Google’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt delivered his commencement address at 2012 Boston University Commencement ceremony on May 20, 2012. Here is the full transcript.
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Introducing speaker: I now call upon Eric Schmidt to deliver the 139th Commencement address of Boston University.
Eric Schmidt – Executive Chairman, Google
Thank you. Well thank you all. It’s great to be here, and it’s an honor to have been invited. It’s an honor to look out on the next generation of BU Terriers. Now let me give you a quote: “I am a true adorer of life, and if I can’t reach as high as the face of it, I plant my kiss somewhere lower down. Those who understand will require no further explanation.”
Well, graduates, now let me to explain. You used to have a professor here — a decent writer by the name of Saul Bellow. And this comes from his novel “Henderson and the Rain King.” And I stand before you today as someone who considers himself an adorer of life. I know what it’s like to plant a kiss on a life lived fully , and I can tell you from experience that, once you understand that, Professor Bellow’s right: that no further explanation is necessary. Live it to the full.
It’s one quote from countless beautiful lines he wrote over his career. But I feel it best sums up an approach that contains the power to transform an ordinary life into one filled with grace and love and dignity.
And it also best, in my view, sums up what a fantastic university like BU tries to inculcate in every one of you who sets foot on this beautiful campus. And you just look at that. And scientists, engineers, writers, business pioneers, governors, Olympic gold medalists, Oscar winners, cabinet secretaries, they all walked across this stage and left their mark on the culture, on society, and on the world.
And, my God, even Martin Luther King is Doctor King because of the PhD that he got here. Pretty amazing. And now you follow. You right, sitting there now, baking in the sun, thinking about the Celtics game tomorrow, possibly nursing a hangover — there’s one down here I’ve been watching — saying to yourself — she knows who she is — “Wow, that’s a lot of pressure. What can I do?” “Where can I plant my kiss?”
Well, that’s your question to answer. I can’t do it for you. But what I know, is I know one thing for certain: No graduating class gets to choose the world they graduate into — just as you can’t choose your siblings and your parents. Welcome to them too of course.
Now every class has its own unique challenges. Every class enters a history that, up to that point, is being written for it. This is no different.
What is different, though, is the chance that each generation has to make history and to make it larger or, in my business, to program it better. And, on that score, your generation’s opportunities are greater than any generation’s in modern history. You can write the code for all of us. You’re connecting to each other in ways those who came before you could never dream of. And you’re using these connections to strengthen the invisible ties that hold humanity together, and to deepen our understanding of the world around us. You are emblems of the sense of possibility that will define this new age.