woman about a vote in absentia in California, I thought it was located near San Francisco. This is when I broke out of my Barbara shell, because I am sitting there, crossing my legs, trying to talk like Barbara, be like Barbara, and I was reading a story about someone with a "blaze" attitude which, if I had gone to Wellesley, I would have known it was blas� and I started to laugh at myself on the air and broke through my Barbara shell and had decided on that day that laughing was OK even though Barbara hadn't at that time. It was through my series of mistakes that I learned I could be a better Oprah than I could be a better Barbara. I allowed Barbara to be the mentor for me, as she always has been, and I decided then to try to pursue the idea of being myself and I am just thrilled that I get paid so much every day for just being myself, but it was a lesson long in coming, recognizing that I had the instinct, that inner voice that told me that you need to try to find a way to answer to your own truth was the voice I needed to be still and listen to.

One of the other great lessons I learned taught to me by my friend and mentor, Maya Angelou and if you can get this, you can save yourself a lot of time. Wendy and I have had many discussions about this, particularly when it comes to men, although she has a very nice one right now. Remember this because this will happen many times in your life:

When people show you who they are, believe them, the first time. Not the 29th time! That is particularly good when it comes to men situations because when he doesn't call back the first time, when you are mistreated the first time, when you see someone who shows you a lack of integrity or dishonesty the first time, know that that will be followed by many, many, many other times that will at some point in life come back to haunt or hurt you. When people show you who they are, believe them, the first time. Live your life from truth and you will survive everything, everything, I believe even death. You will survive everything if you can live your life from the point of view of truth. That took me a while to get, pretending to be something I wasn't, wanting to be somebody I couldn't, but understanding deep inside myself when I was willing to listen, that my own truth and only my own truth could set me free.

Turn your wounds into wisdom. You will be wounded many times in your life. You'll make mistakes. Some people will call them failures but I have learned that failure is really God's way of saying, "Excuse me, you're moving in the wrong direction." It's just an experience, just an experience.

I remember being taken off the air in Baltimore, being told that I was no longer being fit for television and that I could not anchor the news because I used to go out on the stories and my own truth was, even though I am not a weeper, I would cry for the people in the stories, which really wasn't very effective as a news reporter to be covering a fire and crying because the people lost their house [pretending to cry as she said this]. And it wasn't until I was demoted as an on-air anchor woman and thrown into the talk show arena to get rid of me, that I allowed my own truth to come through. The first day I was on the air doing my first talk show back in l978, it felt like breathing, which is what your true passion should feel like. It should be so natural to you. And so, I took what had been a mistake, what had been perceived as a failure with my career as an anchor woman in the news business and turned it into a talk show career that's done OK for me!

Be grateful. I have kept a journal since I was l5 years old and if you look back on my journal when I was l5, l6, it's all filled with boy trouble, men trouble, my daddy wouldn't let me go to Shoney's with Anthony Otie, things like that. As I've grown older, I have learned to appreciate living in the moment and I ask that you do, too. I am asking this graduating class, those of you here, I've asked all of my viewers in America and across the world to do this one thing. Keep a grateful journal. Every night list five things that happened this day, in days to come that you are grateful for. What it will begin to do is to change your perspective of your day and your life. I believe that if you can learn to focus on what you have, you will always see that the universe is abundant and you will have more. If you concentrate and focus in your life on what you don't have, you will never have enough. Be grateful. Keep a journal. You all are all over my journal tonight.

Create the highest, grandest vision possible for your life because you become what you believe. When I was little girl, Mississippi, growing up on the farm, only Buckwheat as a role model, watching my grandmother boil clothes in a big, iron pot through the screen door, because we didn't have a washing machine and made everything we had. I watched her and realized somehow inside myself, in the spirit of myself, that although this was segregated Mississippi and I was "colored" and female, that my life could be bigger, greater than what I saw. I remember being four or five years old, I certainly couldn't articulate it, but it was a feeling and a feeling that I allowed myself to follow. I allowed myself to follow it because if you were to ask me what is the secret to my success, it is because I understand that there is a power greater than myself, that rules my life and in life if you can be still long enough in all of your endeavors, the good times, the hard times, to connect yourself to the source, I call it God, you can call it whatever you want to, the force, nature, Allah, the power. If you can connect yourself to the source and allow the energy that is your personality, your life force to be connected to the greater force, anything is possible for you. I am proof of that. I think that my life, the fact that I was born where I was born, and the time that I was and have been able to do what I have done speaks to the possibility. Not that I am special, but that it could be done. Hold the highest, grandest vision for yourself.

Just recently we followed Tina Turner around the country because I wanted to be Tina. So I had me a nice little wig made and I followed Tina Turner because that is what I can do and one of the reasons I wanted to do that is Tina Turner is one of those women who have overcome great obstacles, was battered in her life, and like a phoenix rose out of that to have great legs and a great sense of herself. I wanted to honor other women who had overcome obstacles and to say that Tina's life, although she is this great stage performer, Tina's life is a mirror of your life because it proves that you can overcome. Every life speaks to the power of what can be done. So I wanted to honor women all over the country and celebrate their dreams and Tina's tour was called the Wildest Dreams Tour. I asked women to write me their wildest dreams and tell me what their wildest dreams were. Our intention was to fulfill their wildest dreams. We got 77,000 letters, 77,000. To our disappointment we found that the deeper the wound the smaller the dreams. So many women had such small visions, such small dreams for their lives that we had a diffcult time coming up with dreams to fulfill. So we did fulfill some. We paid off all the college debt, hmmm, for a young woman whose mother had died and she put her sisters and brothers through school. We paid off all the bills for a woman who had been battered and managed to put herself through college and her daughter through college. We sent a woman to Egypt who was dying of cancer and her lifetime dream was to sit on a camel and use a cell phone. We bought a house for another woman whose dream had always been to have her own home but because she was battered and had to flee with her children one night, had to leave the home seventeen years ago. And then we brought the other women who said we just wanted to see you, Oprah, and meet Tina. That was their dream! Imagine when we paid off the debt, gave the house, gave the trip to Egypt, the attitudes we got from the women who said, "I just want to see you." And some of them afterwards were crying to me saying that "we didn't know, we didn't know, and this is unfair," and I said, that is the lesson: you needed to dream a bigger dream for yourself. That is the lesson. Hold the highest vision possible for your life and it can come true.

