Quotes

[commencement address at Wake Forest University, 2025] Do not settle. You only get one pass at this. This world is going to tell you no a thousand times, but listen to the song in your heart. If they can't hear it, that's on them and not on you.

[commencement address at Wake Forest University, 2025] You might be sorry that you were picked by history for this role. But maybe that was the plan. Hard times are going to make you better and stronger. In a few minutes, when that diploma hits your hand, it's not a piece of paper you're holding. We're handing you a baton. Run with it.

[commencement address at Wake Forest University, 2025] Why am I here today? I'm 50 years farther down the trail than you are, and I have doubled back this morning to tell you the one thing I have learned from Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Nadia Murad and Samer Attar and a thousand others: In a moment like this, when our country is in peril, don't ask the meaning of life. Life is asking, "What's the meaning of you?"

[commencement address at Wake Forest University, 2025] The Wake Forest Class of 1861 did not choose their time of calling. The Class of 1941 did not choose. The Class of 1968 did not choose. History chose them. And now history is calling you, the Class of 2025. You may not feel prepared, but you are. You are not descended of fearful people. You brought your values to school with you and now Wake Forest has trained you to seek the truth, to find the meaning of life.