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Charlie Chaplin: The Great Dictator: 1940

The Great Dictator is a comedy film by Charlie Chaplin released in October 1940. Like most Chaplin films, he wrote, produced, and directed, in addition to starring as the lead. It was the first major feature film to satirize Nazism and Adolf Hitler. At its release, the United States was still formally at peace with Nazi Germany.

Chaplin’s film condemned Hitler, fascism, antisemitism, and the Nazis, whom he calls “machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts”.

You can find this monologue and hundreds of others on Colin’s Movie Monologue page.

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The Jewish private/barber (Charlie Chaplin): I’m sorry but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible; Jew, Gentile, black men, white. We all want to help one another.

Human beings are like that. We want to live by each others’ happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls; has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in.

Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge as made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these things cries out for the goodness in man; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all.

Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say “Do not despair.” The misery that has come upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

Soldiers! Don’t give yourselves to these brutes who despise you, enslave you; who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle and use you as cannon fodder! Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men—machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are men! With the love of humanity in your hearts! Don’t hate! Only the unloved hate; the unloved and the unnatural.

Soldiers! Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the seventeenth chapter of St. Luke, it is written that the kingdom of God is within man, not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people, have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.

Then in the name of democracy, let us use that power. Let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfil that promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to free the world! To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to the happiness of us all. Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us unite!

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Woody Allen: Hannah and Her Sisters

Hannah and Her Sisters is a 1986 American comedy-drama film which tells the intertwined stories of an extended family over two years, written and directed by Woody Allen.

You can find this monologue and hundreds of others on Colin’s Movie Monologue page. The entire script can be found on the www.awesomefilm.com site.

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Mickey Sachs (Woody Allen):
Millions of books written on every conceivable subject by all these great minds, and, and in the end, none of ’em knows anything more about the big questions of life than I do.

Ss–I read Socrates. You know, n-n-n–, this guy used to kn-knock off little Greek boys. What the hell’s he got to teach me?

And, and Nietzsche with his, with his Theory of Eternal Recurrence. He said that the life we live, we’re gonna live over and over again the exact same way for eternity. Great. That means I, uh, I’ll have to sit through the Ice Capades again.

Tch. It’s not worth it. And, and Freud, another great pessimist. Jeez, I was in analysis for years. Nothing happened. My poor analyst got so frustrated. The guy finally put in a salad bar.

FATHER FLYNN:
Now why do you think that you would like to convert to Catholicism?

MICKEY:
Well, uh, because, y-you know, I gotta have something to believe in, otherwise life is just meaningless.

FATHER FLYNN:
I understand. But why did you make the decision to choose the Catholic faith?

MICKEY:
Tch. Well, y-you know…first of all, because it’s a very beautiful religion. It’s a strong religion. It’s very well structured. Now I’m talking now, incidentally, about the-the, uh, against-school- prayer, pro-abortion, anti-nuclear wing.

FATHER FLYNN:
So at the moment you don’t believe in God.

MICKEY:
No. A-a-and I-I want to. You know, I’m-I’m willing to do anything. I’ll, you know, I’ll dye Easter eggs if it works.

I-I need some evidence. I gotta have some proof. Uh, you know, i- i-if I can’t believe in God, then I don’t think life is worth living.

FATHER FLYNN:
It means making a very big leap.

MICKEY:
Yes, but, can, can you help me?

MICKEY:
I don’t understand. I thought that you would be happy.

MICKEY:
Well, because I never thought of God in my life. Now I’m giving it serious thought.

FATHER:
But Catholicism? Why not your own people?

MICKEY:
Because I got off to a wrong foot with my own thing, you know. B-b- b-but I need a dramatic change in my life.

FATHER:
You’re gonna believe in Jesus Christ?

MICKEY:
I know it sounds funny, but I’m gonna try.

FATHER:
But why? We raised you as a Jew.