I want to leave you with a poem that I say to myself sometimes when I am feeling a little down, although I really don't get down a lot because I know that every experience when it happens, something difficult comes into my life, I say what is it you're here to teach me and what I try to do in my life is to get God on the whisper. He always whispers first. Try to get the whisper before the earthquake comes because the whisper is always followed by a little louder voice, then you get a brick I say, and then sometimes a brick wall, and then the earthquake comes. Try to get it on the whisper. But Maya Angelou wrote a poem and I don't know a poem more fitting than "Phenomenal Woman" for this crowd because you are and these words are for you.

All I know is I'm a woman, you're a woman, we are women, honey Phenomenally. Phenomenal women.

Hilary Clinton's Famous Graduation Speech

Commencement Speech First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton Harvard Medical School June 4, 1998

Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Dr. Martin, Dr. Federman, Dr. Donoff. I am delighted to be here. I want to thank the class for extending this invitation to me. I have, as you might expect, attended numerous commencement ceremonies in my lifetime. And I must say I have never attended one where we've already heard so many good speeches, and we could quit right now and feel that we had been in the presence of some extraordinary young people who imparted some rather significant words of advice and even wisdom to us. I want to commend the co-moderators, Dr. Bryant and Dr. Somers, for this commencement ceremony (applause). And I want to thank the student speakers. I want to thank Dr. Cook for not only reminding us that it's done, Mom and Dad, but for showing extraordinary composure while speaking in the course of having a helicopter take off in the background. I want to thank Dr. Babagbemi for her eloquent description of On-Call, but even more for her understanding of what the requirements are for one who has been blessed with the kind of education and gifts that she has on behalf of humanity. And I want to thank Dr. Mitchell for reminding us that in life it is competence and confidence and compassion that separate us as human beings from mere technicians.

Each of these student speakers has already set the stage for the graduation of this extraordinary class.This class comes with, I'm sure, a range of emotions that we can only guess at, exhilaration and exhaustion among them. But also, as we've already heard, a lot of gratitude for the opportunities they have been given. And they also deserve from us gratitude for undertaking the rigorous education which they have, for pushing themselves to the limits and now for going into the world ready to use their talents and their education on behalf of the rest of us.

They have made many sacrifices. More than 70 percent of this class had to take out loans to complete the degrees that they receive today. They will be paying back those loans for a number of years, and I hope that we as a nation will continue to look for ways to provide financial support to students such as these so that they do not have to go into the debt that these young graduates have. (applause) Some of these graduates, these new doctors and dentists, are the first in their families to attend college. Some have completed their educations while they were caring for their own families. Some are recent immigrants to our country. More than 15 percent managed to earn additional degrees. And all of them have worked extremely hard. They deserve this celebration by family and friends, by alumni of these institutions who are gathered here to pay you credit. And I hope that each of you feels the competence and the confidence that you've already heard described, because I can imagine that as you think about your new futures you've got some questions in your mind. You're thinking about the next chapters of your lives.

Now, I don't think the food wherever you're going will be as good as the restaurants on Newbury Street. The sleeping accommodations are not going to be exactly five-star ones. You know where you're going. It's called internship or specialty training. And as we've already heard that means a lot of hard work and not very much sleep. And some of you in the dark of night when those beepers go off or those phone calls come may ask yourselves, 'my goodness, am I ready for all of this?' Based on what I have learned about your class and your preparation, I think the answer is very clear -- you certainly are. You are more than prepared to enter the world of medicine and dentistry and serve your patients.

I was very impressed by the oath that the class has written, which you'll find at the end of your program. And that oath describes very well what this class of extraordinary young men and women are committing themselves to doing. No group of new doctors and dentists has ever been better prepared to care for their patients. No group has ever been better prepared to help us usher in the next century, the next millennium of medicine. From the clinic to the classroom to the community you have received a first-rate education from one of the finest schools in the world.

We've already heard about the extraordinary diversity in your class. If you think back for a minute a hundred or so years ago to classes that also stood on the brink of a new century and new discoveries, you can see starkly the differences. The doors of medical education were virtually glued shut to women and people of color. Tuition here at Harvard was a couple of hundred dollars and you didn't even need a bachelors degree to get into Harvard Medical School. Until the 1870's, there were no written exams. And in fact, when President Elliott first suggested them there was an objection because many of the students couldn't write. Yet like you, the students at the end of the last century had much to look forward to. When Oliver Wendell Holmes spoke at the 100th Anniversary of the Harvard Medical School, he referred to some things that never change such as students sleeping in class. He noted that bleeding had almost become an unknown procedure, and he celebrated the exciting advances in surgical anesthesia, germ theory, and the microscope. He thought they would produce miracles that sounded as though they would come straight from some new Gulliver's Travels.

That day that he talked, future physicians such as yourselves were staring down challenges like cholera and typhoid. There were no antibiotics, no antiseptic surgery in America. The sanitation conditions were horrible. But those young doctors and dentists, like you, were armed with something very important called hope. The hope that they could write a new future for medicine in the 20th century, and they did. Today, all of you stand on the shoulders of those Harvard graduates and faculty who have come before you and pioneered many of the advances that we take for granted today. You stand on the shoulders of all the Nobel Leaureates from Harvard who have unlocked the secrets behind some of the world's greatest medical mysteries. And even today, there are so many Harvard alumni here in the United States and around the world who are working to unlock the secrets of cancer and research into sickle cell disease, working to rid the world of AIDS and doing so much else. Now it is your turn to join them. It is your time to lead. You've been given the chance to use your education and training during the most exciting time ever in medicine.

