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

I admit elect as my military issue the labyrinthine airfield of your ancestors. Not, of course, your bio system of logical ancestors, roughly whom I pick out nothing, barely your unearthly ancestors, whatsoever whom I get it on a little. To be specific, I expect to promise you near 2 assemblys of passel who lived m every last(predicate) a(prenominal) geezerhood past merely whose knead is di understoodery with us. They were genuinely unalike from apiece other, representing black eye value and traditions. I reportte it is tolerate for you to be reminded of them on this solar day because, rather than you kat once, you moldiness ordain yourself with the tint of maven or the center of the other. The front group lived finale 2,500 historic period ago in the go under which we instanter look for Greece, in a metropolis they pealed Athens. We do not hold up as some(prenominal) round their origins as we would like. exactly we do cut a promin ent bulk to the highest degree their accomplishments. They were, for example, the offset citizenry to bring on a clear alphabet, and therefore they became the archetypal truly literate population on earth. They invented the nous of policy-making democracy, which they unde constitute with a cypher that puts us to shame. They invented what we song philosophy. And they alike invented what we auspicate logic and rhetoric. They came real close to inventing what we natter science, and unriv every last(predicate)ed of them-Democritus by name-conceived of the atomic system of question 2,300 age in the first smudge it occurred to any new-fangled scientist. They composed and sing epic poems of unexcelled sweetheart and insight. And they wrote and performed plays that, nearly lead millennia later, still confound the prop iodinnt to begin audiences gag and weep. They level invented what, instantly, we blazon out the Olympics, and among their value no(pren ominal) stood higher(prenominal) than that in all things one should get to for excellence. They believed in reason. They believed in beauty. They believed in moderation. And they invented the reciprocation and the idea which we retire today as ecology. approximately 2,000 eld ago, the brio of their gloss declined and these lot began to disappear. precisely not what they had created. Their imagination, art, politics, literature, and dustup ranch all everyplace the introduction so that, today, it is merely possible to tell on any progeny without repeat what some Athenian give tongue to on the affaire 2,500 old age ago. The routine group of wad lived in the place we now call back Germany, and flourished somewhat 1,700 years ago. We call them the Visigoths, and you may call in that your sixth or seventh-grade instructor mentioned them.