Famous (or Infamous) Commencement Speeches that Broke the Mold

As a rule, commencement speeches are either predictably packed with fake truisms and moldering quotes from the likes of Socrates and Oliver Wendell Holmes, or they're deadly boring pep rallies for Mom and Dad. Occasionally, a speech will break the mold and will be memorable enough to last a graduate's lifetime. Here are excerpts and examples of such atypical commencement speeches.

1) In 2005, Apple co-founder and college dropout Steven Jobs talked to Stanford University seniors about thinking different. In fact, he wore his usual jeans and sandals under his graduation robes. In his speech, he told three stories about his own life. In the first story, he spoke about why he dropped out of Reed College after one month and how one Reed College class on calligraphy later influenced the creation of the first Macintosh computer. His second story was about being fired from the company he had founded by his own board of directors, and how this devastating loss led him in a new creative direction, resulting in the startup of Pixar, the highly successful cutting-edge animation company. His final story was about dealing with his own mortality after a pancreatic cancer diagnosis. After surgery, he survived the cancer and, at the same time, learned about the value of life.

He closed his speech with a quote from "The Whole Earth Catalog": "Stay hungry. Stay foolish."

2) Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Russell Baker gave a 15-minute short and sweet speech packed with humorous on-target bits of advice at Connecticut College. The speech was titled "10 Ways to Avoid Mucking Up the World any Worse than it Already is." The "advice included: "sleep in the nude", "fear the automobile", "don't take your gun to town", and "whatever you do, don't go forth."

3) English Prime Minister Winston Churchill's commencement speech at Harrow School was even shorter than Russell Baker's speech. (Years earlier, Churchill almost flunked out of this school.) His speech was only three words long. He walked up to the podium and said "Never give up." He paused and said "Never give up" again. Then he paused even longer and said "Never give up." And he sat down.