Just think, who could have imagined even thirty years ago the revolutions in biology and technology, to see change in demographics, and the shifts in the way that we fund the healthcare system. All of these changes offer incredible opportunities and fundamental challenges. The real challenge for all of you, it seems to me, is how in the midst of these truly revolutionary changes you can stay true to the oath you will take today to make, as you say, the health of my patients my first concern. I know that many of you worry about this. I imagine there have been many conversations about what is happening in the healthcare system and how you will handle these new challenges, how you will manage the business of medicine from compromising the profession of medicine, how you will keep sacred the bond between patient, and doctor and patient and dentist.

In that extraordinary oath you've written I think that there is a pathway to the future, a pathway that is not only one for you to follow, but for all of us physicians and dentists and lay people as well. When you pledge today to promote health and prevent disease, you do so at a time when there are extraordinary breakthroughs. You know all about them. Treatments for strokes and AIDS, the potential to slow diseases like Alzheimer, computer technology allowing you to share lifesaving information in real time, the mapping of the human genome that is revealing evolutionary secrets as we discover genes that are linked to breast cancer, colon cancer, and Parkinson's Disease.

And yet, with all of these breakthroughs come some questions that each of us, and particularly each of you, will have to address. For example, these kinds of advances don't just happen by accident or overnight. They are the result of sustained investments in research, especially in basic science. That is why we all have a stake in supporting the President's proposal for a 21st century research fund to increase our federal research budget to NIH to historic levels. We should be increasing our budget at NIH as much as we can, at least by 50 percent over the next five years. That would give us the kind of investment that would enable you and your colleagues in the sciences to make these breakthroughs real in the lives of your patients. I hope that all of us (applause) will make clear that the United States must continue to be a leader in basic research and bio medical research, and that the United States government must, at this point in our history, make the kind of significant commitment that will enable us to move forward on the fronts that many of you will work on either in the research labs or apply in your practices.

Now, these continuing advancements in research and treatment also challenge us to ensure that our ethics keep pace with our science. We've all heard stories about people who are avoiding critical tests that their doctors recommend, or refusing to use their insurance out of fear that they will be discriminated against or have their privacy violated. It will do us little good if we discover genes that cause breast cancer or colon cancer, but people are afraid to be tested to find out if they have it because they worry that the information will cause them to lose their job or lose their insurance. You should be able to look your patients in the eye and say 'information about your genes will be used to heal you, not deny you a job or affordable health insurance'. The President has asked Congress to pass legislation prohibiting the use of genetic screening information to discriminate in health insurance and employment. The Congress should act to end genetic discrimination now. (applause) And you should be able to guarantee your patients the privacy of their medical records.

At a time when personal health information is electronically criss-crossing the country, moving among health plans, insurance companies, and employers with fewer federal safeguards than the records of your video rentals, it is time to pass a law safeguarding the medical records and information of every American. (applause) When you take your oath and you pledge to respect the dignity and autonomy of your patients in living and in dying, you make that promise in a world of rapidly changing demographics. The baby boomers like me are graying. Americans are living longer with less disability. Now that is good news. It is what my husband likes to call a high-class problem.

But, as with any nation whose population is aging, we face tough questions about how we will provide and finance healthcare for this expanding group of older citizens. Think back. Before Medicare was enacted, almost fifty percent of older Americans went without health insurance. They found themselves often mired in poverty and chronic illness. Peopleused to work their entire lives only to enter their later years facing unthinkable choices between paying their heating bills and their medical bills. We hear a lot of talk about what's wrong with government, but we shouldn't forget about what we have done right. Medicare forever changed what it means to grow old in this country and we have to make sure that it is there for generations to come. But Medicare, like any program in the public or the private sector, must adapt to a new world. The President worked in a bi-partisan fashion to extend the life of the trust fund as part of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. And the changes in Medicare included not only an extension of its life, but more health plan choices and treatment options, and new prevention benefits like yearly mammogram, and colo-rectal screening, and diabetes self-management.

There is now a consensus between Republicans and Democrats that we have to address the long-term future of Medicare together. This should not be a partisan issue. Therefore, the President and Congress have appointed a National Bi-partisan Commission on the Future of Medicare that is scheduled to report in 1999. And I hope that during the process of its deliberations and certainly in reaction to its report that all of you and all of your colleagues will make sure your voices are heard, because we have to ensure that whatever changes are made are made in the best interest of patients.

You will dedicate yourself to the profession of medicine and dentistry at a time when revolutions in our own healthcare delivery system are blurring the lines between payers, and providers, and ensurers. There are more than 160 million people enrolled in managed care plans, an increase of 75 percent just since 1990. More physicians are forming their own health plans and working to find new ways to share risks and control costs. There is, however, and another responsibility. And that is that these new forms of care do not mean sub-standard care, that the bottom line of profits never eclipses the bottom line of good medicine. And you have to be on the front lines of ensuring that that occurs. Think about a recent statistic that came from a survey I read: 'Sixty percent of Americans say they are worried, that if they were sick their health plans would be more concerned about saving money than giving them the best treatment'. Physicians have been on the front lines arguing against these changes in the delivery of health care. Physicians have been standing up for patients who have been denied treatments that were recommended by their doctors. Physicians have spent countless hours on telephones arguing with insurers to try to make sure that a patient got the care that the physician thought necessary. We have to work to make it absolutely clear that it should be the medical professional who determines treatment options, not a checklist administered from some office thousands of miles away. (applause)

