25 Powerful Commencement Speeches by Famous Women

6/23/2020

25 Powerful Commencement Speeches by Famous Women

STYLE SELF CULTURE POWER

ADVICE WEEK JUNE 26, 2015

25 Powerful Commencement Speeches by Famous Women

By Julie Ma

"When times get tough and fear sets in, think of those people who paved the way for you and those who are counting on you to pave the way for them." --Michelle Obama Photo: Getty Images

This week, the Cut is talking advice -- the good, the bad, the weird, and the pieces of it you really wish you would have taken.

Commencement season is in full swing and a new batch of soon-to-be college grads is donning caps and gowns to listen to a handful of the world's-most-



1/11

6/23/2020

25 Powerful Commencement Speeches by Famous Women

famous tell them how to make it in the working world. While many speakers joke each year

that they can't even remember who spoke on the day of their own graduation (much less the

speech), in the spirit of Advice Week, we've culled together a list of striking quotes from

famous ladies who delivered real, empowering, and provocative messages that are just as

relevant today. Read on for truth bombs from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dr. Ruth

Westheimer, Amy Poehler, and more on everything from taking risks to rede ning success.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, Wellesley, "As women today, you face tough choices. You know the rules are basically as follows: ? If you don't get married, you're abnormal. ? If you get married but don't have children, you're a sel sh yuppie. If you get married and have children, but work outside the home, you're a bad mother. ? If you get married and have children, but stay home, you've wasted your education. ? And if you don't get married, but have children and work outside the home as a ctional newscaster, then you're in trouble with Dan Quayle.

"So you see, if you listen to all the people who make these rules, you might just conclude that the safest course of action is just to take your diploma and crawl under your bed. But let me propose an alternative. Hold on to your dreams. Take up the challenge of forging an identity that transcends yourself. Transcend yourself and you will nd yourself ... There is no dress rehearsal for life, and you will have to ad lib your way through each scene. The only way to prepare is to do what you have done: Get the best possible education; continue to learn from literature, scripture, and history, to understand the human experience as best you can so that you have guideposts charting the terrain toward whatever decisions are right for you."

Father's Day Sale Extended! Get

off unlimited access to The Cut and everything else New York

LEARN MORE ?

Zadie Smith, New School, "Walk down these crowded streets with a smile on your face. Be thankful you get to walk so close to other humans. It's a privilege. Don't let your fellow humans be alien to you, and as you get older and perhaps a little less open than you are now, don't assume that exclusive always and everywhere means better. It may only mean lonelier. There will always be folks hardselling you the life of the few: the private schools, private plans, private islands, private life. They are trying to convince you that hell is other people. Don't believe it. We are far more frequently each other's shelter and correction, the antidote to solipsism, and so many windows on this world."



2/11

6/23/2020

25 Powerful Commencement Speeches by Famous Women

Nora Ephron, Wellesley,

"You are graduating from Wellesley in the Year of the Wonderbra. The Wonderbra is not a step

forward for women. Nothing that hurts that much is a step forward for women. What I'm

saying is, don't delude yourself that the powerful cultural values that wrecked the lives of so

many of my classmates have vanished from the earth. Don't let the New York Times article

about the brilliant success of Wellesley graduates in the business world fool you -- there's still

a glass ceiling. Don't let the number of women in the work force trick you -- there are still lots

of magazines devoted almost exclusively to making perfect casseroles and turning various

things into tents. Don't underestimate how much antagonism there is toward women and how

many people wish we could turn the clock back. One of the things people always say to you if

you get upset is, don't take it personally, but listen hard to what's going on and, please, I beg

you, take it personally. Understand: Every attack on Hillary Clinton for not knowing her place

is an attack on you."

J.K. Rowling, Harvard, "The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden. If you choose to use your status and in uence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped change. 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."

Lisa Kudrow, Vassar, "You can't pursue something and be committed to it if you're apologizing for it at every party. Which I did for a while. I learned you have to surrender to the fact that you are one of too many in a highly competitive eld where it is di cult to stand out ... for now. Over time, through your work, you will demonstrate who you are and what you bring to the eld. Just stay with it and keep working. I was collecting tools to cope with this uncertain path in case it got rocky later on, just in case. For now, it's good, though."

