Read the transcript of President Donald J. Trump’s commencement speech at the University of Alabama on May 1, 2025.
Listen to the audio version here:
Opening Remarks: Beating the Odds
President Donald J. Trump: …ever, ever, ever before. It’s going to be. As you embark on this great adventure, let me share some of the biggest lessons I’ve learned from a lifetime spent building dreams and beating the odds. I beat a lot of odds. Lot of odds. A lot of people said, I don’t know. But it worked out okay. Where are we? Oh, gee, I’m President. How did that happen? Now, you’re going to be in the same position. But some of the things — would you like to hear some of the ideas, or should I just skip over that part, huh? That’s going to be more interesting than all the other stuff, which was slightly political, right? I’m going to give it to you, though, just as I see it and as I’ve learned it — the hard way and the easy way.
Lesson One: You’re Not Too Young for Greatness
First, if you’re here today and think that you’re too young to do something great, let me tell you that you are wrong. You’re not too young. You can have great success at a very young age. You’re all very young. In America, with drive and ambition, young people can do anything. I was 28 when I took my first big gamble to develop a hotel in Midtown Manhattan, the Grand Hyatt. And it worked out incredibly well. But I was very young at the time. I was like a very young person in sort of an old person business. Steve Jobs was 21 when he founded Apple. Walt Disney was 21 when he founded Disney. James Madison, James Monroe, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson — they were no older than 25 when they began the journeys that etched their names into the history books for all time.
So, to everyone here today, don’t waste your youth. Go out and fight right from the beginning, from the day you leave this incredible university. Go out and fight. Fight tough. Fight fair. But go out and fight. You’re going to be very successful, because now is the time to work harder than you have ever worked before. Push yourself further than you have ever pushed yourself before. Find your limits and then smash through everything. Go and smash through. You’ve watched that football team smash through. You’re going to do the same thing. You’re at the age when you have the time and vitality to do really incredible things. If you give, just give it your all. You’ll look back, and a decade from now, you’ll be astounded by what you’ve achieved. You’ll remember this day. You’ll remember when the guy named Trump was giving the commencement address, and he said, I could do it. And guess what? I did. I think you’re going to remember that very fondly. I hope so.
Lesson Two: Love What You Do
Second of all, and very importantly, you have to love what you do. Okay? You have to. I rarely see somebody that’s successful that doesn’t love what he or she does. That’s the way you really, like, work isn’t work. It’s fun. It’s — I find it fun. I work all the time, and I find it fun. If I didn’t find it fun, I wouldn’t be successful, whether it was real estate or in showbiz. I had a lot of different careers, but I loved real estate so much. And I was very successful at real estate because I loved it.
I learned a lot from my father because I watched him work. He worked seven — he was a workaholic. He worked. He loved to work. He’s a good man. He was a tough guy. Tough as hell, actually. Now that I think back, I don’t know if you could even get away with that nowadays. He was tough, but he was a good man, I’ll tell you. And he worked seven days a week. He worked Saturdays, Sundays. It didn’t matter. And I learned by watching him. He loved his life. He loved what he was doing. He had a great long-term marriage — a long, long, many, many, many years. He beat me on that one.
Now, I find him very successful, but they — Kevin lasted quite as long. It was close to — it was close to 70 years. That was a long time. I said, Pop, you beat me on that one. But you know what I learned from him? That he just — he loved life, and all he did was work. I see people that don’t work hard, and they’re miserable. So go out and find — but he loved what he was doing. And you have to find something that you love. And you have to follow your own instincts. Listen to your parents. They’re very wise. But you have to follow your instincts and your heart, your soul. And you want to be the very, very best you can be. Treat every day like a home game against Auburn. Fight like hell and enjoy doing it. And your coach can tell you all about that.
Lesson Three: Think Big
The third thing is to think big. You know, you’re going to do something, you might as well think big. Because it’s just as tough. You can think small. I know a lot of people, they thought small. They’re very smart. I know others that weren’t nearly as smart, but they had a better picture of the big picture, because it’s just as hard to solve a small problem as a big problem, and it’s just as much energy and everything else, except the result is going to be a smaller one. So love what you do, but think big, if it’s possible. Now, if it’s not possible, that’s okay, too.
You do something — you have to do something that you love. You will have all the same headaches and challenges, all the same delays and setbacks, so you might as well do something that’s just amazing. America doesn’t aim small. Alabama doesn’t aim small, and neither do you. So think big when possible. Think big.