MICKEY:
So, just ’cause I was born that way… You know, I’m old enough to make a mature decision.

FATHER:
But why Jesus Christ? Why, for instance, shouldn’t you become a Buddhist?

MICKEY:
A Bud–? That’s totally alien to me. Look, you’re getting on in years, right? Aren’t you afraid of dying?

FATHER:
Why should I be afraid?

MICKEY:
Oh! ‘Cause you won’t exist!

FATHER: So?

MICKEY:
That thought doesn’t terrify you?

FATHER:
Who thinks about such nonsense? Now I’m alive. When I’m dead, I’ll be dead.

MICKEY:
I don’t understand. Aren’t you frightened?

FATHER:
Of what? I’ll be unconscious.

MICKEY:
Yeah, I know. But never to exist again!

FATHER:
How do you know?

MICKEY:
Well, it certainly doesn’t look promising.

FATHER:
Who knows what it will be? I’ll either be unconscious or I won’t. If not, I’ll deal with it then. I’m not gonna worry now about what’s gonna be when I’m unconscious.

MICKEY:
Mom, come out!

MOTHER:
Of course there’s a God, you idiot! You don’t believe in God?

MICKEY:
But if there’s a God, then wh-why is there so much evil in the world? What– Just on a simplistic level. Why-why were there Nazis?

MOTHER:
Tell him, Max.

FATHER:
How the hell do I know why there were Nazis? I don’t know how the can opener works.

KRISHNA LEADER:
What makes you interested in becoming a Hare Krishna?

MICKEY:
Well, I’m not saying that I want to join or anything, but…but I know you guys believe in reincarnation, you know, so it interests me.

KRISHNA LEADER:
Yeah, well, what’s your religion?

MICKEY:
Well, I was born Jewish, you know, but, uh, but last winter I tried to become a Catholic and…it didn’t work for me. I-I studied and I tried and I gave it everything, but, you know, Catholicism for me was die now, pay later, you know. And I just couldn’t get with it. And I, and I wanted to, you know. I–

KRISHNA LEADER:
You’re afraid of dying?

MICKEY:
Well…yeah, naturally. Aren’t you? I– L-let me ask you, reincarnation, does that mean my soul would pass to another human being, or would I come back as a moose or an aardvark or something?

KRISHNA LEADER:
Take our literature…

MICKEY:
Uh-huh.

KRISHNA LEADER:
…read it over, and think about it.

MICKEY:
Well, okay. Thank you very much.

KRISHNA LEADER:
You’re welcome. Hare Krishna.

MICKEY:
Who are you kidding? You’re gonna be a Krishna? You’re gonna shave your head and put on robes and dance around at airports? You’ll look like Jerry Lewis. Oh, God, I’m so depressed.

MICKEY:
I…I-I-I-I had to get out of that house. I had to just get out in the fresh air and-and clear my head. And I remember very clearly. I walked the streets. I walked and I walked. I-I didn’t know what was going through my mind. It all seemed so violent and un-unreal to me.

And I wandered… …for a long time on the Upper West Side, you know, an-and it must have been hours! You know, my, my feet hurt. My head was, was pounding, and, and I had to sit down. I went into a movie house. I-I didn’t know what was playing or anything. I just, I just needed a moment to gather my thoughts and, and be logical, and, and put the world back into rational perspective.

And I went upstairs to the balcony, and I sat down (sighing) and, you know, the movie was a-a-a film that I’d seen many times in my life since I was a kid, an-and I always u-uh, loved it.

And, you know, I’m, I’m watching these people up on the screen, and I started getting hooked o-on the film, you know? What if there’s no God, and you only go around once and that’s it? Well, you know, don’t you want to be part of the experience?
You know, what the hell, it-i-it’s not all a drag. And I’m thinking to myself, geez, I should stop ruining my life… …searching for answers I’m never gonna get, and just enjoy it while it lasts.

