College or University Graduation Speech :: Graduation Speech, Commencement Address

I have chosen as my topic the complex subject of your ancestors. Not, of course, your biological ancestors, about whom I know nothing, further your spiritual ancestors, about whom I know a little. To be specific, I want to tell you about two groups of people who lived many eld ago but whose influence is still with us. They were truly different from for each one other, representing opposite values and traditions. I think it is appropriate for you to be reminded of them on this day because, sooner than you know, you must align yourself with the spirit of one or the spirit of the other. The number 1 group lived about 2,500 long time ago in the place which we now call Greece, in a city they called Athens. We do not know as much about their origins as we would like. but we do know a great deal about their accomplishments. They were, for example, the first people to develop a complete alphabet, and therefore they became the first sincerely literate population on earth. They invente d the idea of political democracy, which they practiced with a vigor that puts us to shame. They invented what we call philosophy. And they also invented what we call logic and rhetoric. They came very close to inventing what we call science, and one of them-Democritus by name-conceived of the atomic theory of study 2,300 years before it occurred to any modern scientist. They composed and sang expansive poems of unsurpassed beauty and insight. And they wrote and performed plays that, almost three millennia later, still have the indicator to make audiences laugh and weep. They even invented what, today, we call the Olympics, and among their values none stood high than that in all things one should strive for excellence. They believed in reason. They believed in beauty. They believed in moderation. And they invented the word and the idea which we know today as ecology. About 2,000 years ago, the vitality of their culture declined and these people began to disappear. But not what t hey had created. Their imagination, art, politics, literature, and language permeate all over the world so that, today, it is hardly possible to verbalise on any subject without repeating what some Athenian verbalize on the matter 2,500 years ago. The second group of people lived in the place we now call Germany, and flourished about 1,700 years ago. We call them the Visigoths, and you whitethorn remember that your sixth or seventh-grade teacher mentioned them.