Sorting papers preparatory to doing taxes, I have come across a clipping I took from the New York Times last last spring. The feature was a compilation of excerpts from 2003 graduation speeches. Here are the two I saved:
Renée Fleming
Opera singer
The Juilliard School, New York City
While you're standing in the grocery line holding Spam instead of foie gras for a few years ponder the following: Those of you who perform — musicians and dancers — will have by now practiced perhaps 3,000 hours a year, times 15 years, which equals 45,000 hours. Which means colletively that you as a group will have practiced 11 million hours. Challenge the idea that the arts are for a select few — teach make more people love what you love, and help them to understand why you dedicated those 11 million hours in the first place.
George J. Tenet
C.I.A. director
University of Oklahoma, Norman
Today, the United States is the lone superpower, with global interests and worldwide reach — part of everyone's problem and everyone's solution. And by this I mean more than Afghanistan and Iraq, where crises called forth from us a military response. There is another, underlying story that must be told: the story of societies and peoples who are left behind, excluded from the benefits of an expanding global economy, whose lives of hunger, disease, and displacement may become wellsprings of disaffection and extremism.
(Note: Credit where credit it due to writer Sam Dillon, who excerpted and juxtaposed these speeches.)
Posted by Emily at March 21, 2004 11:45 AM