And…you know… …after, who knows? I mean, you know, maybe there is something. Nobody really knows. I know, I know “maybe” is a very slim reed to hang your whole life on, but that’s the best we have. And…then, I started to sit back, and I actually began to enjoy myself.

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Dan Pink: What Motivates People?

Daniel H. Pink is an American author and journalist.

The transcript is for a 10-minute extract from the talk, from DotSUB.com, where anyone can watch videos with subtitles in their language, upload videos, and create subtitles. Visit DotSUB.com.

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Dan Pink: Our motivations are unbelievably interesting, I mean… I’ve been working on this for a few years and I just find the topic still so amazingly engaging and interesting so I want to tell you about that.

The science is really surprising. The science is a little bit freaky. OK? We are not as endlessly manipulable and as predictable as you would think. There’s a whole set of unbelievably interesting studies. I want to give you two that call into question this idea that if you reward something you get more of the behavior you want. If you punish something, you get less of it.

So let’s talk, let’s go from London to the main streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts in the northeastern part of the United States and let’s talk about a study done at MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Here’s what they did: They took a whole group of students and they gave them a set of challenges. Things like memorizing strings of digits solving word puzzles, other kinds of spacial puzzles even physical tasks like throwing a ball through a hoop. OK, they gave them these challenges and they said to incentivize their performance they gave them 3 levels of rewards. OK? So if you did pretty well, you got a small monetary reward. If you did medium well, you got a medium monetary reward. And if you did really well, if you were one of the top performers you got a large cash prize. Ok, we’ve seen this movie before.

This is essentially a typical motivation scheme within organizations right? We reward the very top performers we ignore the low performers and other folks in the middle. Ok, you get a little bit. So what happens? They do the test. They have these incentives. Here’s what they found out. 1. As long as the task involved only mechanical skill bonuses worked as they would be expected the higher the pay, the better their performance. Ok, that makes sense, but here’s what happens. But once the task calls for even rudimentary cognitive skill a larger reward led to poorer performance.

Now this is strange, right? A larger reward led to poorer performance. How can that possibly be? Now what’s interesting about this is that these folks here who did this are all economists: 2 at MIT, 1 at the University of Chicago, 1 at Carnegie Mellon, the top tier of the economics profession. And they’re reaching this conclusion that seems contrary to what a lot of us learned in economics which is that the higher the reward, the better the performance. And they’re saying that once you get above rudimentary cognitive skill it’s the other way around which seems like this kind of the idea that these rewards don’t work that way seems vaguely Left-Wing and Socialist, doesn’t it? It’s this kind of weird Socialist conspiracy.

For those of you who have these conspiracy theories I want to point out the notoriously left-wing socialist group that financed the research: The Federal Reserve Bank. So this the mainstream of the mainstream coming to a conclusion that’s quite surprising seems to defy the laws of behavioral physics. So this is strange, a strange funny. So what do they do? They say… This is freaky. Let’s go test it somewhere else. Maybe that 50 dollars or 60 dollars prize isn’t sufficiently motivating for an MIT student, right?

So let’s go to a place where 50 dollars is actually more significant relatively. So we take the experiment, we’re going to Madurai, India. Rural India, where 50 dollars, 60 dollars whatever the number was, is actually a significant sum of money. So they replicated the experiment in India roughly as follows: Small rewards, the equivalent of 2 week’s salary. I’m sorry, I mean low performance [received] 2 week’s salary. Medium performance [received] about a month’s salary. High performance [received] about 2 month’s salary. Ok, so these are real good incentives so you’re going to get a different result here.

What happened though, was that the people offered the medium reward did no better than the people offered the small reward but this time around, the people offered the top reward they did worst of all. Higher incentives led to worse performance. What’s interesting about this is that it actually isn’t all that anomalous. This has been replicated over and over and over again by psychologists by sociologists and by economists, over and over and over again. For simple, straight-forward tasks, those kinds of incentives if you do this then you get that, they’re great! With tasks that are an algorithmic set of rules where you have to just follow along and get a right answer “If-then” rewards, carrots and sticks, outstanding! But when the task gets more complicated when it requires some conceptual, creative thinking, those kind of motivators demonstrably don’t work.

