美国大学最有影响力的十大毕业典礼演讲【下】

[美国大学最有影响力的十大毕业典礼演讲【上】]https://www.jianshu.com/p/6bb395013cc8

6、迈克尔·奥斯兰（Michael Uslan）电影制片人 2006年，印第安纳大学

你必须相信你自己和你的工作。当我们第一部电影《蝙蝠侠》创下史无前例的票房纪录时，我接到了艺术家联合会会长的电话，他在数年之前曾跟我谈过，他说我疯了。
如今他说，“迈克尔，我给你打电话不只是祝贺蝙蝠侠的成功，我说过你是一位梦想家。”你看，关键在这里，当他们说你有多差，你的想法有多糟的时候，不要信他们的话，同时，当他们告诉你你有多么了不起，你的想法多美妙时，也不要相信他们。你就只相信你自己，你会做好的。
还有，不要忘记推销你自己和你的想法。左右大脑你都得用。
　　你的挫败感阈值一定得高。想想那些被好莱坞每一家制片厂拒绝的人。你必须去敲一扇扇的门，直到指节流血。大门会在你面前砰然关上，你必须重振旗鼓，弹去身上的灰尘，再敲下一扇门。这是实现你人生目标的唯一办法。

==========
全文：

TRANSCRIPT
Good Morning IU! And a special hello to the person sitting in the last seat, upstairs, way in the back. That was the best seat I ever could get for a basketball game as an undergrad here.

More than a few years ago, I was sitting right where you are… literally in one of those exact same seats out there… listening to a graduation speaker proclaim how important it is to succeed in your job. It would have been an inspiring speech except for the fact that neither I nor half my friends had a job lined up by commencement day. Sound familiar to anyone out there?

At my graduation, all I had was a very big dream and a very big question: “Bloomington to Hollywood--- How do you get there from here?” I couldn’t just declare I wanted to produce the definitive, dark, serious “Batman” movie and make that leap in a single bound. The problem was: A. I had no family in the motion picture industry; B. I had no friends in the motion picture industry; and C. I didn’t come from money so I couldn’t buy my way in.

I had to start on my career path with a series of smaller, achievable goals that could lead me into the world of “Batman.” I needed something I could do at IU that would get me on the radar in Hollywood and in New York.

Indiana University empowered me to get a job which could eventually lead me to my dream, and it did so by catering to the needs of one individual student. Here’s how it happened…and believe me, it’s hard to believe:

When I was an undergrad, IU had an experimental curriculum department in the College of Arts & Sciences. If you had an idea for a course that was non-traditional and had never been taught before, and if you had the backing of a department, you could appear before a panel of deans and professors to pitch your idea. If they approved it, your course would be accredited and you could teach it on campus.

So, I created a course on comic books, claiming comics to be not only a legitimate American art form as indigenous to this country as jazz, but also as contemporary folklore… modern day mythology. The gods of Egypt, Greece and Rome still exist, only today they wear capes and spandex.

With the backing of the Folklore Department, I appeared before a panel of professors and deans. I entered a dark, mahogany room with a very long conference table right out of the Justice League’s secret sanctum. Now, keep in mind this was the early 1970’s. My hair was down to my shoulders, I was wearing a Spider-Man T-shirt and I think I still had my love beads on.

The professor at the far end of the table looked down at me over those little half-glasses perched on the edge of his nose, and said, “So you’re the fellow who wants to teach a course on ‘funny books’ at my university?” I knew I was in deep… trouble.

He let me speak for two minutes and then he cut me off. “Mr. Uslan,” he said, “I don’t buy your theory. Comic books are cheap entertainment for children. Nothing more. Nothing less. Look, I read them all when I was a kid. I read every issue of ‘Superman’ comics I could get my hands on. But contemporary folklore? Modern day mythology? I reject your theory.”

It was my moment of truth. I inquired if I could ask two questions, and he said I could ask him anything I wanted. So I asked if he was familiar with the story of Moses. He told me he was. I then requested that he very briefly summarize the story of Moses. Eyeing me as if I was insane, he replied that he wasn’t sure what game I was playing, but he would play it with me.

The professor said, “The Hebrews were being persecuted, their first-born were being slain. A Hebrew couple placed their infant son in a little wicker basket and sent him down the River Nile where he was discovered by an Egyptian family who raised him as their own son. When he grew up and learned of his heritage, he became a great hero to his people by---“I said, thank you. That was great. You mentioned before that you read ‘Superman’ comics as a kid. Do you remember the origin of Superman?” He did. “What’s the origin of Superman?” I asked.

The professor said, “The planet Krypton was about to explode. A scientist and his wife placed their infant son in a little rocket ship and sent him to earth. There, he was discovered by the Kents who raised him as their own son. When he grew up---“Suddenly, the professor stopped talking and just stared at me for what seemed like an eternity. He then said, “Your course is accredited.”

“Oh my God, I would be teaching the world’s first accredited comic books course!” I’m walking on air back to my apartment at 10th and Grant when all of a sudden I recall what an IU business prof said to me. He said, “Being creative is not enough. You must market yourself and your ideas if you wish to succeed.”

So I picked up a telephone and called United Press International, the huge wire service in Indianapolis. I asked to speak to the reporter who covered education in Indiana. A man got on the phone and I started to scream at him: “What’s wrong with you?!? The press is supposed to be the watchdog for the people. I can’t believe you’re letting them get away with this!”

The reporter pleaded with me to slow down, and explain to him what I was talking about. I said, “I hear there’s a course on comic books being taught at Indiana University. This is outrageous! Are you telling me as a taxpayer that my money is going to teach our kids ‘funny books’?! This must be some Communist plot to infiltrate the youth of America!” And I hung up the phone.

It took this reporter three days to find out if IU really had this course and, if so, who the lunatic was who was teaching it. He came to Bloomington to interview me and then went out with a huge story with photos. It was picked up by almost every newspaper in North America and Europe. From that day on, my phone rang off the hook. Requests for me to appear on radio and TV talk shows. NBC, CBS and other news crews came to IU and I never once taught a class that wasn’t packed with TV cameras and reporters from everything from “Family Weekly” to Playboy.” I even had my picture appear in “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not.” My mother was so proud!

Three weeks later, my phone rings. “Is this Michael Uslan? This is Stan Lee from Marvel Comics in New York.” Now for you uninitiated, Stan Lee is the co-creator of “Spider-Man,” “X-Men,” “Fantastic Four,” “The Hulk,” and the entire pantheon of Marvel super-heroes. Hearing Stan’s voice over my phone was what I call my very own “Burning Bush” moment. He said, “Mike, everywhere I turn, I see you on TV or in magazines or newspapers. This course you’re teaching is great for the entire comic book industry. How can I be helpful?” Not two hours later, the head of DC Comics, publishers of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman calls me. He had special plans to target comic books to college students and asked if he could fly me to New York to meet.

“Uh…okay.”

