"Be worthy of your advantages ... Dream big. Work hard. Love everything you love, everyone you love, with all your might. And do so, please, with a sense of urgency ...” -David Mccullough Jr

 Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal are two of my favorite movies of all time. Both are definitely in the top 20 list. I vaguely remember reading the book Hannibal, written by Thomas Harris, when I was younger, but I think because I loved the movie so much, the book was a bit of a let-down. But there was one thing I remembered. Hannibal Lector had stashed large sums of money around the world knowing that if he ever had to go on the run (like what happened at the end of Silence of the Lambs), he’d just retrieve the money and be okay, wherever he was. I am OBVIOUSLY NOT ADVOCATING that anyone become a cannibal or commit crimes but the idea that even Hannibal Lector was aware of how financial independence can get you out of a sticky jam.

Lately, I’ve been listening to a lot of commencement speeches. I guess it’s that time of year again.  Everyone always talks about how you shouldn’t be afraid to fail but no one ever talks about the importance of saving and investing, about how that will help cushion the fall and help you get back up. 

If I were ever asked to give a commencement speech, I would spend the entire 20 minutes talking about saving and investing your money. But I’d make it really fun. I’d tell a lot of jokes, jump around the stage, wave my arms around, do a song and dance number directed by Baz Luhrmann himself, all the while wearing a tophat, a long silver cape, and ruby-encrusted disco shoes. I just really want students to know that they should start investing their money NOW,  that time is on their side. 

But these commencement speeches are still pretty good. Below are some of my favorites:

1) Conan O’Brien 2000 Harvard Class Day Speech

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cFY0-IFcwc

Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErZVczhKIss

Transcript: http://allowe.com/laughs/book/COBspeech2k.htm

Favorite quotes:

I left the cocoon of Harvard, I left the cocoon of Saturday Night Live, I left the cocoon of the Simpsons. And each time it was bruising and tumultuous. And yet every failure was freeing, and today I’m as nostalgic for the bad as I am for the good. So that’s what I wish for all of you—the bad as well as the good. Fall down. Make a mess. Break something occasionally. Know that your mistakes are your own unique way of getting to where you need to be. And remember that the story is never over.

If you’ll indulge me for just a second, I’d like to read a little something from just this year. “Somehow, Conan O’Brien has transformed himself into the brightest star in the late-night firmament. His comedy is the gold standard, and Conan himself is not only the quickest and most inventive wit of his generation, but quite possibly the greatest host ever.” Ladies and gentlemen, class of 2000, I wrote that this morning. As proof that when all else fails, you always have delusion.

2) Conan O’Brien 2011 Dartmouth Commencement Address

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELC_e2QBQMk

Transcript:
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~commence/news/speeches/2011/obrien-speech.html

Favorite quotes:

There are few things more liberating in this life than having your worst fear realized. I went to college with many people who prided themselves on knowing exactly who they were and exactly where they were going. At Harvard, five different guys in my class told me that they would one day be President of the United States. Four of them were later killed in motel shoot-outs. The other one briefly hosted Blues Clues, before dying senselessly in yet another motel shoot-out. Your path at 22 will not necessarily be your path at 32 or 42. One's dream is constantly evolving, rising and falling, changing course.

3) Conan O'Brien's Speech 2006 Stuyvesant High School Graduation Speech

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAMkUE9Oxnc

Transcript: http://travelgeekonline.blogspot.com/2010/02/conan-obriens-speech-to-stuyvesant-high.html

​Favorite quotes:

I don’t want to freak you guys out, but twenty five years ago, I could have been any one of you. I went to a public high school, and I was a bright, ambitious, hard working kid who wanted more than anything to go to a good college. The only problem is, I was much more interested in succeeding than in really learning. When you’re a smart kid in a competitive school, it’s an easy trap to fall into. So I did a lot of things in high school not because I enjoyed them but because I thought they look good on an application. I think you know what I’m talking about. I was on a debate team — hated it. I ran track — I was terrible, I got so bored running the two mile that I tried to talk with my opponents during the race. “what are you gonna do later, I mean you gonna be doing something later?” I joined school government — hated it. Of course, like many of you I worried obsessively about my GPA and my SAT scores. And of course, it worked. I got into the college of my choice and to this day I’m proud of the work I did in high school.

