Bono’s Commencement Speech | Words Of Humanity

Its commencement time and almost all the major universities across the globe arrange convocation ceremony during this period of year. Usually a celebrity guest speaker (or the one who have achieved remarkable stuff in life, in positive way) is called to address the students who are awarded degree.

We have often seen the trend that the speaker receives an honorary degree by the institution as well, of course not always. There is nothing wrong however in that. As the person who is receiving the honorary degree have already achieved so much, that it is honor for the institution actually to award him the degree.

Paul David Hewson, who is more famous with his stage name Bono is a rock star. Apart from his skills in music and songs (including writing), he is known for his social activities as well. He was invited at the University of Pennsylvania (official news link) to address the degree recipients in its 248th commencement ceremony (date: May 17, 2004).

He talked a lot about Africa, the situation people live there, and the responsibility of the modern world towards them.

Here is a generalized summary of what we think as the essence of the speech.

• Big ideas come at big cost.
• What is your big idea? Where do you want to spend your moral capital, intellectual capital, money and other possession in the real life?
• If you want to serve the age, betray it. (Actually there are some blind places at every age, which needs to be worked on and make better things for everyone).
• Every human lives are of equal worth.
• One needs to understand what is a cause and what is emergency. Cause can wait a little, but emergency can not. Not responding to emergency is a kind of denying justice.
• We can not resolve every problem, true, but we have to resolve those which we can.
• Say no to poverty.
• When we admit something, we can start doing something about it. (In other words, when you accept the mistake, you can start trying to find its solution’.)
• Every era has its defining struggle. One needs to do his/her efforts to fix the problems.
• Your degree is a blunt instrument for you. Which you can use to fix a lot of things not only for you and your family but the entire world. So go ahead with it and build something great.

You may also like to read our summarized views regarding some other commencement speeches, which we found interesting, inspirational, motivational and got a chance to write about. What you think about this commencement speech? Do share your reviews and views via comments below. And yes, do not forget to share this article with your friends over various social networks via Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus and others. And yes, you may like to subscribe to our RSS feeds and follow us on various Social networks to get latest updates for the site to land right in your mail box.