I’m now in New York City at DC Comics and they offer me a summer job. So, one July day as I’m walking by the office of the editor of a character called “The Shadow,” I hear him complaining loudly that he has no idea for a “Shadow” script that’s due the very next day. Quickly, I poked my head into his office and blurted out, “I have an idea for a story.” I didn’t. But I realized this was a “moment” …a chance to get my foot in the door. Carpe Diem. Seize the Day. I hemmed and hawed and literally created a story on the spot. The editor told me to have the script on his desk in 24 hours and suddenly, I’m a comic book writer for DC Comics.

Two weeks later, the editor of “Batman” comics passes me by in the hallway. He was very gruff, but once you got to know him, he was a real marshmallow inside. “Hey, kid,” he said to me. “I read your ‘Shadow’ script.” “You did?” I asked. “Yeah. It didn’t stink.” “Oh, thank you!” I was beaming. And then he said to me, “How’d you like to take a shot writing ‘Batman’?”

Since I was eight years old, I dreamed of writing “Batman.” He was my favorite super-hero because he had no super-powers. His greatest super-power was his humanity. Plus, he had the best Rogues’ Gallery of villains ever! In my heart of hearts, at age eight, I believed that if I studied hard, worked out, and if my Dad bought me a cool car, I could be this guy!

Now that my dream of writing “Batman” comics came true, I needed a new dream. While staring out the window of my Bloomington apartment, I decided I wanted to get to Hollywood and produce the dark, serious “Batman” movie the way he was originally created in 1939 as a creature of the night stalking criminals from the shadows.

The President of DC Comics listened to my goal and tried to give me fatherly advice. “Michael,” he said, “since the ‘Batman’ TV show went off the air, no one’s been interested in Batman for movies. He’s as dead as a Dodo. Go get credentials in the film business and then come back and talk to me.”

So, every Friday of my senior year, I went to the IU Library and read “Variety” magazine, it’s the bible of show business. I jotted down the name of every movie and TV executive mentioned in the articles. By the end of the school year, I had the names of 372 people I could send resumes to, instead of having to send out “To Whom It May Concern” letters to personnel departments. And I typed every one of those 372 cover letters with two fingers on a typewriter. Now for those of you who don’t know what a typewriter is, visit your local museum. You’ll look for it right next to the VCR.

From 372 resumes, I received two job offers: a major New York talent agency invited me to join its agent training program, which would sentence me to two years in their mailroom at 95 per week. Well, it was time for Plan “B.” And if there’s no other advice I can give you today, it’s always have a Plan “B”…and if you can, a Plan “C.”

Okay, plan “B”: Unable to get my foot in the door creatively in Hollywood at a pay scale above “starvation,” I considered a different route via law school. If I could become an entertainment lawyer as my entrée into the motion picture industry, learn how to finance and produce motion pictures, and meet the power brokers in Hollywood, I could one day sneak in the back door of the creative side.

IU School of Law empowered me by allowing me to take an independent study course because I was the only student in the school interested in entertainment at that time. It was that independent study course that impressed United Artists studio honchos enough to give me, over 200 other applicants, the motion picture production attorney job they had open. Thank you, IU, for yet again accommodating the needs of one individual student.

As part of Plan “B,” I stayed at United Artists as if it was graduate school, learning all I could. Then, determined that I would not be trapped into being a lawyer for the rest of my life, I found a partner and mentor in Ben Melniker, the former Executive Vice President of MGM in its heyday. Together, we raised money, went back to DC with my new credentials, and bought the rights to “Batman.” Believing I had a 51% chance of success with “Batman” in my pocket, I rolled the dice and quit my job, becoming an independent movie producer by sneaking in the proverbial back door.

I thought everyone in Hollywood would line up to finance my dark, serious vision of “Batman.” Instead, I was turned down by every single studio in Hollywood. The rejections piled up quickly: “Michael, you’re crazy! No one’s ever made a movie based on an old TV series. It’s never been done!” “Michael, you’re insane! Nobody will watch a serious version of “Batman. They only remember the pot-bellied funny guy with the Pows! Zaps! And Whams!” “Michael, you’re nuts! (Do you see a pattern here by the way?) Your movie, “Batman,” will fail because our movie, “Annie,” didn’t do well.” I asked this exec if he meant the little red-haired girl who sings, “Tomorrow.” He shook his head affirmatively. “But what does she have to do with ‘Batman’?” He looked at me and said, “Come on, Michael, they’re both out of the ‘funny pages’.” That was my rejection. Finally, even good, old United Artists turned me down cold when its executive said to me, “Michael, you’re out of your mind! Batman and Robin will never work as a movie because the movie, “Robin and Marian” didn’t do well.” Now, that film starred Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn as an aging Robin Hood and Maid Marian. The man apparently turned down “Batman” simply because both movies had the word “Robin” in the title.

From the time we bought the rights to “Batman,” it took ten years for the film to come out. Ten years! Then, it broke one box-office record after another, finally prompting my Mother to stop asking me, “So when are you going to get a real job?” and it spawned an on-going worldwide franchise of movies, animation, videogames, toys, and best of all, last year’s great film made by the genius director, Chris Nolan, “Batman Begins.”

There are four simple but critically important lessons I’ve learned on this journey from Bloomington to Batman, which I’d like to pass along to you at this moment of your graduation:

First, sometimes you have to take calculated risks and roll the dice, or risk growing old and having to say, “I could have been….”

Secondly, you must believe in yourself and in your work. When our first “Batman” movie broke all those box-office records, I received a phone call from that United Artists exec from years before who told me I was out of my mind, that “Robin and Marian” guy. Now he said, “Michael, I’m just calling to congratulate you on “Batman.” I always said you were a visionary.” You see the point --- don’t believe them when they tell you how bad you are and how terrible your ideas are, but also, don’t believe them when they start telling you how wonderful you are and how great your ideas are. Just believe in yourself and believe in your work and you’ll do just fine. And, don’t then forget to market yourself. Use both sides of your brain.

Third, you must have a high threshold for frustration. Take it from the guy who was turned down by every studio in Hollywood. You must knock on doors until your knuckles bleed. Doors will slam in your face, I guarantee it. You must pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and go back and knock again. It’s the only way to achieve your goals in life.

Finally, follow whatever your passion is. Do something you love. My dad was a mason, starting at age 16 when he dropped out of school to help his family survive the Depression. Until he was 80 he worked six days a week no matter how hot or how cold out it was outside. He was an old world artist… a real craftsman who created magnificent fireplaces and homes out of bricks and stones. Every morning of my childhood, I saw my Dad jump out of bed before dawn, eager to get to work, a smile on his face. He was doing what he loved and I knew that was what I wanted out of life… to be able to wake up on a rainy Monday morning and be able to say, “Boy, I can’t wait to get to work!” But I had to find my own bricks and stones. Today, I challenge you to find yours.

If there’s one quotation that sums up my journey through life and the choices I’ve made, it’s the closing lines of a poem by Robert Frost, which I now pass along to you:

“I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”

Bats of luck, every one of you, and congratulations my fellow IU graduates!