But old habits die hard. Once I got into college, I had every intention of joylessly grinding away again. I was gonna turn college into just another step on the road to being successful, whatever that meant. I told people my plan was to go to graduate school in law or government, just because I thought that’s what smart people were supposed to do. And then something really weird happened. My roommate — by the way, he was the weird roommate — my roommate was going to an orientation meeting at the Harvard Lampoon, the school humor magazine, and I decided for some reason to tag along. I wrote one piece, then I wrote another piece, then another. Before long, I was running the place. The only difference was, I was joyously happy. I was succeeding at something because I loved the process, not because I was trying to get anywhere. I had found the thing I wanted to do for the rest of my life, and I honestly didn’t care where it took me or what it paid.

So when I graduated form college in 1985 I told my parents “thanks for the amazing Ivy League education, now I want to be a comedian.” Later, in the emergency room after they woke up, they said they were fine with my decision, and I was on my way. I’ve had a lot of highs, I’ve had my share of lows, but if I hadn’t allowed myself to experiment and risk doing something without a clear career payoff, I might have missed out on so much. 

4) David Mccullough Jr 2012 Wellesley High School Graduation Speech

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lfxYhtf8o4

​Transcript: 
http://time.com/4116019/david-mccullough-jr-graduation-speech-wellesley-high/

Favorite quotes:

​Resist the easy comforts of complacency, the specious glitter of materialism, the narcotic paralysis of self-satisfaction. Be worthy of your advantages. And read… read all the time… read as a matter of principal, as a matter of self-respect. Read as a nourishing staple of life. Develop and protect a moral sensibility and demonstrate the character to apply it. Dream big. Work hard. Think for yourself. Love everything you love, everyone you love, with all your might. And do so, please, with a sense of urgency, for every tick of the clock subtracts from fewer and fewer...

The fulfilling life, the distinctive life, the relevant life, is an achievement, not something that fell into your lap because you’re a nice person or Mommy ordered it from the caterer.

5) Drew Houston MIT 2013 Commencement Speech

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6inri5ggyK4

Transcript: http://news.mit.edu/2013/commencement-address-houston-0607

Favorite quotes:

They say that you're the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. Think about that for a minute: who would be in your circle of 5? ...  One thing I've learned is surrounding yourself with inspiring people is now just as important as being talented or working hard. Can you imagine if Michael Jordan hadn’t been in the NBA, if his circle of 5 had been a bunch of guys in Italy? Your circle pushes you to be better.

I used to worry about all kinds of things, but I can remember the moment when I calmed down. I had just moved to San Francisco, and one night I couldn't sleep so I was on my laptop. I read something online that said "There are 30,000 days in your life." At first I didn't think much of it, but on a whim I tabbed over to the calculator. I type in 24 times 365 and — oh my God, I'm almost 9,000 days down. What the hell have I been doing? … So that’s how 30,000 ended up on the cheat sheet. That night, I realized there are no warmups, no practice rounds, no reset buttons. Every day we're writing a few more words of a story. And when you die, it's not like "here lies Drew, he came in 174th place." So from then on, I stopped trying to make my life perfect, and instead tried to make it interesting. I wanted my story to be an adventure — and that's made all the difference.

6) JK Rowling Harvard 2008 Commencement Speech:

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHGqp8lz36c
​
Transcript: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/06/text-of-j-k-rowling-speech/

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

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

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

7) Phil Knight 2012 Stanford Business School Graduation Speech

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRN9FwWQY8w

Transcript: 
​https://www.oregonlive.com/playbooks-profits/index.ssf/2014/06/phil_knights_address_to_the_gr.html

Favorite quotes:
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​Two "nines" working together will beat two "tens" working for their own careers, every time. Ability and desire almost always trump money and power. If you can't get financing, don't be afraid to go 7,000 miles from home. Government is part of business, any business. There is such a thing as managing creativity. And dare to take chances, lest you leave your talent buried in the ground. And where there is no struggle, there can be no art.

And finally, there is this thought. Ten years from now, the first of you will be asked to give the commencement speech to what will then be the finest class in the school's history. You'll be a bit torn. You are multi-tasked to the max. Two kids. One has an ear infection and needs to get to the doctor right away. Your husband is more needy than usual. And he has a flight in the morning to Europe for 10 days. Your company is at a critical point in its strategic planning and everybody looks to you for what the answers will be. Plus, the company has a PR crisis. And you have TV appearances scheduled for five days straight. And that golden lab that you've had for all of two years has all of a sudden decided he's not housebroken.