Whatever kind of insurance plan any American has, that American should feel they will get quality care. What better place to make that pledge than here at this graduation. Dr. Mitchell Rabkin introduced the first Patients Bill of Rights here at a Harvard hospital. Patients should never have to beg and plead to see a specialist they need. When an emergency arises they should get the care whenever and wherever they need it. They should have a right to a fast and fair appeal when they or their physician disagree with decisions about their care. Congress should pass a Patients Bill of Rights to protect every American and pass it this year. (applause)

One of the most serious and unintended consequences of the changes in the financing and delivery of healthcare in America is the effect that is being had on academic health centers like this one. You have seen first-hand in your training what happens when new market forces squeeze academic health centers. Now you have also been part of setting some good models into place here in Boston when managedcare plans have joined forces with teaching hospitals. But the problem is one that is not just the concern of Harvard or Harvard's graduates, but should be the concern of every American. Because just stop and think for a minute what our academic health centers have meant to each and every one of us.

Academic health centers have many missions. But three of them, in particular, have helped to make American healthcare the best in the world. The research mission of the academic health center has not been replicated anywhere else and could not be. We are all grateful for the extraordinary breakthroughs in research that have happened in the labs and clinics of academic health centers. The mission of training young doctors, and dentists, and nurses, and other healthcare professionals is also the province of the academic health center. And thirdly, the care for the most vulnerable, whether they are vulnerable because they are so poor and disadvantaged, or they are vulnerable because they are so sick and hopeless, the academic health center has been there as a place of last refuge.

Now those three missions: research, education and training, and uncompensated care for the vulnerable, are not profitable missions. You rarely can make any money at all in the short-run and even the medium-run in research. And you certainly can not make money off of training young physicians or dentists. And you lose money when you open your doors to the most vulnerable. And yet, in this brave new world of HMOs and healthcare agencies that look to the bottom line, many academic health centers are being told I'm sorry, we're not reimbursing you for these functions which are not directly related to the patient care activities that we have listed in our brochure. So you will not receive compensation for research, education, training. And you're just going to have to send those poor patients somewhere else.

What that attitude fails to recognize is that the reason American healthcare is so good is because we've had the best research, education and training opportunities available of any country in the world. If we squeeze out those functions, if we force places like Harvard to have to cut back on what they do best, than it is not only Harvard that will suffer. It is hospitals and patients throughout the world. It is time for us to recognize that paying for those academic health centers and their vital missions is in the best interest of us all. Historically, Medicare has borne a great deal of the cost, paying directly and indirectly for graduate medical education. We should do everything possible to continue Medicare and the federal government's commitment to academic health centers. But, I believe it is also fair and appropriate for every health plan and every insurance policy to pay something toward the maintenance of our academic health centers since we all benefit from the work which they do on our behalf. (applause) This is not one of those abstract debates that should only take place in Washington behind closed doors. It should be brought out into the light of day. And those of you on the front lines of delivering high quality medicine, doing cutting-edge research, and caring for the poorest and the sickest among us should make sure your voices are heard.

Now, all of these issues I've just mentioned were part of the overall plan that was presented a few years ago to reform our nation's healthcare system. Now clearly, that particular proposal was not successful, but it is critical that we do not give up on what must still be done. Many people ask me, 'Well, were you discouraged after the defeat of healthcare reform?' Well yes, I was discouraged we didn't have the kind of debate that we should have had in Congress so that people in the country could have seen clearly what our true choices were. But, I also believe that the debate and the effort was very important for America. We did educate ourselves about many of the issues that you here at Harvard know so well. And we also learned that when the political environment makes it impossible to take large steps in a direction you believe you must go, then you have either the choice of taking smaller steps or sitting on the sidelines and doing nothing. I come from the school of smaller steps. It is far better to try to make changes that will help at least some people than to do nothing and help no one.

So, we've seen some progress since 1994. Thanks, for example, to the leadership of Senator Kennedy here in Massachusetts, the Congress passed a Bill prohibiting the loss of health insurance just because of the loss of a job or a pre-existing condition. Now there are problems with the implementation of that provision, but it is still an important step, and it is a value that makes clear that we are moving toward ensuring that people are not wrongfully deprived of their access to health insurance. We've also seen major legislation, the most significant since 1965, in making it possible for uninsured children to have access to health insurance.

But, our job is far from done. We have 41 million people living without health insurance. You've treated many of them in the hospitals where you've done your rotation and waited to be on call. Who will take care of these people in the future? Who will ensure that they will be taken care of? How will we pay for their care? And how will we pay for the extra costs that come when someone is not treated for a chronic disease or turned away from the emergency room? The job of healthcare reform in America cannot be done when any of our citizens' access to care depends on the color of their skin, or the neighborhood they live in, or the amount of money in their wallet.

Let's be clear. As a nation, we have to continue to work toward universal, affordable, quality healthcare for every single American. (applause) While all of us must continue to work toward that day and we will do our part, it is going to be up to each of you who graduates today to assume your place as one of the architects of this changing healthcare world. I'm afraid you can't just be bystanders or kibitzers because you have the information and the experience that all of us need. About 100 years ago, one of your predecessors said, 'We are very glad to be in the class of 1900 and not 1800, because we confidently believe we shall all witness greater triumphs in the century now dawning'. I hope each of you feels the same. And I trust that in 100 years when your successors look back at the class of 1998, they will say that given the opportunity you went far beyond the instructions to do no harm at the patients' bedside. Instead, you worked in the service of your patients and humanity. And you worked to improve the system in which you care for your patients.