Indiana University
Bloomington, IN
May 06, 2006

Posted on: 08.11.2006

## 7、大卫·L·卡尔霍恩（David L ·Calhoun）商人 2005年，弗吉尼亚理工大学

我在GE为一个名叫杰克·韦尔奇的家伙工作了20年。他既是一位伟大的领导者，也是一位伟大的导师。如果我必须找出这么多年他对我说的最慷慨激昂的主题，那就是自信。
自信是最重要的，它是成功必不可少的，是所有在其他方面大相径庭的伟大领导者的共同特征。
　　如何获得自信？培养你内心的自信的秘密是什么？
　　首先，你必须下决心每天都通过你的工作和家庭生活去获得智力、道德、技术与专业上的增进。你需要每天问自己：我是在加速还是在后退？我还在学习吗？我是在重复做同样的事情或就像奥蒂斯·瑞汀所说的那样“坐在海湾的码头上，看潮起潮落”？
　　对学习的渴望是不受年龄限制的。

培养自信的另一个重要途径是寻找最难的工作，最枯燥的科学、工程或管理的挑战。
　　
===============================
全文：

May 13, 2005

Thank you President Steger.

Going to school at Virginia Tech has been a family tradition…going back to my great-uncle William Slater Cowart, who graduated 95 years ago.

It's been 26 years since I sat out there in this stadium…a stadium then half this size…played in by a football team half as good as today's…and I received a degree that was probably half as good as the one you will receive at tomorrow’s ceremony.

I love this school. I love the way it never stops growing and getting better…

This is a day that will live on in your memories for forty…fifty…sixty years or more…years that will go by at a speed you cannot yet imagine.

Besides feeling incredibly honored, your invitation did a great thing for me…it caused me to spend some “quiet time”…away from the daily business of winning and losing…thinking over the…thousands of careers I have observed over the years…and over my own career…and what some of the great people I have known…have taught me.

Over the next eight minutes or so I will offer a view, influenced heavily by my investment in GE’s leadership development, of the personal characteristics you will need to cultivate…as you enter the real world tomorrow… in business… science… engineering… architecture… the military… whatever you now believe you want to do with your life.

I worked for a guy named Jack Welch for twenty years at GE. He was…and is…a great mentor as much as a great leader. If I had to isolate the subject he spoke most passionately to me about…over all those years…it is that SELF CONFIDENCE is the most important…the indispensable characteristic of success…the common characteristic shared by great leaders whose talents may have varied widely in most other respects.

Self-confidence…a quiet self-confidence…not cockiness…not conceit…not arrogance…is the key to winning…to excelling…no matter what you do in life.

Some of you may already have the beginnings of this confidence from academic…or athletic…or even social success…but in my experience…that will not be enough to get you through a career…and a life that will thrill you…rather than scare…or bore you.

Henry David Thoreau once said, “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” I don't believe that most do…but I do believe that quietly desperate people are the ones who never quite found their self-confidence.

So, how do you get it? What is the secret to developing your own brand of self-confidence?

First, you must resolve to grow…intellectually…morally…technically…and professionally…every day through your entire work and family life.

When I walked out of this stadium a quarter century ago… the half life of knowledge…particularly scientific and engineering knowledge… was probably five or six years. What I hope you will remember today is that unless you walk away from here resolutely determined to stay at the very leading edge of your profession… you will be out of touch and headed for irrelevance in just two or three years… or maybe sooner.

You need to be absolutely paranoid about the currency of your knowledge… and ask yourself every day… am I really up to speed? Or am I stagnating intellectually… faking it… or even worse… falling behind? Am I still learning? Or am I just doing the same stuff on a different day… or… as Otis Redding sings… “Sitting on the dock of the bay… watching the tide roll away”

The lust for learning is age-independent

In my world, we have 55 and 60-year-old engineers in our jet engine business, who are as leading-edge as anyone I know. Their lust for learning defines their very being… at work and in their communities. They have perfected the habit of learning… and they practice it every working hour… despite the fact that many of them are… already… the world's leading experts in their respective fields.

In contrast, we occasionally find a 30 year-old tip-toeing around the place who has already forgotten how to learn… who may have actually listened to someone who told them that “today marks the end of learning and the time to begin doing.” If you bring that mindset to companies like ours, your career will be short-lived. We compensate people for what we believe they will learn… for the discoveries that lie ahead… not for yesterday's news.

Great institutions have to do the same. Thanks to forward-looking leadership and learning, this wonderful school never stops growing… and because of that… it has helped you grow.

Starting tomorrow you must learn to grow on your own.

Another important way… to build your confidence… is to seek out the toughest jobs… the most daunting scientific… engineering… or management challenges. In my world, the world of business, we look for situations where intense global competition or technical innovation, threatens the very survival of a business. We ask our most talented people to take on these assignments. In these situations, your purpose is clearly before you when you wake up in the morning… and there is nothing like survival to engage the mind.

One of GE's greatest acquisitions has been a company called Amersham, led by man named Sir William Castell. A man approaching his sixties who now runs our enormous Healthcare business… and whose purpose in life… every waking hour… is to solve the Human Genome riddle and customizes therapy for each and every patient, Sir Bill has taught GE that while the great schools and companies can teach you process… it all means very little without purpose. Process without purpose is pretty much the definition of bureaucracy… rather than a formula for achievement and personal fulfillment.

Let me give you another example. September 11…2001…was Jeff Immelt's first real day on the job as the chairman and CEO of GE… and I had just taken over as CEO of the company's jet engine business.

Jeff and I were at an Aerospace Industry meeting in Seattle that awful day. We awoke early… Pacific time… to watch… in horror… as it unfolded on television. Both of us were afraid for our country… our way of life… and… finally… for our Company.

We were grounded for the next few days… stranded in Seattle… and unavoidably began to think through the implications of this event on our Company and its 350,000 associates. I got to observe this brand new 47 year-old CEO of the world's most respected company… steel himself for what lay ahead.

Jeff had… in his portfolio… our business… whose primary customer was the world's airline industry. GE owns and leases the largest fleet of airplanes in the world… a world that for all anyone knew, might not fly any more. Jeff also insured billions of dollars in property and buildings in the World Trade Center complex. NBC…yet another GE business… was operating 24/7 for weeks with no advertising… and hemorrhaging cash. With GE so intertwined in the global economy… and economy now a big question mark… virtually every business under Jeff lay under a cloud.

My view…and the consensus of my colleagues who know Jeff…is that he grew five years… in terms of stature… leadership skills…judgment… and…above all… self-confidence… in the year that followed the tragedy of 9/11. I know I learned more in one year than I had in the previous four. Difficult situations, bring real purpose and resolve in our decision-making.

Our confidence and belief in an ever more inter-dependent global economy sustained our commitment to invest and grow in these difficult markets.

While there is nothing that builds confidence more than winning against the odds… believe it or not… losing against great odds builds it as well. Most great companies… love people who take big swings… even if they have to walk back to the dugout on occasion and sit down. Seek out the businesses… the technical challenges… the government projects… that others are afraid to touch. The world will soon get to know you… and more important… you will get to know yourself.

