A commencement speech, or commencement address, is the main speech at a graduation ceremony, usually given by an invited guest who often receives an honorary degree the same day. The famous ones run from about 1,200 words to more than 3,000, roughly eight to twenty-five minutes aloud, and nearly all of them are built one of four ways: on stories from the speaker's life, on a single image, on a numbered list, or on an announcement.
Below are ten well-known addresses grouped by those four shapes. Most are under copyright, so they are described here rather than quoted; the three given by a president or a secretary of state are public domain, and those are quoted directly. After each group comes an original passage that shows the technique, so you can borrow the method instead of the words. If you are the student speaker rather than the guest, start with graduation speech examples or how to write a valedictorian speech.
Ten famous speeches at a glance
| Speaker | Where and when | How it's built |
|---|---|---|
| SpeakerGeorge C. Marshall | Where and whenHarvard, 1947 | How it's builtA policy proposal: aid for postwar Europe |
| SpeakerJohn F. Kennedy | Where and whenAmerican University, 1963 | How it's builtOne subject, chosen for the place: peace |
| SpeakerLyndon B. Johnson | Where and whenUniversity of Michigan, 1964 | How it's builtA named idea, mapped onto three places |
| SpeakerFred Rogers | Where and whenDartmouth, 2002 | How it's builtA moment of silence for someone who shaped you |
| SpeakerSteve Jobs | Where and whenStanford, 2005 | How it's builtThree stories from his life |
| SpeakerDavid Foster Wallace | Where and whenKenyon College, 2005 | How it's builtA fish parable, then a supermarket line |
| SpeakerJ.K. Rowling | Where and whenHarvard, 2008 | How it's builtTwo lessons: failure and imagination |
| SpeakerConan O'Brien | Where and whenDartmouth, 2011 | How it's builtA public failure, told as comedy |
| SpeakerGeorge Saunders | Where and whenSyracuse, 2013 | How it's builtOne regret |
| SpeakerWilliam H. McRaven | Where and whenUniversity of Texas at Austin, 2014 | How it's builtTen lessons and a refrain |
Look down the last column and a pattern shows. None of these speakers tried to cover everything they knew. Each picked one shape and kept to it, and most told the audience early what the shape was. That is most of the craft.
Speeches built on personal stories
Steve Jobs, Stanford, 2005. Jobs admitted in his opening lines that he never graduated from college, then told the class he had three stories for them and nothing more. The first was about dropping out of Reed College and sitting in on a calligraphy class that later shaped the Mac's typography. The second was about being fired from Apple, the company he had started. The third was about death, and his cancer diagnosis the year before. He closed by borrowing, with credit, the farewell line printed on the back cover of the final issue of The Whole Earth Catalog: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." The text is about 2,250 words, roughly fifteen minutes.
J.K. Rowling, Harvard, 2008. Rowling asked herself what she wished she had known at her own graduation, 21 years earlier, and gave two answers: the benefits of failure and the importance of imagination. The failure section is blunt about the years when she was jobless, a single parent and broke. The imagination section draws on a job she held in her early twenties in Amnesty International's research department in London, reading letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes. It runs close to 2,800 words.
Conan O'Brien, Dartmouth, 2011. O'Brien spent most of his address on jokes, then turned to the loss of The Tonight Show, which had ended for him in January 2010, and argued sincerely that falling short of the thing you most wanted can be what makes you who you are. The comedy earns the turn: by the time he gets serious, the room trusts him.
All three tell stories in which the speaker fails. That is not modesty for its own sake. A success story from a famous person sounds like a victory lap; a failure story sounds like testimony, and it builds the trust that rhetoric calls ethos (more on that in ethos, pathos and logos). Here is the technique at the scale most invited speakers work at.
My second year out of school, I designed my first bridge. A pedestrian bridge, 130 feet of steel over a creek behind a middle school. I ran the numbers three times, and I was proud of every one of them.