Fact: Money is a motivator, at work. But in a slightly strange way if you don’t pay people enough they won’t be motivated. What’s curious about, there’s another paradox here which is the best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table. Pay people enough, so they are not thinking about money and they’re thinking about the work. Now once you do that, it turns out there are 3 factors that the science shows, lead to better performance not to mention, personal satisfaction: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Autonomy is our desire to be self-directed: to direct our own lives.

Now in many ways, traditional methods of management run afoul of that. Management is great if you want compliance, but if you want engagement which is what we want in the workforce today as people are doing more complicated, sophisticated things, self-direction is better. Let me give you some examples of this of the most radical forms of self-direction in the workplace, that lead to good results.

Let’s start with this company right here, Atlassian an Australian company. It’s a software company and they do something really cool. Once a quarter on Thursday afternoon, they say to their developers “For the next 24 hours, you can work on anything you want. You can work at it the way you want. You can work at it with whomever you want. All we ask is that you show the results to the company at the end of those 24 hours.” and this fun kind of meeting, not a star chamber session but this fun meeting with beer and cake and fun and other things like that. It turns out that one day of pure undiluted autonomy has led to a whole array of fixes for existing software, a whole array of ideas for new products that otherwise have never emerged. One day.

Now this is not an “if-then” incentive. This is not the sort of thing that I would have done 3 years ago before I knew this research. I would have said “You want people to be creative and innovative?” Give them a fricken innovation bonus. If you could do something cool, I’ll give you 2,500 dollars. They’re not doing this at all. They’re essentially saying you probably want to do something interesting. Let me just get out of your way. One day of autonomy produces things that never emerge.

Now let’s talk about mastery. Mastery is our urge to get better at stuff. We like to get better at stuff. This is why people play musical instruments on the weekend. You have all these people who’re acting in ways that seem irrational economically. They play musical instruments on weekends, why? It’s not going get them a mate. It’s not going to make them any money. Why are they doing it? Because it’s fun. Because you get better at it, and that’s satisfying.

Go back in time a little bit. I imagine this: If I went to my first economic’s professor a woman named Mary Alice Shulman. And I went to her in 1983, and said “Professor Shulman, can I talk to you after class for a moment?” “Yeah.” “I’ve got this inkling. I’ve got this idea for a business model. I just want to run it past to you. Here’s how it would work: You get a bunch of people around the world who are doing highly skilled work but they’re willing to do it for free and volunteer their time 20, sometimes 30 hours a week.” Ok, she’s looking at you somewhat skeptically there. “Oh, but I’m not done. And then, what they create, they give it away, rather than sell it. It’s going to be huge.” And she truly would have thought I was insane. All right, you seem to fly in the face of so many things but what do you have? You have Linux, powering 1 out of 4 corporate servers and Fortune 500 companies. Apache, powering more than the majority of web servers.

Wikipedia…What’s going on? Why are people doing this? Why are these people, many of whom are technically sophisticated highly skilled people who have jobs, ok? They have jobs! They’re working at jobs for pay doing challenging, sophisticated, technological work. And yet, during their limited discretionary time they do equally, if not more, technically sophisticated work not for their employer, but for someone else for free! That’s a strange economic behavior. Economists who look into it “Why are they doing this?” It’s overwhelmingly clear: Challenge in mastery along with making a contribution, that’s it. What you see more and more is a rise of what you might call the purpose motive. It’s that more and more organizations want to have some kind of transcendent purpose partly because it makes coming to work better partly because that’s the way to get better talent. And what we’re seeing now is, in some ways when the profit motive becomes unmoored from the purpose motive bad things happen. Bad things ethically sometimes but also bad things just like, not good stuff: like crappy products like lame services, like uninspiring places to work. That when the profit motive is paramount or when it becomes completely unhitched from the purpose motive people don’t do great things. More and more organizations are realizing this and sort of disturbing the categories between what’s profit and what’s purpose. And I think that actually heralds something interesting. And I think that the companies, organizations that are flourishing whether they’re profit, for-profit or somewhere in-between are animated by this purpose. Let me give you a couple of examples. Here’s the founder of Skype. He says our goal is to be disruptive but in the cause of making the world a better place. Pretty good purpose. Here’s Steve Jobs. “I want to put a Ding in the universe.” All right? That’s the kind of thing that might get you up in the morning, racing to go to work.