Seek a real purpose. Seek to make a difference.

Now… on the subject of getting to know yourself. Evaluate strengths and weaknesses with cool objectivity. Even as your confidence grows you must suppress your ego… focus on your weaknesses and ways to overcome them. What are your sources of anxiety?

Years ago…still early in my career… I realized that I had no real experience with customers… a shortcoming that caused me great personal anxiety… particularly, in light of my boss's desire to promote me quickly into business leadership. So…against the advice of my boss…I took a job…and a demotion…to work in sales. Never made a better career move in my life. My confidence grew and my anxiety abated. You will have similar decisions to make.

At another period, I found myself envious of the courage and resourcefulness of GE executives who spent years in the developing world… in Southeast Asia… or in South America… with strange languages and business practices… and different time lines and ways of getting things done. So I uprooted my family… with their consent… and took a job in Asia… faced into the unknown… made more than a few mistakes… and am better for it… and so is my family.

Move to… or experience… a foreign country as early as you can in your career if you have not already. Go to China… to Southeast Asia… to North Africa… or to India. That is where the future is.

Know yourself… and to your own self be true. You may find some day three or four years from now that you simply don't like engineering… or teaching… or architecture… or government… or the company you started with. You have little in common with the people you work with, and relative to your peers, you find your interest waning.

At that point you have to muster whatever self-confidence you have… and every bit of your courage… and make the decision to do something else with your life.. It is always better sooner than later… to make that call.

Over the next few years, you will hear a lot about “work/life balance.”

This issue… at its heart… comes down once again to self-confidence.

Five short years after graduating from Virginia Tech, I fell into a terrible rut… hanging around the office twelve and fourteen hours a day. It was a habit I developed after joining GE's Corporate Audit staff. I routinely found myself getting home well after the kids fell asleep.

Then I took a job working for a GE Vice Chairman named Larry Bossidy. I quickly noticed a few things about Larry… who retired recently as CEO of Honeywell. Larry came to work at a reasonable time… and left in time for dinner… even if there was the ever-present possibility that Jack Welch might try to track him down in the evening.

By the time I started working for him he had nine children. He actually knew their names… and he actually went to a fair number of their games and school functions. Yet, if you surveyed the GE Leadership team at any time during Larry's tenure, they would tell you that Larry got more done than anyone they had ever known. The title of Larry's book “Confronting Reality… Doing What Matters to Get Things Right” says a little something about his philosophy.

Larry has… and I hope I now have… the self-confidence to let achievements… rather than time spent in the office… define our value.

Nothing on earth can replace my oldest daughter's volleyball games, my next daughter's concerts, my son's hockey games, or coaching my youngest daughter's basetball team… nothing on earth!

My father would sacrifice almost any amount of time to save a dollar. I …on the other hand… would spend almost any amount of money to save a minute. I consider myself very fortunate to have learned this vital lesson early.

There is one…final… attribute of self-confidence I would like to mention before I leave you… the one attribute you must not fail to make your own… if you have not done so already.

You must achieve the confidence of knowing that you possess absolute… unbending… unimpeachable integrity. Everyone must know that… above all else… it is integrity that defines your character.

With the parade of disgraced… indicted… CEO’s and CFO’s… accountants… and men and women and families caught up in things they never would have initiated on their own… you have to wonder when it was… exactly what day it was… that these people… whose lives are now in ruins… came to work and decided to… or were asked… to do something that was probably wrong.

On what day… at what moment… does this begin? When does that first bad cell split?

There may come a day in your career when you are asked to approve… or go along with… or wink at… or ignore… something that… if you go along with it… will have a positive impact on some measure or metric that you, your institution, or your friends will be judged favorably for.

You may know that day… that you… and your colleagues… are near the edge. The lawyers or compliance people may say it's “OK”… or “it shouldn’t be a problem”… or “that's the way they do business in China”… or Hungary… or in the insurance industry… or wherever. It is not the way of global business.

So understand that when you are conscious that you are near the edge… that line in the sand… that line in your soul… is moving closer to you… not further away. You must have the confidence… and the courage… to say, “No… we are not doing this.”

Then you can go home, look your family in the eye, and sleep like a baby.

And there is nothing more important in any career than the ability to do that.

This concludes my offering to you on your big day: the simplest and best advice I could think of… advice that I will continue to follow as my own career continues:

==> Grow your self-confidence… and move quickly to repair it when it is damaged by the setbacks and failures and mistakes that lie ahead for us all.

==> Continue to grow intellectually… and listen to the little alarm inside you that sounds when stagnation or boredom… or becoming a know-it-all… begin to creep up on you.

==> Tackle the toughest jobs and challenges… and watch yourself do more… and learn more… than you ever dreamed possible.

==> Understand the difference between process and purpose… and never begin a day without being able to articulate that purpose… even if it's only to yourself.

==> Know yourself… particularly your weaknesses… and don't let a day pass without moving toward eliminating them.

==> And understand that whatever else may fail you… whatever bad luck or failure may befall you… your personal integrity is always in your own hands and can never be taken from you.

Congratulations to you all… and to the families that love you and have supported you during these important years.

With the self-confidence you have earned, it is time for you to go out and make them even prouder.

Thanks…and good luck.

---

David L. Calhoun is president and CEO of GE Transportation and 1979 graduate of Virginia Tech
https://www.unirel.vt.edu/history/instruction_degrees_commencement/speeches/2005_calhoun.html

8、厄尔·巴肯（Earl Bakken）商人 2004年，夏威夷大学

主题：当你离开学校的时候需要养成的五个习惯

从空气动力学上讲，大黄蜂的生理结构是最不健全的，无论怎么说，它是最不擅长飞的。
但是，它们还是在不停地飞着，用它那像涡轮喷气式飞机一样的翅膀，带着它圆乎乎的身体飞到任何植物的花蕊上去采蜜。因此，它是最坚韧的生灵，纵然不擅长飞，也努力地扇动翅膀，克服自身的不足，让自己腾空而起。
　　千万不要屈服于悲观。不知道你不会飞，你会飞得像鹰一样高。
不要到头来埋怨自己因为自己太懒或太怕高飞而无所作为。做一只大黄蜂！飞到天上去！你会做到的。

Graduation Speech Excerpts
Five habits that will be important to you when you leave this university
"Aloha to Chancellor Rose Tseng, distinguished faculty, graduates, parents, and other honored guests. Thank you for the opportunity to address these marvelous young people today. I would like to congratulate each of them for the work, time, and effort they have put into their degrees. Francine, wherever life takes you, please stop at a Medtronic office. Your talents in psychology and communication are much needed by our company. We have over 2000 job openings in 120 countries and every major city on the U.S. mainland.
My compliments also to your department of Hawaiian Studies and Languages; this is a grand thing for our state. We must preserve the Hawaiian culture and language for future generations. The spirit of aloha contains much wisdom and compassion.