I hope also that we'll be able to look back and see that just as medicine conquered bacteria in the 20th century that the 21st will see the defeat of viruses, that chronic illness will be cured or tamed, that so many of the problems we have seen in disease around the world will finally be put at bay, that our grandchildren will have to look in history books to learn about the devastation of cancer or AIDS. During a time of great change there is always uncertainty about which direction each of us individually will go and which direction collectively we will choose. We are at such a point in our healthcare system. We are at such a point in your lives as you enter this system.

I am extraordinarily hopeful as I look out at these graduates, that the decisions that have to be made will be made with their guidance and expertise, and that the oath that they take today will be fulfilled in full measure. Because after all, it is they who must ensure that above all the health of my patients will be my first concern. We need your competence and your confidence that, as we've already heard, even more we may need your compassion harnessed to that competence and confidence. And we will need your voices to ensure that what you know, what you see, what you experience cannot be ignored as our nation debates what direction we take. And I'm confident that if we follow your oath we will make the right decisions. Congratulations, good luck, and God speed.

Graduation 1998 Education & Admissions | Research | Administration & Faculty Harvard Medical Web

Oliver Stone's Famous Graduation Speech

Searching for the Spiritual I had the fortunate privilege recently to be able to shoot one of my movies in Thailand. It was called Heaven and Earth, and it's coming out this year. I spent several months over there preparing the movie, and I was struck, as was my crew, by the spirituality of Thailand. By the concept of Buddhism immanent in every walk of life. Of course Thailand has a very corrupt part of society, much like our own land. The politicians for years have been known to be on the take; there's a large amount of deforestation going on; bribes get you everything you need in that society. And the military pretty much dominates it. It's a military-dominated society. When we were there a military coup d'�tat occurred and democracy was shuttled to the side. It was an interesting time, because the people are very quiet, and in a sense, very passive by our standards. Until they killed some young people, some protesters, there wasn't the outbreak of sensational newspaper reaction that you get in our country; but something deeper was going on.

Thailand, as I said, is a Buddhist society; at 6:00 in the mornings everywhere you go you see monks walking on the sides of the roads with their beggar baskets. People give them food. It's very beautiful, the sharing and the trust given the monks. At one point in my stay there, approximately 100,000 monks got together -- in a country that's about as big as Texas -- to chant and sing and pray in protest against the military regime. It was something that was not reported in the newspaper; you didn't hear about it probably because our secular press doesn't pick up

on things like that, but it had a tremendous, tremendous impact in that country. It wasn't too much longer after that day when the force of their prayers worked and the military government collapsed. They gave up, and they returned to a form of democratic government. It was a very noble example of bringing change through prayer.

When I got back to America, I was wondering where that element exists in our society. We are a very secular, information- and result-oriented society. There's very little faith in the right side of the brain type of thinking, or mysticism, or what we call spirituality. Buddhism in this country is not really understood; it's regarded as sort of quaint, it seems to be an old-fashioned religion. But it isn't, really. It's a very active one and has a place in the modern world.

I couldn't find that kind of spirituality in this country, except, oddly enough, in the American Indian cultures where I've been able to travel with some friends over the last few years. With the Sioux up north in South Dakota, and the Navajo and Hopi tribes down in the Southwest. It's been a very eye-opening experience for me to attend a sun dance, for example. A sun dance, some of you may know, is a coming together of the tribes in a vast gathering in the summertime to pray, to exorcise the demons, to bring the tribe together, to make speeches. Certainly the physical highlight of the event is the piercing of flesh, where the males of the tribe walk around a tree in circles and dance around the tree for days on end. When I was there, there were 300 sun-dancers. There were old people, young people; they beat the drums through the day. There must have been a hundred with pierced flesh on the front, here on the breast, and on the back. They were crying as they went through a wall of pain, young boys up to age ll. I saw men lifted into the trees by their chests. Horses were pulling the ropes, they were dragging buffalo skulls in the dust like Christ figures. There was a man walking backward the whole time, for three or four days, until he was totally dizzy, I'm sure. But he was looking for the vision.

Visions -- often of ancestors. Without food and water in a hot summer, you start to see a lot of ancestors. And I felt that I was witnessing a combination of fear and an act of faith at the same time, which is rare.

The sun dance was their opera and their theater event of the year. In our culture, you go to the theater, the curtain comes down, you applaud, you pay fifty bucks and that's it. But there is faith in fear. And I think the whole event, the four days, the building of that fear was intended to induce a sacred state of belief in what St. Paul called "the evidence of things unseen." To the Indians, the thing unseen is the Great Creator of Being, Tonkasha or Tongashira. He's sacred in all things of the earth. The rocks that are our ancestors, Mother Earth, the sky, the sacred pipe that they smoke, the Indians view all things as spiritual. All our winters, the 70 or 80 winters that we pass here on earth, are as a speck in time compared to the eternity spent in the spirit world. We here in this room really are ghosts, secondary to that spark.

For them, the Holy Spirit very much exists, but it exists in ritual. A byproduct is art, and art exists for them only if it is holy, blessed with the spirit. Because art, cultural or whatever, is meant to heal, to bind the tribe together on an annual basis to revive mourning and tears and pity and horror and joy. Those things the Greeks called catharsis, the sharing of pity and terror and joy with all. A bond exists between the onlookers and the pierced ones. They give their flesh as offerings as Jesus did. We watch and we are moved by the sun dance's sacrifice, and after four days, we once again commit ourselves to things of the spirit.

I sometimes think that the media have dreamed our history up. They dreamed Watergate, the revelations of Watergate, of which we saw the surface. There so much missing tape, there's 400 hours of tape, that we, the naive ones, saw just a few hours of -- the surface events. There may have been a reason for Watergate, which I'm not going to discuss here, but I urge you to read a book such as Silent Coup. I urge you as students to look through Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States. It goes through American history upside down. It reexamines Columbus, the genocide against the Indians. It reexamines all the stories I grew up with; the Indian wars, the origins of the American Revolution, what George Washington was really doing. The origins of the Civil War. Was slavery really the issue it was supposed to be? Was it really such a noble conflict? How did World War I get started?