So I think that we are purpose maximizers, not only profit-maximizers. I think that the science shows that we care about mastery very, very deeply. And the science shows that we want to be self-directed. And I think that the big take-away here is that if we start treating people like people and not assuming that they’re simply horses you know, slower, smaller, better-smelling horses if we get past this kind of ideology of “carrots and sticks” and look at the science I think we can actually build organizations and work lives that make us better off but I also think they have the promise to make our world just a little bit better.

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Larry Page: University of Michigan Commencement Address, 2009

Larry Page’s University of Michigan Commencement Address, May 2009. Larry Page is one of the co-founders of Google

The transcript is from the google press website

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Larry Page: Class of 2009! I don’t think I heard you! Class of 2009! First I’d like you to get up, wave and cheer your supportive family and friends! Show your love!

It is a great honor for me to be here today.

Now wait a second. I know: that’s such a cliché. You’re thinking: every graduation speaker says that – It’s a great honor. But, in my case, it really is so deeply true – being here is more special and more personal for me than most of you know. I’d like to tell you why.

A long time ago, in the cold September of 1962, there was a Steven’s co-op at this very university. That co-op had a kitchen with a ceiling that had been cleaned by student volunteers every decade or so. Picture a college girl named Gloria, climbing up high on a ladder, struggling to clean that filthy ceiling. Standing on the floor, a young boarder named Carl was admiring the view. And that’s how they met. They were my parents, so I suppose you could say I’m a direct result of that kitchen chemistry experiment, right here at Michigan. My Mom is here with us today, and we should probably go find the spot and put a plaque up on the ceiling that says: “Thanks Mom and Dad!”

Everyone in my family went to school here at Michigan: me, my brother, my Mom and Dad – all of us. My Dad actually got the quantity discount: all three and a half of his degrees are from here. His Ph.D. was in Communication Science because they thought Computers were just a passing fad. He earned it 44 years ago. He and Mom made a big sacrifice for that degree. They argued at times over pennies, while raising my newborn brother. Mom typed my Dad’s dissertation by hand, kind of ironic in a computer science dissertation. This velvet hood I’m wearing, this was my Dad’s. And this diploma that I have here, just like the one you’re are about to get, this was my Dad’s. And my underwear, … oh never mind, sorry.

My father’s father worked in the Chevy plant in Flint, Michigan. He was an assembly line worker. He drove his two children here to Ann Arbor, and told them: That is where you’re going to college. Both his kids actually did graduate from Michigan. That was the American dream. His daughter, Beverly, is also with us today. My Grandpa used to carry an “Alley Oop” hammer – a heavy iron pipe with a hunk of lead melted on the end. The workers made them during the sit-down strikes to protect themselves. When I was growing up, we used that hammer whenever we needed to pound a stake or something into the yard. It is wonderful that most people don’t need to carry a heavy blunt object for protection anymore. But just in case, I have it here.

My Dad became a professor at uh… Michigan State, and I was an incredibly lucky boy. A professor’s life is pretty flexible, and he was able to spend oodles of time raising me. Could there be any better upbringing than a university brat?

