I know there were some parents that were concerned about my speech here tonight, and I want to assure you that you will not hear any language that is not common at, say, a dock workers union meeting, or Tourrett’s convention, or profanity seminar. Rest assured.

—Jon Stewart at William and Mary, 2004

I would like to add something that’s not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the layman when you’re talking as a scientist. I am not trying to tell you what to do about cheating on your wife, or fooling your girlfriend, or something like that, when you’re not trying to be a scientist, but just trying to be an ordinary human being. We’ll leave those problems up to you and your rabbi. I’m talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you’re maybe wrong, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen.

—Richard Feynman at Caltech, 1974

I hope instead that when you are “old and gray and full of sleep,” as the poet William Butler Yeats once wrote, that you can say that your goal in life was not the perfection of work alone but the perfection of a life.

—Doris Kearns Goodwin at Dartmouth, 1998

This is not the Worcester, Mass., Boat Show, is it? I am sorry. I have made a terrible mistake. Ever since I left Saturday Night Live, I mostly do public speaking now. And I must have made an error in the little Palm Pilot. Boy. Don’t worry. I got it on me. I got the speech on me. Let’s see. Ah, yes. Here we go.

—Will Ferrell at Harvard, 2003

Don’t let The New York Times article about the brilliant success of Wellesley graduates in the business world fool you — there’s still a glass ceiling. Don’t let the number of women in the work force trick you — there are still lots of magazines devoted almost exclusively to making perfect casseroles and turning various things into tents.

—Nora Ephron at Wellesley College, 1996

A commencement speech is a particularly difficult assignment. The speaker is given no topic and is expected to be able to inspire all the graduates with a stirring speech about nothing at all. I suppose that’s why so many lawyers are asked to be commencement speakers; they’re in the habit of talking extensively even when they have nothing to say.

—Sandra Day O’Connor at Stanford, 2004