Shonda Rhimes, Dartmouth,

"Ditch the dream and be a doer, not a dreamer. Maybe you know exactly what it is you dream

of being, or maybe you're paralyzed because you have no idea what your passion is. The truth

is, it doesn't matter. You don't have to know. You just have to keep moving forward. You just



3/11

6/23/2020

25 Powerful Commencement Speeches by Famous Women

have to keep doing something, seizing the next opportunity, staying open to trying something

new. It doesn't have to t your vision of the perfect job or the perfect life. Perfect is boring and

dreams are not real."

Ellen DeGeneres, Tulane, "As you grow, you'll realize the de nition of success changes. For many of you, today, success is being able to hold down shots of tequila. For me, the most important thing in your life is to live your life with integrity, and not to give into peer pressure; to try to be something that you're not. To live your life as an honest and compassionate person; to contribute in some way. So to conclude my conclusion: Follow your passion, stay true to yourself. Never follow anyone else's path, unless you're in the woods and you're lost and you see a path, and by all means you should follow that."

Naomi Wolf, Scripps College, "Become goddesses of disobedience ... We are told that the worst thing we can do is cause con ict, even in the service of doing right. Antigone is imprisoned. Joan of Arc burns at the stake. And someone might call us unfeminine! ... Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, `disappeared,' or run o the road at night. Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever. Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down, and suggest it's personal. And the world won't end ... And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking."

Amy Poehler, Harvard Class Day, "Take your risks now. As you grow older, you become more fearful and less exible. And I mean that literally. I hurt my knee on the treadmill this week and it wasn't even on. Try to keep your mind open to possibilities and your mouth closed on matters that you don't know about. Limit your `always' and your `nevers.' Continue to share your heart with people even if it's been broken. Don't treat your heart like an action gure wrapped in plastic and never used. And don't try to give me that nerd argument that your heart is a Batman with a limitededition silver battering and therefore if it stays in its original package it increases in value."

Anne Lamott, University of California, Berkeley, "I got a lot of things that society had promised would make me whole and ful lled -- all the



4/11

6/23/2020

25 Powerful Commencement Speeches by Famous Women

things that the culture tells you from preschool on will quiet the throbbing anxiety inside you

-- stature, the respect of colleagues, maybe even a kind of low-grade fame. The culture says

these things will save you, as long as you also manage to keep your weight down. But the

culture lies ... I'd been wanting to be a successful author my whole life. But when I nally did

it, I was like a greyhound catching the mechanical rabbit she'd been chasing all her life --

metal, wrapped up in cloth. It wasn't alive; it had no spirit. It was fake. Fake doesn't feed

anything. Only spirit feeds spirit, in the same way only your own blood type can sustain you ...

So from the wise old pinnacle of my years, I want to tell you that what you're looking for is

already inside you."

Joan Didion, University of California, Riverside, "I'm not telling you to make the world better, because I don't think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I'm just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to su er it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave's a ne and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that's what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it."

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Wellesley, "I urge you to try and create the world you want to live in. Minister to the world in a way that can change it. Minister radically in a real, active, practical, get-your-hands-dirty way ... Write television shows in which female strength is not depicted as remarkable but merely normal. Teach your students to see that vulnerability is a human rather than a female trait. Commission magazine articles that teach men how to keep a woman happy. Because there are already too many articles that tell women how to keep a man happy. And in media interviews make sure fathers are asked how they balance family and work. In this age of `parenting as guilt,' please spread the guilt equally. Make fathers feel as bad as mothers. Make fathers share in the glory of guilt. Campaign and agitate for paid paternity leave everywhere in America. Hire more women where there are few. But remember that a woman you hire doesn't have to be exceptionally good. Like a majority of the men who get hired, she just needs to be good enough."

Gloria Steinem, Smith,

"Your generation has made giant strides into public life, but often still says: How can I

combine career and family? I say to you from the bottom of my heart that when you ask that



5/11

 ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download