commencement speeches

on mother teresa:
A journalist once asked Mother Teresa how she persevered in the face of all the despair she had seen. Mother replied, "God has not called me to be successful. He has called me to be faithful." Over the years, I've carried in my heart a similar code my parents taught me: You do the right thing for the right reasons, and good things will happen.

on richard stengel:
One of the things I am certain about is that certainty and democracy don't go together. If you look at the leaders of the last 10 years who have had ironclad certainty, who are they? Joseph Stalin, Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak, Muammar Qaddafi. Totalitarianism is the place for certainty, not democracy….
Democracy is based on doubt. It's based on wondering. It's based on questioning: Are we doing the fair thing? Are we doing the right thing? Are we doing the just thing? It's not about certainty. So I'm telling you today: Beware of certainty. Beware of ideas and theories that cannot be tested. Beware of people who know that they're right.

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thank you @mrslauer