Tag: commencement speech

The Top 10 Words in Commencement Speeches

NPR have a wonderful speech database with over 350 great commencement speeches on their resource The Best Commencement Speeches, Ever

What are the Most Common Words?

Excluding prepositions and other super-common words, the most frequent words appearing in this database of Great Commencement Speeches were:

  1. Life
  2. Make
  3. People
  4. World
  5. Yourself
  6. Make
  7. Success
  8. Generation
  9. Define
  10. Human

Source: The Top Words of Wisdom for Graduates on NPR, (accessed 7 May 2019)

Commencement Speech: Emmanuel Faber – “Who is your Brother?”

I’ve just added another great Commencement speech to my youtube playlist: Commencement Speeches

Emmanuel Faber gave the commencement address at HEC this year, 2016.

The first half is in french, the last in english.  Emmanuel tells a powerful personal story, describes 3 diseases, and asks us a question…

This is a powerful speech.  You’ve got to watch the video to hear Emmanuel’s story…

The 3 Diseases…

  1. Power – People who have power but do nothing with it, only protect their hold on power… Power makes sense only if you serve a purpose.
  2. Money – You chase money, you become a prisoner of money. Remember why you chase the money.
  3. Glory – Hall of fame is so that people can look at their own name.  Don’t lose yourself just to see your name on a wall.

The Question

Who will you allow to ask you the important questions?   (Who is your brother?)

Watch Emmanuel’s speech here:

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