Lesson Four: Work Hard and Never Stop
Fourth is work hard. Work hard. Never, ever stop. An example is a great athlete, actually — Gary Player. Golfer. Great, great golfer. He wasn’t as big as other men. He was actually on the small side. Don’t tell him that, friend of mine. Don’t tell him that, because he doesn’t understand that. But he worked very, very hard. He made up for it. He never stopped. He won 168 golf tournaments. Think of that — 100. I said, Gary, you’re winning like every weekend. Do you ever choke or anything? I don’t know what choke means. And he made a statement years ago that I read, and I thought it was sort of an incredible statement. He said, “It’s funny, the harder I work, the luckier I get.” Right? Think of that. “The harder I work, the luckier I get.” So you really have to work hard, and you’re going to be successful because you have the talent. To get into this school is not easy. To get through it is even more difficult. You have a lot of talent.
Fifth is don’t lose your momentum. Just — you just want to keep it going. And you have to know if you are losing it, you have to know when you’re losing it. So maybe you stop, and maybe it’s time to stop. Listen to the feedback. Think through your plan very carefully. And keep moving fast. The word momentum is very important.
I mean, I’ll just tell you a little story about a great real estate developer named William Levitt. He built Levittown. Some of you might live in a Levittown. He was the biggest developer of the whole country in the 1940s and so. And he built these jobs. He started with one house, then two houses, then 20 houses, then thousands and thousands of houses. And a company, Gulf and Western, came along, and they said, “We’re going to make you an offer to buy your company.” And they offered him a lot of money. A lot of money.
More money than he ever thought he could make. And he retired. Lost his momentum. He retired, and he led a beautiful life. He had a wife, I must tell you. It was his second wife. It was a trophy wife, what can I say? I don’t like telling you everything, but we’re all friends, right? Can we talk? We’re all friends. He had a trophy wife. And he lived a different life. He moved to the south of France, but he lived — it was a life of tremendous luxury. He had so many millions of dollars. He was given a fortune for the company. And 10 years went by, and then 15 years went by, and he got a call from this big conglomerate, Gulf and Western, and they said, we’re not doing well with the purchase because he used to pick up every nail, every piece of sawdust, every piece of wood, every chip, everything, and he’d sell it. He’d make a couple of bucks. Everything was perfect. They can’t do that.
You know, these big companies, they don’t do that. You see it a lot when an entrepreneur sells to a big company, and then he ends up buying the company back for peanuts later on. Happens a lot. But he was the best at what he did. But 15 years went by, and he was so excited, and they sold him back his company. And he started — and he was going to tear apart the world because he got bored with a life of luxury. And he started building and building and building. And the markets turned on him, and he went bad. He lost everything, and he went bankrupt. Absolutely bankrupt. And it was a sad story to read. It was such an amazing story because he was so rich, but he paid them, and he bought it for the right price, bought it low, but he went wild. But he lost his momentum. He wasn’t good at it anymore.
And he was at a party on Fifth Avenue, I’ll never forget. And it was a party of a very, very powerful man who was having the party in a magnificent apartment overlooking the park. And I walked in, and there were 50 or so people. I recognized most of them. All the biggest business people in the world, actually. Very glamorous. I was doing well. I was young, and I was doing well. And I was invited to parties like that. And I looked in the corner, and there was Mr. William Levitt sitting all by himself on a chair, looking very glum. Nobody was talking to him. Because you’ll find that when you’re not successful, you lose a lot of friends. It’s not a good situation. But there was nobody talking to him.
But I wanted to talk to him because I was in the real estate business, and he was. And most of these people were in different businesses. And I went over and talked to him, and I said, “How are you, Mr. Levitt?” He goes, “Donald.” He knew who I was. Not well. “I’m not well.” I said, “So, can you come back?” He said, “No, son. I lost my momentum. I shouldn’t have done it. I lost my momentum.” And I never forgot that expression. He lost his momentum.
If he would have kept going, instead of selling and relaxing and going into a different life, he probably would have been three times bigger than he was. But he lost his momentum. And you have to know when it’s your time. I mean, there’ll be a time when you do lose. You see it with fighters. You see it with a lot of people. They have a great record, and they retire. Then, four years later, they say, “I’m going back. I can beat that guy.” And they get knocked to hell. And it’s not good. It’s not good. So, he lost his momentum. You have to know when your momentum time is up. I call it momentum time. But follow your momentum. It’s a very important word. You don’t hear it from too many, but I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it a lot.
Have the Courage to Be an Outsider
Number six, if you want to change the world, you have to have the courage to be an outsider. In other words, you have to take certain risks and do things a little bit differently. Otherwise, if that weren’t the case, everybody would be successful. It doesn’t work that way. Progress never comes from those satisfied with the values of a broken system. It comes from those who want to fix the broken system. And you’ll make the bigger money, you’ll make them more success by acting that way. The other way may be more secure, but if you want to go to the top, you’re just never going to do it unless you break the system.
Change is never easy, and the closer you get to success, the more ferociously those with a vested interest in the past will resist you. They want to resist. So I just say, trust me on that because I know you really do. You have to break the system a little bit and follow your own instincts. But if your vision is right, nothing will hold you down. Nothing. You have to have the right vision.