There are some fascinating economic reasons behind World War I. What about that most sacred cow of all, the origins of World War II? I'm not saying that Hitler was a nice guy by any means, but I am saying that the origins of that war were thicker and more dense than is the simplistic version of the "good war" against Germany. The Korean War is a puzzle to most of us. Vietnam eludes many people. I honestly have reached a point, cynical as it may sound, where I do believe that history is written by those who win. They won. They killed Kennedy, they rewrote it to match what they wanted you to believe, and if Hitler had won World War II, believe me, today we'd be reading a different history about the United States to justify Hitler. Winner takes all. Never underestimate the power of corruption to change history.

I guess I sound pessimistic, but in my heart, being a filmmaker and taking dramatic license, I am most optimistic. I do feel the media can be used for good purpose in the 21st century. I do feel that a golden age could be upon us. A higher consciousness, so to speak, through computers and communication. In a sort of Buckminster Fuller paradigm, people would be smarter because they have to be, in order to make the earth system work. Fuller would say no matter how greedy and selfish people could get, politicians, businessmen, lawyers, leaders, at some point it becomes naturally unproductive to be so selfish. They've got to start to clean up the atmosphere because it becomes economically profitable to do so. Profit motivates. Survival is profitable. Technology and soul. We must, in our daily lives, struggle to keep our consciousness growing. I sometimes feel like my children, young people, are only getting film sequels, robots, sound-bites, created by cynical people. I feel that the minds of my children will perish in a sleepwalk through their adult years from the suburbs to the car to the golf course to the office. Devoid of a sensibility to look beyond their own lives to reach out to others. To trip over a homeless person in the street without noticing because they will be unable to deal with the reality of suffering. Nothing wrong with suffering, suffering is good. The Indians say "walk with the pain of the world." It is good to be exposed to suffering, not to run from it, not to keep it at arm's length through some expensive government program that we can ignore. It is good to make it part of your everyday life, like the Indians do in Calcutta.

I think with movies we can begin to strengthen people's immune systems, because people go into the movies with their defenses down. It's not real, therefore not threatening. When they least expect it, that might be the best time for the guerrillas of art to get in there and move the head and the heart. One hopes that people will leave the theater renewed, sacred. In a system that has rendered man more and more insignificant, where artists and all people are packaged and trivialized by the media, where their dreams are categorized and destroyed, I really want to believe in the greatness of the spirit of man. And I think so do our movies, that's why we all like happy endings. I think it's something fundamental to all people.

I choose to believe, in the back-burner of my mind, in some old movie hero besieged on all sides by enemy swordsmen, who by some inner force and greater love conquers his adversaries against all odds. What is a movie but this parade of faces across the screen? Greta Garbo to Julia Roberts, they're faces that, for the most part, you love. Most of the power of movies is the close-up of the face. People, I think, want to see faces because that face of sorrow, suffering, pain, resurrection makes the audience, once again, believe in being human. In traversing the odds, in getting up in the morning and making it through the day.

I think man wants to believe in man, woman wants to believe in women, people in people. And in a world where the systems are crushing us, where many of our leaders are shadow-puppets, mouthing hypocrisies on the media stage, where centralization, big business, big government, is constantly, fascistically, gaining each day on the individual and has wiped out so much of the human spirit in this century, I think that people are the one recurrent hope we have. Day by day in the Calcuttas and Manhattans of the world, you get up and you get through the day, inch by inch, and by making it, you win. If adversity is big, and it is, then I choose to believe that man is bigger than his adversity. In the words of Andre Malraux, "The 21st century will either be spiritual or it will not be." Thank you. � Copyright 1997, Regents of the University of California

Alan Alda's Famous Graduation Speech

Finding Feynman Twenty-five or thirty years ago, on my days off from the Korean War, which was at that time being waged at Twentieth Century Fox in Beverly Hills, I would often come to Pasadena to visit the Rembrandts at the Norton Simon Gallery, or take a walk in the Huntington Gardens. And sometimes I would drive by Caltech and give it a glance and wonder what interesting stuff was going on in there. I had been reading about science avidly for years and I was immensely curious about how scientists went about what they did. It didn�t occur to me each time I passed by that there was one particular man in one of these buildings who at that moment might have been drawing gluon tubes on a blackboard, or playing the bongos, or just standing looking out the window as a young woman passed by�a man in whom, in a few years, I would become intensely interested.

One day, exactly 28 years ago, he was standing right here, giving the commencement address. This is the way the universe operates. First Richard Feynman gives the talk; then, 28 years later, an actor who played him on the stage gives it. This is what�s called entropy. This is what happens just before the cosmos reaches a temperature of absolute zero.

Let me tell you a little about the path that led me here. After I had read several books about Richard Feynman, I brought one of them, a charming, touching book by Ralph Leighton, called Tuva or Bust, to Gordon Davidson at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. I wondered if he thought we might be able to make a play about Feynman. He suggested Peter Parnell to write the play, and the three of us started off on a journey to find out who Richard Feynman was. We thought we�d open the play a year or so later. Instead, it took us over six years.

We had no idea how hard it would be. For one thing, he was an extremely unusual person. Toward the end of his life, he knew he was dying and he knew exactly what the most important questions were, and he knew he had a shot at answering them . . . and yet he kept to his habit of doing only what interested him.

He spent a good part of his time trying to get to this little place in the middle of Asia called Tuva, mainly because its capital was spelled with no vowels, which, for some reason, he found extremely interesting.

But, just as getting to Tuva was tantalizingly difficult for Feynman, getting to Feynman became maddeningly hard for us.