I would like to recognize three friends of mine who are here today. Together we hope to bring some major advances to the island. Max Goldberger is an alternative energy expert; Ron Toms is a rocket scientist; and John Craven is a submarine expert and Naval scientist. My aloha to all of you.

My talk this morning will be on five habits that will be important to you when you leave this university. They are often overlooked, but have meant a lot to me.

1. Pick a company or organization that is dedicated to helping humanity.
   Then your life will be dedicated to a worthy cause. In 1949 I started a company called Medtronic to repair medical electronic equipment. We began with two people, and now have over 31,000 employees in 120 countries around the world. In our first month we made eight dollars; this year the implantable electronic devices Medtronic has developed will make nearly nine billion dollars.
   In 1960 Medtronic created a mission statement, something not often done at the time. The company’s mission became my personal mission. Two weeks from now, I will be leading a "mission ceremony" in Minneapolis for 300 new employees who are making Medtronic’s mission their own.

One of our products is now implanted someplace in the world every six seconds. These devices can save a life or make a sick person well again. With millions of people receiving these devices, I am continually running into them. They say, "Mr. Bakken, I am alive because of your work," or "Mr. Bakken, you gave my child a good life she could not have had without the device." The experience is always very moving, very satisfying. If you join the right company or organization you will receive this kind of gratitude.

2. Do more work than is required.
   Find ways to go beyond the specifics of your task. Learn new things. Find work outside your direct assignment. Through high school I worked summers. My job was to run the copying machine. I started learning to use a desk comptometer on my lunch breaks. The boss needed another person to do the billing, and I got the job. Today, I still work all week, as well as most weekends and holidays. You need a strong passion and enthusiasm for your work. Above all, be on time! Surprise people.

3. "Ready, Fire, Aim."
   This is the approach I have used all my life. There are always decisions to be made. In my experience, it is better not to get caught up in over-analysis of a problem. Many of the decisions at Medtronic were made very quickly. The first pacemaker took only four weeks from concept to first use. The original design was not perfect, of course, but it worked. So if you feel positive in your gut, in your na ‘au, about your idea – do it. Don’t get stuck in the limbo of "Ready, Aim...Aim...Aim..."—and let someone else do the "Firing." Be there first!

4. Study continuously.
   Knowledge is increasing so rapidly—it is exponential. With the way things are going, the technical information you have learned in school will be obsolete in two years! You need to continue to read and learn all of your life. Today I receive 178 magazines and journals. I can’t read them all and mostly scan them, but I try to keep up. Continue the joy of learning, always.

5. Dream "out of the box." Be creative!
   The North Hawaii Community Hospital is very different from any other hospital in the world. It is designed to help heal the patients, rather than as a warehouse for their sick bodies. Making the building a part of the healing environment—with skylights, wide halls, and music—is what we call "blended medicine." The devices developed by Medtronic, the programs at Tutu’s House, the "Just Think" Mobile, the Bakken Museum, my "off the grid" home at Kiholo Bay—all these are "thinking out of the box."
   Live your life according to these five principles and follow your dreams. You can shape the future to make your dreams come true, but you must work for it. Don’t just hope it will happen.

By all reckoning, the bumblebee is aerodynamically unsound and shouldn’t be able to fly. Yet, the little bee gets those wings going like a turbo-jet and flies to every plant its chubby little body can land on to collect all the nectar it can hold. Bumblebees are the most persistent creatures. They don’t know they can’t fly, so they just keep buzzing around. Like the lowly bumblebee, honored graduates, never give in to pessimism. Don’t know that you can’t fly, and you will soar like an eagle. Don’t end up regretting what you did not do because you were too lazy or too frightened to soar. Be a bumblebee! And soar to the heavens. You can do it. Godspeed to you all."
Commencement Address Transcript no longer available at the source: www.earlbakken.com/content/publications/uh.hilo.pdf as of November 26th, 2013.
University of Hawaii
Hilo, HI
May 16, 2004

## 9、布兰德利·惠特福德（Bradley Whitford）演员 2006年 威斯康辛-麦迪逊大学
　
　　第一、爱上过程，结果自然会来。
　　
　　第二、做你的事。

第三、一旦你准备好，把你的准备丢进垃圾桶里。
　　第四、你能做的，超出了你的想象。
　　第五、聆听。
　　第六、采取行动。
　　你有一个选择。要么你成为环境的被动受害者，要么你成为你自己生命的英雄。行动是冷漠、玩世不恭与绝望的解毒剂。

全文：

8. Bradley Whitford, Actor

Commencement Address at University of Wisconsin, 2004

Take action. Every story you've ever connected with, every leader you've ever admired, every puny little thing that you've ever accomplished is the result of taking action. You have a choice. You can either be a passive victim of circumstance or you can be the active hero of your own life.

===============================

TRANSCRIPT
What's up, Mad City?!

It's great to be back in my hometown. On behalf of the acting president of the United States, I want to congratulate you all on your tremendous achievement.

A commencement address is what we call in show business a tough gig. You've got a huge room, you've got a big, distracted crowd that thinks they know everything about everything - and probably stayed out a little too late last night celebrating. I heard you at the hotel, by the way. And you've got a bunch of family members of various ages who you have to worry about offending if you happen to get a little too honest.

Somebody once said it's like being the body at a wake. They stick you in the middle of the room, but deep down they really don't want to hear a lot out of you.

The sad truth is, I don't even remember who the speaker was at my graduation. I remember squinting a lot and a vague sense that I would never again be around so many attractive, available young people in my life. It is my solemn duty to inform you that that fear is entirely well founded. This is coming from a guy who works in Hollywood, by the way.

So I begin this address not only with the full expectation that I will soon be forgotten, but with the additional humiliation that there will probably be no one there to remind you of who I was.

I just want to take a moment to note that the commencement speaker at Concordia College this year was the president of the United States, George W. Bush. Concordia has about 5,000 students. The University of Wisconsin has about 40,000. Yes, my friends, the question hangs over this beautiful Kohl Center like a foul stench. Why couldn't you get a more significant speaker?

Why would the University of Wisconsin, a school with a reputation and the stature to attract a genuine world leader - at least some uncelebrated public servant - the guy who runs the dog pound in Baraboo - somebody, for God's sake! Why would you opt instead for a glorified circus clown from a television show? I can't answer that question, my friends. This is uncomfortable for all of us. I feel your shame.

One thing I can tell you is that Concordia College is getting ripped off. George Bush did not write that speech. No way! A bunch of invisible White House lackeys, otherwise known as speechwriters, wrote it for him. And he just strutted up to the podium, he read it, and then he rode off into the sunset in his little taxpayer-funded 747.

Now, you may think that I am inappropriately taking this opportunity to attack the president on a meaningless issue because of my particular political persuasion -- and you would be correct. But I hereby challenge the leader of the free world to swear under oath that he wrote every word of the commencement address that he delivered. It is not gonna happen.