Walt Kessler had been checking drawings at that firm since before I was born. He sent my calculations back with a single penciled question mark next to the wind load.
I had used the wrong exposure category. The bridge would not have fallen. It would have swayed enough that the sixth graders would have loved it and their parents would have called the city.
I fixed it in an afternoon. What stayed with me was what Walt said when I went to thank him: "Don't thank me. Check mine." He meant it. For the next six years, every drawing he stamped crossed my desk first. Twice, I found something.
You are about to work for people who know more than you do. Some of them will be wrong, and the good ones will be glad you noticed. Check their work. Ask them to check yours. A question mark in the margin is not an insult. It's how the bridge stays up.
- The story has a set: 130 feet, a creek, a pencil mark. Specific nouns persuade where adjectives can't.
- The failure is small and a little funny, so the audience relaxes instead of worrying about the speaker.
- The lesson is two imperatives long, and the last line goes back to the bridge.
Speeches built on one image
David Foster Wallace, Kenyon College, 2005. Wallace opened with a parable about two young fish who are asked how the water is and have no idea what water is, then remarked that little parables are a standard requirement of the genre. The long middle of the speech is not a parable at all. It is a tired adult driving to a crowded supermarket after work, stuck in traffic and then in the checkout line, which Wallace uses to show that choosing what to pay attention to is the real work an education prepares you for. The text circulated online within weeks and was published as a small book, This Is Water, in 2009. His last move is a pun on the word commence.
George Saunders, Syracuse, 2013. Saunders, giving a convocation address, mocked the form at the start (an old man who has made mistakes advising young people who haven't yet) and then asked himself what he regretted. He set aside the answers you would expect, bad jobs and lean years, and settled on a shy, often-teased seventh-grade classmate he was never unkind to and still wishes he had done more for. One phrase from it, "failures of kindness," carries the rest of the speech.
Fred Rogers, Dartmouth, 2002. Rogers made the image the audience's own. As he did in several speeches, he asked everyone to spend a moment in silence thinking about someone who had been a good influence on them. A crowd supplying its own examples is more vivid than anything a speaker can describe.
An image works when it comes back. Introduce it early, explain it in the middle, and turn it into an instruction at the end, the way a motif recurs in a novel.
In every patient room at St. Brendan's there is a whiteboard across from the bed. At the start of each shift, the nurse writes three things on it: the date, the goal for the day, and her own name.
I have written my name on those boards something like nine thousand times. For years I thought of it as paperwork. Then a man named Mr. Okafor, eighty-one, two days out of hip surgery, asked me to leave my name up after my shift ended. He said it was the only thing in the room that told him who was looking out for him.
That's what the board is for. Not the chart, not the hospital, not the audit. It's for a frightened person at three in the morning who wants to know that one specific human being is responsible for them.
You are going to write your name on a lot of boards. Some nights you will be too tired to write it neatly. Write it anyway. Write it big enough to read from the bed.
The meaning comes from the patient, not the speaker, which keeps the passage from sounding like a lecture. And the last line is something a new nurse can physically do on her first night.
Speeches built on a list
William H. McRaven, University of Texas at Austin, 2014. McRaven, then a Navy admiral, opened with the university's slogan, "What starts here changes the world," and a piece of back-of-envelope arithmetic: if each of the nearly 8,000 graduates changed ten lives, and each of those people changed ten more, five generations later the class would have reached 800 million people. Then he gave ten lessons from Navy SEAL training, the first being to make your bed every morning. Most of the lessons end on the same refrain, a sentence that starts "If you want to change the world," one of the oldest rhetorical devices there is. His ending compresses all ten into a single paragraph and lands back on the slogan. The speech later became the book Make Your Bed.
Lyndon B. Johnson, University of Michigan, 1964. Johnson used a commencement to name his domestic program, then organized the speech as a list of places where it would be built.
"For in your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society."
"So I want to talk to you today about three places where we begin to build the Great Society—in our cities, in our countryside, and in our classrooms."
