The Best Commencement Speech
This timeless classic reminds us of what truly matters
“Your guidepost stands out like a tenfold beacon in the night”
— General Douglas MacArthur, 1962
It’s commencement season — when high schools, colleges, and universities celebrate grads (and undergrads) and bestow upon them the gift of wise words, courtesy of a commencement speaker.
I recall the spring days on the campus of Boston University buzzing with excitement. I was there for my master’s and bachelor’s degree work and was part of the administration, so I saw my fair share of those days leading up to commencement.
Before the commencement speaker was announced, the student body would be alight with rumors, suspicions, and educated guesses.
The university always had its reasons for making a selection (wooing a wealthy alumnus, the star power of a celebrity, the political horse-trading related to municipal land deals…), so when the speaker was finally revealed, the name was met with a shrug, a thrill, or a yawn.
But the speech itself might surprise even those with the highest expectations.
One example of this occurred in 1962.
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Making a Point
West Point is the premier military academy in the United States, training and educating cadets to be Army officers and leaders of character. It is revered by those who understand leadership, service, and sacrifice.
General Douglas MacArthur gave his famous farewell address to Congress in 1951, in which he expressed “neither rancor nor bitterness in the fading twilight of life, with but one purpose in mind: to serve my country.”1
Eleven years later, on May 12, 1962, he gave a historic commencement address at West Point.2 It was one of deep reverence, patriotism, and inspiration, filled with language and rhetorical flourishes that emphasized the moral and ethical responsibilities of these future leaders.
MacArthur opened by acknowledging the Thayer Award which was bestowed on him — and award “not intended primarily for a personality, but to symbolize a great moral code — the code of conduct and chivalry of those who guard this beloved land.”
He was already setting the tone for his speech that would emphasize a code greater than any single person. A code that leaders of all kinds should remember.
Timeless Leadership Virtues
The next five paragraphs of his speech read like a handbook of Timeless Leadership virtues.
He began with the motto that every West Point cadet knows: Duty, Honor, Country. And he appended to it the virtues of courage, faith and hope:
Duty, Honor, Country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn. Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean.
Knowing that there are individuals of an entirely different nature around us (some who might call out suckers and losers, for example), MacArthur warned against them:
The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and, I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule.
Along with the traditional virtues like strength, bravery, honesty, he normalized things like vulnerability, failure, humility, empathy, humor, and more:
But these are some of the things they do. They build your basic character. They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the nation’s defense. They make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid.
They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for action; not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm, but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future, yet never neglect the past; to be serious, yet never take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness; the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.
All of these, MacArthur said, are the building blocks of what every leader ought to have:
They give you a temperate will, a quality of imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, an appetite for adventure over love of ease. They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman.
There is much more to this speech, of course, and General MacArthur repeatedly returned to the theme of Duty, Honor, and Country. You can read it in full.
His advice is more than the cookie-cutter graduation speech and more than a leadership lesson; it is something relevant to anyone at any time, whether they are in the military, plan any kind of civic duty or private enterprise, or in any way wish to contribute to making the world a better place.
It is honorable and selfless, wise and nostalgic, timeless and timely.
It’s the kind of speech that hard-working and talented graduates everywhere — and especially at West Point — deserve.
There’s so much to learn,
For the & Guild, I have a series that connects MacArthur’s speech to some of the leadership qualities we cover here at Timeless & Timely:
Farewell Address to Congress, General Douglas MacArthur, April 19, 1951
Listen to David Foster’s THIS IS WATER.
💞 there's so much to learn