Addresses

 Speech by Dave Packard to HP Managers March 8, 1960 I'm glad to have this opportunity to get together with you and discuss how each of us can do our job more efficiently because as the company grows l think this is going to be crucial in determining whether we are able to continue to grow and keep an efficient organization and maintain the character of our company which we think is important. I am going to speak about things in general, hopefully to give you an idea of our overall objectives....

The "Peanut Butter Manifesto"Brad Garlinghouse to Yahoo! EmployeesNovember 2006 Three and half years ago, I enthusiastically joined Yahoo ! The magnitude of the opportunity was only matched by the magnitude of the assets. And an amazing team has been responsible for rebuilding Yahoo! It has been a profound experience. I am fortunate to have been a part of dramatic change for the Company. And our successes speak for themselves. More users than ever, more engaging than ever and more profitable...

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates. The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I have endured at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and convince myself that I am...

This is a speech by John Gardner delivered in 1990 to McKinsey & Company: I’m going to talk about “Self-Renewal.” One of your most fundamental tasks is the renewal of the organizations you serve, and that usually includes persuading the top officers to accomplish a certain amount of self-renewal. But to help you think about others is not my primary mission this morning. I want to help you think about yourselves. I take that mission very seriously, and I’ve written out what I have to say...

Written by Maya Angelou When great trees fall,rocks on distant hills shudder,lions hunker downin tall grasses,and even elephantslumber after safety. When great trees fallin forests,small things recoil into silence,their senseseroded beyond fear. When great souls die,the air around us becomeslight, rare, sterile.We breathe, briefly.Our eyes, briefly,see witha hurtful clarity.Our memory, suddenly sharpened,examines,gnaws on kind wordsunsaid,promised walksnever taken. Great souls die andour...

A speech written and delivered by Seth Klarman before Harvard Business School students and alumni at the opening of Klarman Hall I suspect there’s a great deal that most of us can agree on about capitalism. The free enterprise system, of which HBS is an essential part, has lifted billions of people around the world out of poverty. It provides the backdrop for unleashing boundless human potential. It has made the US an economic powerhouse. It has played a major role in capital being allocated...

The lecture below was delivered to the plebe class at the United States Military Academy at West Point in October 2009. My title must seem like a contradiction. What can solitude have to do with leadership? Solitude means being alone, and leadership necessitates the presence of others—the people you’re leading. When we think about leadership in American history we are likely to think of Washington, at the head of an army, or Lincoln, at the head of a nation, or King, at the head of a...

CITIZENSHIP IN A REPUBLIC Theodore RooseveltSpeech delivered at the SorbonneParis, FranceApril 23, 1910 The Famous Quote: “The Man In The Arena” It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort...

Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s Report to the House of Commons 4 June 1940 From the moment that the French defenses at Sedan and on the Meuse were broken at the end of the second week of May, only a rapid retreat to Amiens and the south could have saved the British and French Armies who had entered Belgium at the appeal of the Belgian King; but this strategic fact was not immediately realized. The French High Command hoped they would be able to close the gap, and the Armies of the north...

June 3, 2012 We had a patient at my hospital this winter whose story has stuck with me. Mrs. C was eighty-seven years old, a Holocaust survivor from Germany, and she’d come to the emergency room because she’d suddenly lost the vision in her left eye. It tells you something about her that she was at work when it happened—in the finance department at Sears. She’d worked her entire life. When her family left Nazi Germany, they narrowly avoided the concentration camps but ended up among...

September 7, 2012 Barton (1932 - 2012) I walked with him. I talked with him. I golfed with him—played squash, tennis, lifted weights with him—climbed mountains with him. I travelled the world with him—I helped create new investment worlds with him. I started funds, businesses and companies with him. I laughed with him. Even cried with him. I discussed, debated and dueled with him. I got yelled at and kicked in the ass by him. I hugged him. I occasionally managed to bully him. I'm perhaps the...

President Ronald Reagan – On the 40th Anniversary of D-Day Pointe du Hoc – Normandy, France6 June 1984 We're here to mark that day in history when the Allied armies joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For 4 long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue. Here in Normandy the rescue began. Here the Allies stood and...

September 20, 2010 President and Mrs. Arnn, Mr. John Cervini, Mr. David Bobb, Elliot Gaiser, College Republicans and each and every one of the faculty and students of Hillsdale College here today.... As I am sure you know, honor is what allows us to do what is right despite the cost. Even greater honor is required to do what is right in the face of superior power. And the greatest honor is to stand strong even if it means standing alone. The long fight of Hillsdale College, standing alone —...

Admiral William McRaven (USN, Retired) 2014 Commencement Address University of Texas at Austin  President Powers, Provost Fenves, Deans, members of the faculty, family and friends and most importantly, the class of 2014. Congratulations on your achievement. It's been almost 37 years to the day that I graduated from UT. I remember a lot of things about that day. I remember I had throbbing headache from a party the night before. I remember I had a serious girlfriend, whom I later married —...

Charles Munger - USC Business School I'm going to play a minor trick on you today because the subject of my talk is the art of stock picking as a subdivision of the art of worldly wisdom. That enables me to start talking about worldly wisdom—a much broader topic that interests me because I think all too little of it is delivered by modern educational systems, at least in an effective way. And therefore, the talk is sort of along the lines that some behaviorist psychologists call Grandma's rule...

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit....

Transcription of the 2005 Kenyon Commencement Address - May 21, 2005Written and Delivered by David Foster Wallace (If anybody feels like perspiring [cough], I'd advise you to go ahead, because I'm sure going to. In fact I'm gonna [mumbles while pulling up his gown and taking out a handkerchief from his pocket].) Greetings ["parents"?] and congratulations to Kenyon's graduating class of 2005. There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other...

Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans. Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn’t consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day? Sure I’m lucky. Who wouldn’t consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the...

President Pitzer, Mr. Vice President, Governor, Congressman Thomas, Senator Wiley, and Congressman Miller, Mr. Webb, Mr. Bell, scientists, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen: I appreciate your president having made me an honorary visiting professor, and I will assure you that my first lecture will be very brief. I am delighted to be here, and I'm particularly delighted to be here on this occasion. We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a State...

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live....