What part of him do you focus on? He helped create the atomic bomb, he helped figure out why the Challenger blew up, he understood the most puzzling questions in physics so deeply they gave him the Nobel Prize. Which facet of him do you let catch the most light? The one who was a revered teacher, a bongo player, an artist, a hilarious raconteur or a safecracker?

A mathematician friend of mine suggested that a central image for a play about him could be Feynman�s own idea of a sum over histories. Just as Feynman saw a photon taking every possible path on its way to your eye, Feynman himself took every possible path on his way through life. He was the sum of all his histories.

Well, nature may be smart enough to know how to average all the paths of a photon. But, we three theater people couldn�t figure out how to add up all the histories that made up Feynman. At one point, I said, "You know what we ought to do? We ought to write a play about three guys sitting around in a hotel room, trying to figure out a play about Feynman. They never figure it out. They just drive themselves crazy."

We researched him like mad, of course. The people who knew him and worked with him and loved him here at Caltech opened their doors and their hearts to us. They were extremely generous and helpful, as we struggled to reduce this irreducible person to an evening in the theater.

I think one of the things I most hoped would come through was his honesty. He never wanted to deceive anyone, especially himself. He questioned his every assumption. And when he was talking to ordinary people with no training in physics, he never fell back on his authority as a great thinker. He felt that if he couldn�t say it in everyday words, he probably didn�t understand it himself.

I was fascinated by this in him. He knew more than most of us will ever know, and yet he insisted on speaking our language.

Like Dante in his time, he could say the most exquisitely subtle things in the language of the common people. He was an American genius, and like many American artists, he was direct and colloquial� not afraid to take a look at the ordinary, and not afraid to go deeply into it to reveal the extraordinary roots of ordinary things.

And yet, he recoiled from oversimplification. He wasn�t interested in dumbing down science� he was looking for clarity.

If he left something out, he always told you what he was leaving out, so you didn�t get a false picture of a simplicity that wasn�t there. And, later when things got more complex, you were prepared for it. He treated you, in other words, with respect.

I was reading a book by Freeman Dyson the other day and a paragraph about Feynman jumped off the page at me.

"Dick was� a profoundly original scientist [Dyson says]. He refused to take anybody's word for anything. This meant that he was forced to rediscover or reinvent for himself almost the whole of physics . . .

He said that he couldn't understand the official version of quantum mechanics that was taught in textbooks, and so he had to begin afresh from the beginning . . .

I think I saw something in this paragraph for the first time; something suddenly clicked into place. The fact that he wouldn't take anybody's word for anything wasn't new to me, or that he needed to go through every step himself in order to understand it. A phrase of his has been on the blackboard behind me every night as I�ve played Feynman: "What I cannot create, I do not understand."

(People have asked us why that phrase is given so much prominence in the play. It's because the blackboard on our set contains pretty much everything that was on the final blackboard left by Feynman in his office when he died. And "What I cannot create, I do not understand" was right up there at the top.)

But what did jump out at me the other day was the phrase "he couldn't understand the official version of quantum mechanics that was taught in textbooks." Now, this is Feynman we�re talking about. I suddenly had this picture in my head of Feynman going through the same experience the rest of us do . . . meeting that same blank wall half way up the mountain. I wondered. Did that give him the ability to remember what it was like to start that climb?

So, maybe it wasn't just that he could visualize these little particles and their interactions that made him able to communicate it to the rest of us, maybe it was also that he could remember what it was like to feel dumb.

Now, here's why I'm going on about this. It may not seem important how Feynman did it. Maybe we should just be glad he could do it and let it go at that. But I think it is important. Because, I think we have to figure out how we can do it, too.

For one thing, we live in a time when massive means of destruction are right here in our hands. We�re probably the first species capable of doing this much damage to our planet. We can make the birds stop singing; we can still the fish and make the insects fall from the trees like black rain. And ironically we�ve been brought here by reason, by rationality. We cannot afford to live in a culture that doesn�t use the power in its hands with the kind of rationality that produced it in the first place.

But right now, instead of reason, a lot of people are making use of wishes, dreams, mantras, and incantations. They�re trying to heal themselves using crystals, magnets, and herbs with unknown properties. People will offer you a pill made from the leaf of an obscure plant and say, �Take it, it can�t hurt you, it�s natural.� But so is deadly nightshade.

Interestingly, they expect the plant to have active properties to cure them, but they�re certain it has no active properties that can harm them. How do they know that?

I mention this, not to denigrate anyone�s beliefs (I feel strongly that we�re all entitled to our beliefs, just as we�re entitled to our feelings) but I bring it up to point out that we�re in a culture that increasingly holds that science is just another belief.

And I guess it's easier to believe something . . . anything . . . than not to know.

We don't like uncertainty�so we gravitate back to the last comfortable solution we had�no matter how cockeyed it is.

But Feynman was comfortable with not knowing. He enjoyed it. He would proceed for a while with an idea as if he believed it was the answer. But that was only a temporary belief in order to allow himself to follow it wherever it led. Then, a little while later, he would vigorously attack the idea to see if it could stand up to every test he could think of. If it couldn't stand up, then he simply decided he just didn�t know. �Not knowing,� he said, �is much more interesting than believing an answer which might be wrong.�

You're graduating today partly as Feynman's heirs in this gloriously courageous willingness to be unsure. And just as he was heir to Newton, who was in turn heir to Galileo . . . I hope you'll think about devoting some time to helping the rest of us become your heirs.

I�m assuming you�re here at Caltech because you love science, and I�m assuming you�ve learned a great deal here about how to do science. I�m asking you today to devote some significant part of your life to figuring out how to share your love of science with the rest of us.

But not just because explaining to us what you do will get you more funding for what you do . . . although it surely will . . . but just because you love what you do.

