Oprah Winfrey and Bill Gate´s Commencement Speeches at Harvard

The commencement ceremony encourages each student’s search for knowledge. It often includes a speech which seeks to put their recent hard work into the context of their future. Oprah Winfrey’s Harvard commencement speech and Bill Gates’s Harvard commencement speech both give Harvard graduates important advice for the future. While there are differences between Oprah Winfrey and Bill Gate’s commencement speeches at Harvard, they both agree that students should find a purposeful cause in their lives and find the solution. Both speeches are full of ideas that are geared to motivate the graduates, help them set goals, and strive for things in life. The speeches give them a message to takeaway for later. Not all speeches are the same but they seem to have similar running theme to them.

These speeches both have motivating factors to them, and I felt in Winfrey’s it was this quote. “It doesn’t matter how far you might rise. At some point you are bound to stumble because if you’re constantly doing what we do, raising the bar. If you’re constantly pushing yourself higher, higher the law of averages not to mention the Myth of Icarus predicts that you will at some point fall. And when you do I want you to know this, remember this: there is no such thing as failure” (Winfrey, 2013). This quote was a real motivating factor in her speech because it lets us know that as we succeed in life sometimes we fall and that’s ok. Along as the graduates are pushing themselves towards the top it doesn’t matter what happens along the way it’s just part of the ride. Bill Gates’s motivation point was when he said “When you consider what those of us here in this Yard have been given – in talent, privilege, and opportunity – there is almost no limit to what the...

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...gs are great to have any graduate think about, as they are starting the next chapter of their lives.

And while, both speeches were amazing and engaging in their own ways, they both motivated their audiences and made them think about how they can change peoples' lives. They let them know that people in the world need help and that have the solutions to help them. They challenged them to take on the problems and to make a difference. While the speeches are not exactly the same they have similar themes running through them. These are truly two of the most amazing people who have given this world so much.

Works Cited

Gates, B. (2013). Harvard commencement speech. In The writer’s guide from Soomo Publishing.

Retrieved from www.webtexts.com

Winfrey, O. (2013). Harvard commencement speech. In The writer’s guide from Soomo

Publishing. Retrieved from www.webtexts.com