"I would like to suggest that you need to maintain a discipline of hope. I use the word ‘discipline’ intentionally. Like regular exercise is a discipline, so is the maintenance of hope. The more you do it, the easier it gets – but like establishing a regular pattern of exercise, it requires a certain amount of will power."

"Part of learning is to make a personal pledge to give back. The educated must not ignore the disenfranchised, the underprivileged, the poor, the unlucky. As we see on the news, thousands need a lift."

Now, once you say 'girls,' it sounds like it should be 'women,' but you get the point. Find other girls and men and people from around the world with whom you can collaborate and do great projects. No one holds the story anymore. When I was doing research at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, they wear around their necks lanyards that say 'Make Cancer History.' They understand that no one individual will make that history. Collaborations, teams, making promises to work well with one another.

Stay in the struggle. Stay strong. Be new. Be you. To each of you, I say: You go, girl!"

"An educated person never stops learning. In our world of talk radio, talk television and internet talk, there is no shortage of those who will gladly do your thinking for you. They will even sell you subscriptions to their opinions so that you can do more important things than forming your own.

One of the great ironies of our time is that our right to freedom of expression is so readily hijacked by a few who believe that only their expressions are worthy of listening to. Continue your learning process; exert independence of thought that gives true meaning to freedom."

"Gratitude can be the hallmark of our humanity. It lifts us out of isolation and ignorance by connecting us to others. And so here is my challenge to you.

If common sense, personal experience and scientific evidence show the worth of gratitude in human relations, how do we extend that value into the public square?

National service serves the individual imperative to be grateful – there’s no faster way to appreciate what you have than by seeing the greater needs of others. Widespread national service is the best way to create grateful citizens and serve social needs."

"There are plenty of challenges in today’s society that await you: violence, discrimination, consumerism, the environment, to name a few.

We live in a violent world. When you walk through life reverencing others, accepting with equal grace those you like and those you dislike, friend and foe alike, you’ll make a difference in this world.

Our world discriminates making judgments according to race, religion, cultural practices and economic means. When you embrace the differences, and work peaceably with diversity, you’ll make a difference.

"I am often asked what I think (Rachel) Carson’s final estimate of the future of the stream of life would be. Her particular remedy for entitlement was to instill in our children a ‘sense of wonder’ by which she meant awe in the face of nature’s mystery and majesty. To kindle a regard for its wild beauty and a comprehension of our intimate connection to it. She hoped that such a sense of wonder would make us care. This sounds like an ephemeral cure, but it is the basis of attitudinal change.

Rachel Carson (Chatham ’29) understood, as St. Exupery wrote in The Little Prince, that caring assumed involvement and responsibility. She insisted that our ‘obligation to endure’ makes it imperative for us to be active. We are part of the stream of life, and our future cannot be considered apart from the future of the whole."

"The only deprivation we have comes from ignorance. Embrace all of your limitations – they too are gifts. And accept other people’s limitations – those too are gifts. Celebrate their differences. Celebrate your differences. Never forget He who gave you those gifts; He makes no trash."

"If human conversation isolates itself from open debate and discussion with faith and religion, it will fall victim to its own arrogance and its own dogmatism.

After all, science, technology and politics aren't the only means for grasping the world or helping us decide how to live. They shouldn't be. Religion, ethics and our own Catholic faith as well as a global and historic religious community have a crucial role to play as well. College of Notre Dame has never forgotten that. Neither should you.

Every appeal for reason and every skill you gain in college to reason better brings you closer to a civilized and productive life and a richer faith. The religion, too, must always test itself against reason. Irrational claims anywhere are unworthy of us."

God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them.’

Bono has obviously heard his deeper call beneath celebrity and fame."

"You, the Columbia College Class of 2007, now possess a tremendous gift: the gift of a wonderful education. This is the greatest tool you have to make the right choices as you embark on the next chapter of your life. So I leave you with one last piece of advice – never give up. Mary McLeod Bethune, Susan B. Anthony, and Sarah Mae Flemming were faced with extraordinary obstacles.

They never gave up. When they came to a fork in the road, they chose the path that while treacherous, led to a long-term positive effect. I urge you to look down the path ahead of you, and search for those opportunities that will lead you to have a positive impact no matter how large or small. You have earned your degree, and it is now time to take your place as a ‘good steward of God’s varied grace.’"

"Use your mind and your soul. You leave here with a valuable, privileged asset: a liberal arts education, which has as its goal to teach one how to think – not how to compile "information” – that changes faster than we can speak of it – but how to divide the spurious from the real, the false from the true, to leave nothing of your experience unexamined, none of your principles untested.

"Today you graduate at a time when our sense of community is not bound by place or time, nor a still horizon.

Thanks to technology and other factors, we are connected in ways our ancestors never imagined. And you have the good fortune, not only to carry forward the hopes and dreams of those who came before you, but also to be champions both here and abroad of great causes, such as moving from illiteracy to literacy, injustice to justice, indifference and ignorance to caring and healing."

"Looking back over my life thus far – if I had anything to do differently – I would have taken more risks, not less. And in the process of taking those risks I would have been more deliberate and systematic in whittling down my fear of failure to the point that I could see – really see – that I exist apart from my deeds – good or bad – and apart from what other folks think about me or say about me.

At my best, I try to carry with me questions: What can I share? Whom can I comfort? What can and should I challenge in the name of what is good and right? For whom will I stick my neck out because they have been treated as less than human and deserve better? And finally, whom will I allow to really know me?"