There is no time. There is no time. And then you'll accept -- because of the honor, because it's a chance to have some influence on the most able, best-prepared young people on the planet. And you'll accept, though it's hard to see now, because there is a part of you that longs to go back to a place and a time and a self, forever gone. And in looking for things to say, include in your consideration moments from the school's history. You might even look back to that time in the deep past, that moment over six decades before, when Frank Shallenberger, the professor of entrepreneurship, said the words that meant so much to me, the words that became the mantra for his class, the words that said, "The only time you must not fail, is the last time you try."

8) Sherry Lansing 2008 Penn State Graduation Speech

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNo-9rLXclY

Favorite quotes: 

Please don’t be afraid to fail. Fear of failure leads to mediocrity. I’ve often thought that people who have the greatest success can also tell you a story about their great failures, but instead of being defeated by their failures, they learned from their mistakes. They paid attention to their mistakes. You know, they often say that good judgment comes from experience, and of course experience comes from bad judgment. Mistakes are going to happen. They have to. If they don’t, you’re not trying hard enough. You’re just playing it safe, you’re being complacent. But the important thing is a mistake should not be a permanent setback. Instead, you should use it, you should use it to learn from and to grow from. I failed as much as I succeeded.

9) Stephen Colbert 2011 Northwestern Commencement Speech

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6tiaooiIo0

Transcript: https://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2011/06/colbert-speech-text.html

​Favorite quotes: 

You have been told to follow your dreams but  .... what if it’s a stupid dream?

For instance Stephen Colbert of 25 years ago lived at 2015 North Ridge with two men and three women in what I now know was a brothel. He dreamed of living alone. Well, alone with his beard in a large barren loft apartment, with lots of blonde wood, wearing a kimono, with a futon on the floor and a Samovar of tea constantly bubbling in the background, doing Shakespeare in the street for homeless people. Today, I am a beardless suburban dad who lives in a house, wears no-iron khakis and makes Anthony Wiener jokes for a living and I love it! Because thankfully, dreams can change. If we’d all stuck with our first dream, the world would be overrun with cowboys and princesses. So whatever your dream is right now, if you don’t achieve it you haven’t failed and you’re not some loser. But just as importantly, and this is the part I may not get right and you may not listen to, if you do get your dream, you are not a winner.

10) Steve Jobs 2005 Stanford Commencement Speech

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc​

Transcript: https://news.stanford.edu/2005/06/14/jobs-061505/

Favorite quotes:
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​Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

11) Will Ferrell 2017 USC Commencement Speech

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfjGmBVAL-o

Transcript:
​http://time.com/4778112/will-ferrell-usc-university-of-southern-california-commencement-graduation-read-transcript/

Favorite quotes:
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​By the spring of 1995 producers from Saturday Night Live had come to see the current show at the Groundlings. After two harrowing auditions and two meetings with executive producer Lorne Michaels, which all took place over the course of six weeks, I got the word I was hired to the cast of Saturday Night Live for the ‘95-‘96 season.

I couldn’t believe it. And even though I went on to enjoy seven seasons on the show, it was rocky beginning for me. After my first show, one reviewer referred to me as ‘the most annoying newcomer of the new cast.’ Someone showed this to me and I promptly put it up on the wall in my office, reminding myself that to some people I will be annoying. Some people will not think I’m funny, and that that’s okay.

The venerable television critic for the Washington Post Tom Shales came up to me during my last season of the show. He told me congratulations on my time at the show and then he apologized for things he had written about me in some of his early reviews of my work. I paused for a second before I spoke, and then I said, ‘How dare you, you son of a bitch?’ I could tell this startled him, and then I told him I was kidding, and that I’d never read any of his reviews. It was true, I hadn’t read his reviews. In fact I didn’t read any reviews because once again, I was too busy throwing darts at the dartboard, all the while facing my fears.

10) And lastly, this following speech by Jodie Foster isn't a graduation one but it's still a very lovely speech she gave while accepting the Cecil B. DeMille award at the 2013 Golden Globes. 

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6plBl7wFHRk

Transcript: 
​https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/jan/14/jodie-foster-golden-globe-speech-transcript

Favorite Quote: Love people, and stay beside them.