What I’m trying to tell you is that this is WAY more than just a homecoming for me. It’s not easy for me to express how proud I am to be here, with my Mom, my brother and my wife Lucy, and with all of you, at this amazing institution that is responsible for my very existence. I am thrilled for all of you, and I’m thrilled for your families and friends, as all of us join this great, big Michigan family I feel I’ve been a part of all of my life.

What I’m also trying to tell you is that I know exactly what it feels like to be sitting in your seat, listening to some old gasbag give a long-winded commencement speech. Don’t worry. I’ll be brief.

I have a story about following dreams. Or maybe more accurately, it’s a story about finding a path to make those dreams real.

You know what it’s like to wake up in the middle of the night with a vivid dream? And you know how, if you don’t have a pencil and pad by the bed to write it down, it will be completely gone the next morning?

Well, I had one of those dreams when I was 23. When I suddenly woke up, I was thinking: what if we could download the whole web, and just keep the links and… I grabbed a pen and started writing! Sometimes it is important to wake up and stop dreaming. I spent the middle of that night scribbling out the details and convincing myself it would work. Soon after, I told my advisor, Terry Winograd, it would take a couple of weeks to download the web – he nodded knowingly, fully aware it would take much longer but wise enough to not tell me. The optimism of youth is often underrated! Amazingly, I had no thought of building a search engine. The idea wasn’t even on the radar. But, much later we happened upon a better way of ranking and we made a really great search engine, and Google was born. When a really great dream shows up, grab it!

When I was here at Michigan, I had actually been taught how to make dreams real! I know it sounds funny, but that is what I learned in a summer camp converted into a training program called Leadershape. Yeah, we got a few out there. Their slogan is to have a “healthy disregard for the impossible”. That program encouraged me to pursue a crazy idea at the time: I wanted to build a personal rapid transit system on campus to replace the buses. Yeah, you’re still working on that, I hear. It was a futuristic way of solving our transportation problem. I still think a lot about transportation – you never loose a dream, it just incubates as a hobby. Many things that people labor hard to do now, like cooking, cleaning, and driving will require much less human time in the future. That is, if we “have a healthy disregard for the impossible” and actually build the solutions.

I think it is often easier to make progress on mega-ambitious dreams. I know that sounds completely nuts. But, since no one else is crazy enough to do it, you have little competition. In fact, there are so few people this crazy that I feel like I know them all by first name. They all travel as if they are pack dogs and they stick to each other like glue. The best people want to work on the big challenges. That is what happened with Google. Our mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. How can that not get you excited? But we almost didn’t start Google because my co-founder Sergey and I were too worried about dropping out of the Ph.D. program. None of you had that issue, it seems. You are probably on the right track if you feel like a sidewalk worm during a rainstorm! That is about how we felt after we maxed out three credit cards buying hard disks off the back of a truck. That was actually the first hardware for Google. Parents and friends: more credit cards always help. What is the one sentence summary of how you change the world? Always work hard on something uncomfortably exciting!

As a Ph.D. student, I actually had three projects I wanted to work on. Thank goodness my advisor said, “Why don’t you work on the web for a while”. He gave me some seriously good advice because the web was growing with people and activity, even in 1995! Technology and especially the internet can really help you be lazy. Lazy? What I mean is a group of three people can write software that millions can use and enjoy. Can three people answer the phone a million times a day? Find the leverage in the world, so you can be truly lazy!

Yeah…

Overall, I know it seems like the world is crumbling out there, but it is actually a great time in your life to get a little crazy, follow your curiosity, and be ambitious about it. Don’t give up on your dreams. The world needs you all!

So here’s my final story:

On a day like today, you might feel exhilarated — like you’ve just been shot out of a cannon at the circus – and even invincible. Don’t ever forget that incredible feeling. But also: always remember that the moments we have with friends and family, the chances we have to do things that might make a big difference in the world, or even to make a small difference to the ones we love — all those wonderful chances that life gives us, life also takes away. It can happen fast, and a whole lot sooner than you think.