A numbered list is the easiest shape for a listener, because they always know where they are. It fails when the items are interchangeable advice. Each one needs its own story, and the list needs a reason to exist: a training course, a career, a kitchen.
I've run kitchens for twenty-two years, and I've learned four things worth saying at a graduation.
One: say "behind" when you walk behind someone. In a kitchen it keeps people from getting burned. Outside a kitchen it works just as well. Tell people where you are, especially when they can't see you.
Two: clean as you go. The cook who saves every pan for the end of the night is the cook still scrubbing at one in the morning. Small messes handled now don't become big ones later. That goes for dishes, for money and for apologies.
Three: put a date on everything. Nobody knows what's in the quart container at the back of the walk-in, including the person who made it. Write it down while you still remember.
Four: taste it before it leaves the pass. Not most things. Everything. The ticket tells you it's done. Only your tongue tells you it's right.
Say where you are. Clean as you go. Date everything. Taste before it leaves. That's the whole speech. The rest is practice.
Speeches that make news
George C. Marshall, Harvard, 1947. One of the most consequential speeches ever given on a commencement day was about 1,200 words long. Marshall, then secretary of state, read it at the afternoon gathering where honorary degree recipients spoke, to a crowd the Marshall Foundation puts at 15,000. In it he proposed American aid for Europe's recovery, the program that became the Marshall Plan. One sentence did the defining work:
"Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos."
John F. Kennedy, American University, 1963. Kennedy opened with a joke about his honorary degree, noting that a senator in the audience had earned his law degree through years of night school "while I am earning mine in the next 30 minutes." Then he told the graduates why he had brought this subject to them: "I have, therefore, chosen this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived—yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace." He defined the peace he meant by setting it against what it was not, a juxtaposition that runs through the speech. He also announced talks toward a nuclear test ban treaty and a pause in American atmospheric tests. The passage most often quoted:
"For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal."
Few speakers set foreign policy, but anyone can make one concrete commitment in front of a few thousand families: a scholarship, a standing offer, a program. Clear it with the school first. An announcement is news, and their communications office will want to know before you make it.
I could give you advice today. Instead, I'd like to make you an offer, and I'd like your families to hear it, so that nobody can say later that I didn't.
Brookfield has 140 miles of water main older than anyone in this stadium, me included. Every winter some of it breaks, and every winter we wait for crews from three counties away.
Starting this September, the city will hire twenty graduates of this college's water technology program every year for the next five years, paid from the first day of training. Applications open Monday. Dean Ruiz has the details, and she has promised not to let any of you forget.
I chose this stage on purpose. A speech in the council chamber is a press release. A promise made in front of two thousand families is a lot harder to walk back.
Openings and closings that recur
Read enough commencement addresses and the same moves turn up at both ends. Jobs and Kennedy opened by naming their own relationship to a degree. Rowling said she could not remember a single word of her own commencement speaker's address; McRaven said he could not remember who his speaker had been. That joke is now common enough to be a cliché, so twist it or skip it. McRaven also built his opening on the school's own slogan. Each line below keeps one of those techniques and swaps in new details.
Your relation to the place. "I didn't go to school here. I applied, and I still have the letter. President Moreau tells me admissions standards have changed since then, and I've decided she meant it kindly."
The forgotten speaker, twisted. "I looked up who spoke at my own graduation. A federal judge, forty minutes, on water rights. I remember none of it except the phrase 'water rights,' which I have thought about more often than you'd guess. So my goal today is modest: one phrase."
The motto. "Your motto is carved over the library door in Latin, which means most of you have walked under it for four years without reading it. It translates, roughly, as 'work conquers all.' I want to talk about the days it doesn't."
The count. "The registrar estimates that this class turned in about 60,000 assignments. I'd like to talk about the one you turned in late."
At the other end, Jobs and Rowling both closed on someone else's words, with credit: Jobs on the Whole Earth Catalog, Rowling on a line from Seneca. McRaven recapped his whole list in one breath. Wallace ended on a pun. For more ways to land the last line, see how to end a speech.
