2013 commencement speeches: The funniest and most inspiring moments

STEPHEN COLBERT
University of Virginia

So self obsessed — tweeting your Vines, hashtagging your Spotifys and Snapchatting your YOLOs — your generation needs everything to be about you. And that's very upsetting to us baby boomers because self-absorption is kind of our thing. We're the original "me" generation, we made the last 50 years all about us. We took all the money we soaked up all the government services and we've deep-fried nearly everything in the ocean. It may seem that all that's left for you is unpaid internships, Monday to Tuesday mail delivery, and, thanks to Global Warming, soon semester at sea will mean sailing the coast of Ohio…

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But while we may be leaving you with an economy with fewer job opportunities for the new graduate to slip into. While traditional paths may seem harder to find, that also means that you will learn sooner than most generations the hard lesson that you must always make the path for yourself. There is no secret society out there that will tap you on the shoulder one night and show you the way. Because the true secret is your life will not be defined by the society that we have left you. To paraphrase Robert Bolt, society has no more idea of what you are than you do because ultimately it has only your brains to think with. Every generation must define itself and so make a world that suits itself.



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PRESIDENT OBAMA
Morehouse College

Just as Morehouse has taught you to expect more of yourselves, inspire those who look up to you to expect more of themselves. We know that too many young men in our community continue to make bad choices. Growing up, I made quite a few myself. Sometimes I wrote off my own failings as just another example of the world trying to keep a black man down. I had a tendency sometimes to make excuses for me not doing the right thing. But one of the things that all of you have learned over the last four years is that there is no longer any room for excuses...

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Keep setting an example for what it means to be a man. Be the best husband to your wife, or your boyfriend, or your partner. Be the best father you can be to your children. Because nothing is more important...

My whole life, I've tried to be for Michelle and my girls what my father was not for my mother and me. I want to break that cycle where a father's not at home, where a father's not helping to raise that son or daughter. I've tried to be a better father, a better husband, a better man.

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Even now, I'm still practicing, I'm still learning, still getting corrected in terms of how to be a fine husband and a good father. But I will tell you this: Everything else is unfulfilled if we fail at family, if we fail at that responsibility.
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