Yes, friends, take solace in the fact that if you had actually paid me anything to come here today, you would be about to get your money's worth. For better or for worse, this horribly disappointing choice of a commencement speaker had to write his own speech.

The first problem I faced when confronted with this grim task was that, as my wife and children will attest, aside from drinking coffee, I have only two areas of expertise - reproduction and acting. Let me begin with the one that I don't mind blabbing about to a room full of strangers -- acting.

You know, I get it. I know that it's not the most respectable way to make a living. I am perpetually assaulted by examples of children, quadrupeds and a wide variety of insufferable idiots who are, on occasion, capable of acting beautifully. This fills my life with bitterness.

The good news is that if you keep at it long enough and you actually get to make a living at this glorified high school extracurricular activity, you not only get a little better at it -- given enough chances, even a chimpanzee may type a dictionary -- but you begin to see that the process of acting has the potential to show us a little bit about how we might act a little better in our real lives. It comes down to about six basic principles. I call them "Everything I Need to Know in Life I Learned on My Way to a Humiliating Audition," and they go like this:

Number One: Fall in love with the process and the results will follow. You've got to want to act more than you want to be an actor. You've got to want to do whatever you want to do more than you want to be whatever you want to be, want to write more than you want to be a writer, want to heal more than you want to be a doctor, want to teach more than you want to be a teacher, want to serve more than you want to be a politician. Life is too challenging for external rewards to sustain us. The joy is in the journey.

Number Two: Very obvious - do your work. When faced with the terror of an opening night on Broadway, you can either dissolve in a puddle of fear or you can get yourself ready. Drown out your inevitable self-doubt with the work that needs to be done. Find joy in the process of preparation.

Number Three: Once you're prepared, throw your preparation in the trash. The most interesting acting and the most interesting living in this world has the element of surprise and of genuine, honest discovery. Be open to that. You've all spent the majority of your lives in school, where your work is assigned to you and you're supposed to please your teachers.

The pressure to get into wonderful institutions like this is threatening to create a generation of what I call hiney-kissing requirement-fulfillers. You are all so much more than that. You've reached the wonderful and terrifying moment where you must be your own guide. Listen to the whispers inside you. We have a lot of problems in this world and we're going to need you to think outside the box.

Number Four: You are capable of more than you think. If you've ever smashed a mosquito on your arm, there is a murderous Richard III inside you. If you've ever caught your breath at the sight of someone dipping their toes into Lake Mendota in the late afternoon sun over at the Union, you, too, have Romeo's fluttering heart.

Now, I'm not advocating that you all go out and bleach your hair so that you can play the jerk in a really stupid Adam Sandler movie. I don't know what kind of an idiot would think that is a worthwhile way to spend their life. But don't limit yourselves. Take it from the professional extrovert - the most gregarious among us are far more insecure than we would ever admit. We all go through life bristling at our external limitations, but the most difficult chains to break are inside us.

One of the few graduation speakers who will never be forgotten, Nelson Mandela, put it this way:

"Our worst fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world."

Let's just take a moment to hope that Nelson Mandela and Adam Sandler never again share a paragraph.

Number Five: Listen. It is the most difficult thing an actor can do and it is the most riveting. You can't afford to spend your life like a bad actor stumbling through a predetermined performance that is oblivious to the world around you. We can't afford it either. Listening isn't passive. It is an act of liberation that will connect you to the world with compassion and be your best guide as you navigate the choppy waters of love, work and citizenship.

And finally, Number Six: Take action. Every story you've ever connected with, every leader you've ever admired, every puny little thing that you've ever accomplished is the result of taking action. You have a choice. You can either be a passive victim of circumstance or you can be the active hero of your own life. Action is the antidote to apathy and cynicism and despair. You will inevitably make mistakes. Learn what you can and move on. At the end of your days, you will be judged by your gallop, not by your stumble.

Many of you started here in the fall of 2000. You go out into a world we could not have imagined four years ago. Ominous threats seek to distract us from achieving our spectacular potential as individuals, as a nation and as a delicate, shrinking planet. We need you.

Come as you are, armed with nothing more than the tools of a mediocre television actor. All we need is for you to find joy in your journey, to find satisfaction in hard work, to be aware of what is happening around you, to free yourself from your imagined limitations, to listen, and finally, to act - not to play make believe. This isn't a television show. The choices are difficult and the consequences are real.

No matter where you stand politically, we need you to participate in an urgent discussion about the future that we will all share. Some will question your qualifications to participate. We get a lot of that in Hollywood. I like to tell those people that there is nothing less American than telling another American to shut up - so they should shut up.

This is especially true when the stakes are so high. In the words of the great World War II hero and former U.S. Senator George McGovern, "The highest patriotism is not blind allegiance to official policy, but a love of one's country deep enough to hold her to a higher standard."

It has always been up to the people to hold this country up to its spectacular promise. Make no mistake about it - if you choose not to participate at the ballot box or in the urgent discussion about the world that we will one day pass on to the next generation, you no longer live in a democracy. You have sentenced yourself to a civic gulag dictated by the whims of those who choose to participate.

In short, my obnoxiously young friends, you don't just get democracy - you have to make it happen. I urge you to extend that call to action to every aspect of your lives.

Let me be clear - I want you all to stay the hell out of show business. The last thing I need is a bunch of young people invading my job market.

But I do want you to be an actor in your own life. Infuse your life with action. Don't wait for it to happen. Make it happen. Make your own future. Make your own hope. Make your own love. And whatever your beliefs, honor your creator, not by passively waiting for grace to come down from upon high, but by doing what you can to make grace happen -- yourself, right now, right down here on Earth.

I will leave you with something I have learned from my only other area of expertise, besides the coffee -- being a father. We sit in the shade of trees planted long ago. We have all arrived at this wonderful moment together because of countless gestures of hope made by generations that have preceded us -- the baby born, the family begun, the university founded, the care and nurturing of our schools, our communities, a wonderful variety of faiths and, of course, our families and their families before them.

The line of fire racing across time that we call life is burning brightly in all of you at this moment. We celebrate the joy of your achievement, but we must give thanks for all that brought us here. And we must be keenly aware that our stupendous good fortune carries with it an obligation to keep that flame burning brightly into the future for every living thing that is and is yet to be.

Congratulations, Class of 2004. Go out and plant some trees! Thank you.

Read the full commencement speech »

University Wisconsin - Madison
Madison, WI
May 17, 2004

## 10、伍迪·海耶斯（Woody Hayes）大学橄榄球教练 1986年 俄亥俄州立大学

在橄榄球场上，我们总是说其他队战胜不了我们。我们必须坚信我们不能打垮我们自己。所有人都必须这么做，确保自己不要被自己打垮。

全文：

Graduates, Mr. President, faculty members, friends and families of the graduates who have done
so much to make this possible.
Today is the greatest day of my life. And, Mr. President, you certainly helped to make it that way.
I appreciate it so much being able to come here and talk to our graduating class at The Ohio State
University, the great, great University that you and I love.
(APPLAUSE)

I am so grateful and so appreciative to be here today, I just can't tell you how much.