And while you're explaining it, remember that dazzling us with jargon might make us sit in awe of your work, but it won't make us love it.

Tell us frankly how you got there. If you got there by many twists and turns and blind alleys, don't leave that out. We love a detective story. If you enjoyed the adventure of getting there, so will we.

Most scientists do leave that out. By the time we hear about their great discoveries, a lot of the doubt is gone. The mistakes and wrong turns are left out . . . and it doesn�t sound like a human thing they�ve done. It separates us from the process.

Like the young man so head over heels about his sweetheart he can�t stop talking about her, like the young woman so in love with her young man she wants everyone to know how wonderful he is . . . show us pictures, tell us stories, make us crave to meet your beloved.

Don�t just tell us science is good for us and, therefore, we ought to fund you for it; don't tell us to trust you that your fancy words actually mean something; don't keep the tricks of your trade up an elite sleeve. Don�t be merchants, or mandarins, or magicians . . . be lovers!

Look, we�re accustomed in our culture to know when a commercial is coming. We know how to turn it off. But love we can't resist.

You may be swayed by people who insist they're only interested in hearing about the practical applications of science. You may be tempted to bend over backwards, telling them what they want to hear.

When Feynman stood here and spoke 28 years ago, he cautioned scientists against going too far in telling laypeople about the wonderful everyday applications of their work, especially if there weren�t any. He felt it wasn�t honest to pretend there was such a benefit just to get funding for your work.

Robert R. Wilson resisted it beautifully. Bob Wilson was a physicist who Feynman had known well. He had helped recruit Feynman for the Los Alamos project. Wilson was also an accomplished sculptor. He had a foot in each of C. P. Snow's Two Cultures.

Wilson built Fermilab, the giant atom smasher in Illinois. But at a congressional hearing in 1969, he was grilled by Senator John Pastore, who wanted to know what an atom smasher was good for. Does it in any way contribute to the security of the country?

Wilson looked at him and said, "It only has to do with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of people, our love of culture . . . In that sense, this new knowledge has all to do with honor and country. But it has nothing to do directly with defending our country�except to help make it worth defending."

Like Wilson, I don't think Feynman needed to justify his curiosity about nature. Pure science was pure pleasure. It was fun.

The one thing I was certain of from the beginning was that we had to have the story of the plate in the play. It was central. The author, Peter Parnell, would do draft after draft. And I would look at it and say, "Where�s the plate?" I drove him crazy.

The plate story is this: After the war, Feynman became depressed. His first wife had just died of tuberculosis and the realization of the awful destructive power of the bomb he had helped make had finally sunk in. He was teaching at Cornell, but he had no taste for it. He couldn't concentrate. Then, one day, he's in the school cafeteria and some guy starts fooling around, tossing a plate in the air. Feynman watches the design on the rim of the plate as it spins and he sees that as it spins, the plate wobbles. He gets fascinated, and he tries to figure out the relationship between the spin and the wobble. He spends months on this. And finally comes up with this complicated equation, which he shows to Hans Bethe.

And Bethe says, "That's interesting, Feynman, but what's the importance of it?" And Feynman says, �It has no importance, it�s just fun!�

But, see, that's the thing�it not only brought him out of his slump, but that playful inquiry, according to Feynman, eventually led in a circuitous way to the work that won him the Nobel Prize.

But no matter where it might have led him, he made up his mind that day in the cafeteria never to work on anything that didn't interest him, that wasn't fun.

Of course, what Feynman was looking for was serious fun. It was the awe he felt when he looked at nature. And not just the official great wonders of nature, but any little part of nature, because any little part of it is as amazing and beautiful and complicated as the whole thing is.

So, this is interesting. I'm urging you to be like someone who I admit I've found to be pretty elusive.

Here I am, seven years later. And, just as Feynman never got to see Tuva, I never really found Feynman. Not really. I came close; but he was too many things. He had too many histories.

We came up with a play in QED that was immensely satisfying. It was beautifully written and beautifully directed and it gave the audience a Feynman that was as close an approximation as we could come up with. But part of me feels that a large chunk of the man is still beyond our reach�probably beyond the reach of anyone. He's just out of sight, smiling at us. Laughing at how he put one over on us, letting us think he was just an ordinary guy. A guy we could get.

It turns out, though, that the old thing about the destination not being as valuable as the journey really is true.

Because, when we began, finding Feynman seemed important, and I guess it was . . . but as it turned out, looking for Feynman has been the fun.

Every once in a while, though, I can feel Feynman looking over my shoulder, and he's not smiling. Like right now. I'm at the end of my talk and I feel the pressure of the words he closed his talk with 28 years ago. "One last piece of advice," he said; "never say you'll give a talk unless you know clearly what you're going to talk about and more or less what you're going to say."

Okay, let me be more or less practical. I'm going to propose something to you today. I realize it's a childish idea, something only an unschooled layperson would come up with, but it's specific enough that it might get you thinking.

What if each of you decided to take just one thing you love about science and, no matter how complicated it is, figure out a how to make it understood by a million people? There are about 500 of you taking part in this ceremony today. If just a few of you were successful, that would make several million people a lot smarter.

How you do it is up to you. You're clever people, and I bet you come up with some ingenious solutions. On the other hand, you may be thinking, "WHY? Why should I do this impossible thing?"

1) It's a good way to improve your chances of having sex. 2) It feels good to sing. 3) Singing is the music nature makes when it dances the dance of life.

You are the universe announcing itself to itself. You open your mouth and a little muscle in your throat makes a corner of nature vibrate. You're one part of the forest saying, "This is what I think I know," while another part of the forest is saying, "Yeah? Well this is what I think I know!" Your chirpings are the harmony of all knowledge.

You've learned so much in this place about how nature works. Is there anything more beautiful than that? Is there anything greater to sing about?

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