The borrowed line, credited. "Thoreau spent two years in a cabin and then wrote a book about it. Near the end he says that 'if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.' Notice the verb. He said advances. Not waits. Congratulations."
The callback. "Check the work. Ask for the check. Leave the question mark in the margin. Congratulations, engineers."
The instruction. "Before dinner tonight, write down the name of one person who got you here. Tomorrow, call them. They won't be expecting it, which is the best part."
How to write a commencement address
The steps below assume you are the invited speaker. The general method is in how to write a speech; what changes here is the audience, the length and the setting.
- Ask the organizers five questions
How long is my slot? Who else speaks, and on what? Indoors or outdoors? Will it be streamed, recorded or published? Is anything weighing on this class, such as an anniversary, a loss or a disrupted year? The answers rule out half your ideas before you write a word.
- Find the one thing you know
Graduates have heard "follow your passion" from every greeting card. What they haven't heard is what your work taught you: the bridge, the night shift, the kitchen. Write it as one sentence a twelve-year-old would follow. If you need two sentences, you have two speeches.
- Pick one shape and say it early
Stories, one image, a list or an announcement. Tell the audience which in the first minute ("I have three stories," "ten lessons") so they can follow along without a handout. A speech outline template with a time column keeps each part to its share.
- Draft to a word budget
At a typical speaking pace of 130 to 150 words a minute, your slot sets the length. Plan for the slow end: outdoor sound, laughter and applause all eat time.
- Write for a field, not a page
Short sentences, names instead of pronouns, and repetition that would look clumsy in an essay. In a stadium, sound echoes and attention drifts to the family in row 40, so say your idea at least three times in different words. Keep the tone warm even when the subject is hard.
- Read it aloud, cut, and rehearse
Time a standing read-through, then cut whole sections rather than trimming every sentence. Drafting in Strokes, version history keeps the long draft, so you can cut hard and restore a paragraph if you miss it. Rehearse with a microphone if you can, and decide how much to learn by heart with how to memorize a speech.
| Your slot | Words to write | Comparable speech |
|---|---|---|
| Your slot8–10 minutes | Words to write1,050–1,500 | Comparable speechMarshall, about 1,200 |
| Your slot15 minutes | Words to write1,950–2,250 | Comparable speechJobs, about 2,250 |
| Your slot20 minutes | Words to write2,600–3,000 | Comparable speechRowling, about 2,800 |
| Your slot25 minutes | Words to write3,250–3,750 | Comparable speechKennedy, about 3,400 |
Frequently asked questions
How long is a commencement speech?
As long as the organizers give you, which is usually well beyond a student speaker's three to five minutes. Famous addresses range from about 1,200 words (George Marshall at Harvard in 1947) to about 3,400 (John F. Kennedy at American University in 1963). At 130 to 150 words a minute, a 15-minute slot holds roughly 1,950 to 2,250 words. Ask for your exact slot and come in under it.
What is the difference between a commencement speech and a graduation speech?
The terms overlap. In the US, a commencement speech usually means the main address by an invited speaker at a college or university ceremony, while a graduation speech often means a student's remarks or a high school address. The invited speech is longer and speaks to the class from outside it; a student speech speaks from inside.
Who gives the commencement speech?
Usually someone the school invites: a public figure, writer, scientist, business leader or well-known graduate, who often receives an honorary degree at the same ceremony. Many schools also have a student speaker, chosen by grades, audition or class vote.
Can I quote a famous commencement speech in mine?
A short line with credit is fine. Long passages are another matter: most famous commencement speeches are under copyright, and several were published as books. Check the attribution too. The best-known 'commencement speech' online, the one about sunscreen, was a newspaper column.
Why is it called commencement?
Because the ceremony marks a beginning. The word comes from the old academic idea that graduates were commencing as bachelors or masters, entering a new standing in the university rather than simply finishing their studies.