I would like to start out with something that I use in almost every speech, and that is the idea of
paying forward.

Paying forward - that is the thing that you folks with your great education from here can do for
the rest of your lives. I was so happy the other day when I saw in the paper about Jim Lachey,
who played here one year ago and comes back after one year of professional football to give a
six-figure gift to the University. And what he said was, "I received a great education here and I
got to play great football under Coach Bruce, and under a great football system here. I want to
help some other youngster to do the same thing."

Take that attitude toward life, because so seldom can we pay back - those whom you owe - your
parents and other people - will be gone. Emerson had something to say about that.

He said you can pay back only seldom. But you can always pay forward, and you must pay line
for line, deed for deed, and cent for cent. He said beware of too much good accumulating in your
palm or it will fast corrupt. That was Emerson's attitude and no one put it better than he did.

I might mention a couple of people. Jim Lachey is one who is already paying forward. Two weeks
ago in Michigan, a former football player of ours passed away. He was in his 60s. He had been in
the Marine Corps during World War II, on Okinawa - there were only 30 from his outfit that
survived. That made a difference in him. He came back to coaching and he was a great coach. His
name was Jack Castignola. He sent his son, Greg, here as one of our quarterbacks. Jack
Castignota won nine championships - undefeated season, and all that - but he did something
bigger: He coached 126 players who went on to college. One hundred and twenty-six players
went on to college and that was his way of paying forward.

We had a great dean of agriculture here by the name of Roy Kottman, who retired a couple years
ago. And on his retirement, he and I were having lunch one day in the Faculty Club, and I said,
"Roy, how did you happen to go to Iowa State?" "Oh," he said, "I was working back during the
Depression for $1.50 a day pumping gas and I couldn't save any money. But an old man in that
community in Iowa came to me and said, 'Roy, if you'll go to Iowa State, I'll pay your tuition.' So
I went to Iowa State and worked for my room and board, graduated, went into the service, came
back, got my master's, my doctorate, went to West Virginia as dean of the agriculture college, and
then I came to Ohio State." He was here 23 years, and in those 23 years, he virtually doubled food
production in Ohio. On top of that, he graduated thousands of youngsters. On top of that, he
helped to feed hungry mouths all over the world. All because that old man back in Iowa said,
"Roy, if you'll go to Iowa State, I'll pay your tuition." That's paying forward.

You know, I might give you a little advice today - not too much, but a little bit. One thing you
cannot afford ever to do is to feel sorry for yourself. You can't do it. You cannot feel sorry for
yourself because that's what leads to drugs, what leads to alcohol, and those things that tear you
apart.

In football, we always say, "That other team can't beat us. We have to make sure that we don't
beat ourselves." And that is what a person has to do, too - make sure that they don't beat
themselves. It takes an awful big man to beat you. So many times I've found people smarter than I
was. I found them in football - bigger, they could run faster, could block harder, they were
smarter people than I.

But you know what they couldn't do? They couldn't outwork me. They couldn't outwork me! And
I ran into coaches that I coached against who had a much better background than I did, knew a
lot more football than I did, but they couldn't work as long as I could. They couldn't stick in there
as long as I could.

Of course my health was good. And I had a wonderful wife who put up with that - she'd allow me
to stay and work. And I had great associations with my coaches. There was no one who had
better people than I did, or better football players. And, we outworked the other teams. The only
way we'd get beaten was if we got a little fatheaded, if we didn't train right, if we had dissension
on the squad.

Family is so enormously important. I'm going to tell a story I shouldn't tell, but ... (LAUGHTER)

I'm going to tell you about a student in your University right now. About a Rhodes Scholar, Mike
Lanese. I asked his mother over a week ago, and I said, "When did you realize this young man
was going to be outstanding?" She said, "When I was carrying him." (LAUGHTER)

And she said, "When I'd tell people that, they'd laugh." They don't laugh now. I talked to his dad.
I said, "When did you know he was going to be a great athlete?" "Well," he said, "by the time he
was in the seventh grade, he was coming along physically. You could tell he was going to be a
good one. But I found out something else when he was in the seventh grade - I found out he was
listening to his coaching instruction and the instruction we gave him." There's your good family.
For me, this goes all the way back to my grandmother and then right on down the line. She didn't
tell my dad, "Now, you go to the study table." No, no. She said, "I'll meet you at the study table' "
And that's where your good parents and good teachers are. They're talking now about all of this
tutoring you need for athletes and all that. We were doing that 35 years ago. Because I didn't send
those football players to the study table I met them at the study table.

When you deal with youngsters, when you get into jobs of any kind, don't send people to do it,
meet them there and help them do it, and you'll be amazed how it works.

Don't forget the other thing I mentioned: You can outwork anybody. Try it, you will find out that
you can do it.

You know in football, we do learn some wonderful things. And one of them is this. When you get
knocked down - which is plenty often - you get right up in a hurry, just as quickly as you can.
Then do you know what you do? You probably need more strength. You know where you get it?
You get it in a huddle. You get it by going back and getting a new play and running that play
together. "Together" is the thing that gives you the build-up to get ready to go again. And in your
lifetime, how well you can work with people will depend on how quickly you get back to them
and get together.

In football, you learn there's nothing that comes easy that's worth a dime. As a matter of fact, I
never saw a football player make a tackle with a smile on his face. (LAUGHTER)

Never.

We've had a great heritage. And so many times we've been so lucky you can't believe it. The odds
against us were unbelievable.

It started with the Battle of Salamis, 500 years before the birth of Christ, in Greece. The Persians
were there to conquer Greece and had burned Athens down. The Persians came in to whip them,
but the Greeks had been getting ready for 10 years. They had discovered silver on Mt. Larium and
they had taken that silver to help them make good ships - small ships that could maneuver. They
mousetrapped those Persians into the Bay of Salamis, and then they attacked with the metal
prows on their ships. They busted into them and the Persians couldn't get out of the way - they
were too awkward in their big troop-carrying ships. And in one day, they sank the Persian fleet
and drove it out of the gulf and all the way back to Persia. They drove them back, then the
Greeks got busy. Do you know what they did? They went over and rebuilt their city and decided
they needed a new type of government. They even had a name for it - "demos kratos." Did you
ever hear of "demos kratos"? "People rule"! That was the beginning of democracy. Right there
on the Bay of Salamis is where we got this great thing we have today.

A few years ago, the mayor of Stuttgart, West Germany, was here and I interviewed him on
television. He was the son of the great general, Erwin Rommel.

I asked him, "Did your father agree with Hitter's order to stop on May 24, 1940, when he was
within 40 miles of the English Channel?" He said, "Wait a minute, coach, there's something you're
not thinking about. My father did not have choices at all. He lived in a dictatorship. I live in a
democracy and you live in the greatest democracy in the world. You and everyone else in your
country have choices and decisions to make almost every day of your lives. My father didn't."
And that night when I got home, I started to wonder why he became so upset. I got to thinking,
what was the last decision his father made on this earth? The decision was to take poison and die
so that this boy and his mother could live. And that makes you appreciate democracy, when you
look at it that way. And you do have great, great decisions to make every day of your life.