In late March 1996, soon after I had moved to Stanford for grad school, my Dad had difficulty breathing and drove to the hospital. Two months later, he died. I was completely devastated. Many years later, after a startup, after falling in love, and after so many of life’s adventures, I found myself thinking about my Dad. Lucy and I were far away in a steaming hot village walking through narrow streets. There were wonderfully friendly people everywhere, but it was a desperately poor place – people used the bathroom inside and it flowed out into the open gutter and straight into the river. We touched a boy with a limp leg, the result of paralysis from polio. Lucy and I were in rural India – one of the few places where polio still exists. Polio is transmitted fecal to oral, usually through filthy water. Well, my Dad had polio. He went on a trip to Tennessee in the first grade and caught it. He was hospitalized for two months and had to be transported by military DC-3 back home – his first flight. My Dad wrote, “Then, I had to stay in bed for over a year, before I started back to school”. That is actually a quote from his fifth grade autobiography. My Dad had difficulty breathing his whole life, and the complications of polio are what took him from us too soon. He would have been very upset that polio still persists even though we have a vaccine. He would have been equally upset that back in India we had polio virus on our shoes from walking through the contaminated gutters that spread the disease. We were spreading the virus with every footstep, right under beautiful kids playing everywhere. The world is on the verge of eliminating polio, with 328 people infected so far this year. Let’s get it eradicated soon. Perhaps one of you will do that.

My Dad was valedictorian of Flint Mandeville High School in 1956 class of about 90 kids. I happened across his graduating speech recently, and it blew me away. 53 years ago my Dad said: “…we are entering a changing world, one of automation and employment change where education is an economic necessity. We will have increased periods of time to do as we wish, as our work week and retirement age continue to decline [and we wish that were true]. … We shall take part in, or witness, developments in science, medicine, and industry that we can not dream of today. … It is said that the future of any nation can be determined by the care and preparation given to its youth. If all the youths of America were as fortunate in securing an education as we have been, then the future of the United States would be even more bright than it is today.”

If my Dad was alive today, the thing I think he would be most happy about is that Lucy and I have a baby in the hopper. It’s here.. I think he would have been annoyed that I hadn’t gotten my Ph.D. yet (thanks, Michigan!). Dad was so full of insights, of excitement about new things, that to this day, I often wonder what he would think about some new development. If he were here today – well, it would be one of the best days of his life. He’d be like a kid in a candy store. For a day, he’d be young again.

Many of us are fortunate enough to be here with family. Some of us have dear friends and family to go home to. And who knows, perhaps some of you, like Lucy and I, are dreaming about future families of your own. Just like me, your families brought you here, and you brought them here. Please keep them close and remember: they are what really matters in life.

Thanks, Mom; Thanks, Lucy.
And thank you, all, very much.

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Mary Schmich: Wear Sunscreen (1997)

This famous commencement (graduation) address to students has been attributed to Kurt Vonnegut and been covered by different singers and artists including Baz Luhrmann, but it was never presented at any college. It was written in 1997 by Mary Schmich, a columnist from the Chicago Tribune.

In her article, she introduces her advice to imaginary students as follows:

Inside every adult lurks a graduation speaker dying to get out, some world-weary pundit eager to pontificate on life to young people who’d rather be Rollerblading. Most of us, alas, will never be invited to sow our words of wisdom among an audience of caps and gowns, but there’s no reason we can’t entertain ourselves by composing a Guide to Life for Graduates.

I encourage anyone over 26 to try this and thank you for indulging my attempt.


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Mary Schmich: Ladies and gentlemen of the class of ’97:

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they’ve faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don’t worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts. Don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long and, in the end, it’s only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else’s.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.

Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents. You never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They’re your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you’ll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you’ll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.

Don’t mess too much with your hair or by the time you’re 40 it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen.