9696 – 中文站 | 科普文章，文史知识，英文演讲和英文书籍
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
So what I say to all of you is that “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. I’ve seen porta-potties on fire from a helicopter above Woodstock 99. I’ve seen Charlize Theron glitter in the dark from the backstage wings of the Oscars. All of these moments and far better ones are waiting to be experienced and marveled at by every one of you. It’s time to live.
The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.
I stand here today, grateful for the diversity of my heritage, aware that my parents’ dreams live on in my two precious daughters. I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.
College is something you complete. Life is something you experience. So don’t worry about your grade, or the results or success. Success is defined in myriad ways, and you will find it, and people will no longer be grading you, but it will come from your own internal sense of decency. Love what you do. Get good at it. Competence is a rare commodity in this day and age. And let the chips fall where they may.
As the US grapples with a disinformation crisis, Tom Hanks told graduates of Harvard on Thursday to be superheroes in their defense of truth and American ideals, and to resist those who twist the truth for their own gain.
“For the truth to some is no longer empirical. It’s no longer based on data, nor common sense, nor even common decency,”
We are led by our gut instincts, our intuition, our desires and fears, our scars and our dreams. And you will screw it up sometimes. So will I. And when I do, you will most likely read about on the internet. Anyway…hard things will happen to us. We will recover. We will learn from it. We will grow more resilient because of it.
William Lyon Phelps (1865-1943) was an American educator, literary critic and author. He served as a professor of English at Yale University from 1901 to 1933. His works include Advance of the English Novel and Essays on Modern Dramatists. On April 6, 1933, he delivered this speech during a radio broadcast.
I say to you, my friends, so even though we must face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