It all started with "demos kratos," when they drove those doggone Persians back to where they
belonged.

This is much more recent, but we haven't heard too much about it. Another underdog victory.
The fellows who did it were your age - the Battle of Britain. They were 4-to-I underdogs against
Hitter's hordes. At that time, even the American ambassador to England was sending reports
back here that he didn't think the British could win.

The British didn't look at it that way. They fought - men, women and the boys who flew those
planes. And their mathematicians and scientists had done something that the German arrogance
didn't think could happen. They had broken the German code - the Enigma Code - with their
coding machine called the Ultra - and it was the "ultra." It was the best in the world. They knew
where the German forces were coming from. They knew at what time they'd get there. They knew
the point of attack, the formation, everything about them. Then these fighter planes of the British

• manned mainly by British, but some Americans, some Polish, some Canadians - would go up and
  strike them just as they were ready to lower their bombs. The air marshal didn't send them out
  over the English Channel - he didn't have that many. He was outnumbered over 2-to-1. He didn't
  want to waste their fuel and their strength out there. The one thing these young fellows - just your
  age, mind you - wanted in the world, was to get up there and fight, and then get back and have a
  couple of hours to sleep under a shade tree to get ready to go up and fight again.

That's the way they fought and won. Then, when the British had won, General Dowding was
criticized and fired. Well, there have been a lot of great men fired - MacArthur, Richard Nixon, a
lot of them. (LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE)

But, rather than knighting the air marshal for what he had done - and he had fought an
unbelievably great war - they sent him over here recruiting. He could have very easily straightened
things out by telling about the Ultra secret, but he wouldn't do that. He wouldn't do that because
he knew that Ultra was going to be needed for the rest of the war. The secret wasn't told for 35
years after that. And this man went to his death keeping that secret. And that was Air Marshal
Dowding - all honor to his great name, all honor. They won and they won for us, because if Hitler
had whipped England then and got the English Navy - that was a year-and-a-half before we got
into the war - we'd have never gotten into it and Hitler would have been here after that, you can
believe that. That's how fortunate we were to have those great British people. And do you know
what the greatest man in the war said about those fliers? He said, "Never has so much been owed
by so many to so few." He was referring to those British flyers who won that Battle of Britain.

I'd like to tell you about one more battle, and it's referred to yet as a miracle - the Miracle at
Midway. Underdogs? You can believe it. Well, let me tell you about it, quickly. (LAUGHTER)

Underdogs? The Japanese had eight battleships in the area. We had eight, but all of ours were in
the mud back at Pearl Harbor - this was six months after Pearl Harbor. The Japanese had 14
cruisers. We had five heavy cruisers. They had 45 destroyers, we had 15. They had a whole flotilla
of submarines there. They had eight admirals in the area. We had two. And one of them was asubstitute. Yet that substitute made two of the great decisions that were ever made in combat.

We had broken the Japanese code - the "purple code," the diplomatic code. We knew where they
were coming - at least Admiral Nimitz at Pearl knew. He had a great man, a Commander
Rochefort, who was his intelligence officer, who had spent three years in Japan before the war
studying their language, and he broke their language code. He broke it and we knew they were
coming to Midway. So the great advantage that Admiral Spruantz's substitute had was that he
sent his planes off early because he knew the Japanese were going for another strike on Midway,
and he hit their carriers when they had gasoline hoses all over the decks and land bombs were
there, and everything else was on the decks. At 10:30, the Japanese were winning the war. By 10:
36, they had lost it. Three carriers - the Caga, the Akagi and the Soryu - were sunk in six
minutes. They didn't go down until the next day, but they were mortally wounded. I talked to
Ensign George Gay, who was in the water for 30 hours - his torpedo squadron, every plane went
down; he's the only one who survived - and he said, "I had to hold my eye open to see the battle.
My left eye was burned shut, but I held my right one open with my two hands and I watched the
battle."

You know why they hit those ships? Teamwork, George Gay and Torpedo Squadron 789 went in
there and were practically totally decimated - they never got a strike on those carriers. But do you
know what they did? They brought down the air umbrella - the Japanese zeroes. And when they
came down to hit them, our high-level bombers came over and in six minutes, that's what
happened.

The thing that is so amazing about that is that those four ships that I mentioned (the three carriers
plus the Hiryu) and two more - the Shokaku and the Shobo, which had been knocked out at Coral
Sea, when the Japanese were trying to take Australia and we kept them from doing it - were the
six that had raided Pearl Harbor six months before, before war was declared. It took us three
more years in the Pacific. To win the war, Harry Truman had to use the atom bomb to save a
million servicemen's lives and a million Japanese lives. You may have heard other opinions about
that, but the truth is that he sat down with great men and he came to the conclusion that he had to
use it to save our lives. I never voted for Harry Truman, but I fought for him and I think he was a
wonderful, wonderful, great man.

But all of those things happened behind us. Our problems are before us. Russia, sure, is a
problem. How did they get that way? Believe it or not, communism came right out of the First
World War directly. The German general staff put Lenin into Russia to start that revolution.
That's exactly the way it started. Now, half the world is enslaved by communism. The atom bomb
is our other problem. It came out of Germany, too. It came out of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. A
little Jewish lady brought that to us. We had it for two-and-one-half years and never started to
build it until it looked like Hitter was going to win in '42. And that's when we started to build that
atom bomb. But it is a problem in the world today.

These wars always bring bigger problems than they settle. We can't have that. And yet it's up to us
to have such a good democracy that those people want it, too. Because right now, the communist
expects one thing - you should know this. He expects to conquer the world. And they're tough
people. They're just as tough as they can be, and yet we've got to live lives that are better than
theirs. There are problems whenever you try to help them. If you give them food, they'll end up
with a bigger army; if you give them technical devices they'll use them against us. The thing they
want worst of all right now is what we know so well - computers. Oh, they would love to have
our computers, but we can't let them have them. And we're going to have to work probably
through another generation to get this settled, if it ever will be. But that's a job that will be in your
future.

I'm going to tell you one little story about how education helps on this. Two years ago I was
down speaking in Georgia, and one of my former football captains is there, and he brought his
family for breakfast with me. He had a daughter that had been to a girls' school and the next year
was going to go to the University of Georgia. And do you know what she was going to do? She's
a pianist. She was going to work for two years and study Russian composers, then she was going
to study the Russian language for two years. On top of that she was going to study TV
communications so she could go to Russia. I think she'll be as fine an ambassador as we can have
there, because she is a lovely young lady. Things like that, work like that, decisions like that, will
help to change this and make it a better world.

And I have no idea, but you may have the attitude and the capacity and the ability to go on from
here and help to make this a greater, greater world. And God speed, in the meantime, to all of
you! Thank you very much.

-- Woody Hayes is head football coach and professor emeritus at The Ohio State University.