With graduation just around the corner, now's as good as time as any to be inspired by the world's best commencement speeches. From Steve Jobs to Denzel Washington, Arianna Huffington and Stephen Colbert, these inspiring speeches speak not just to recent grads but marketing and business professionals everywhere. Which stands out for you?

1. 10 Speeches
that
Online Marketers
Need to Hear

2. “Service is love made visible. If
you love friends, you will serve
your friends. If you love community,
you will serve your community. If
you love money, you will serve only
money. And if you love only yourself
you will serve only yourself and you
will have only yourself. So no more
winning, instead, try to love others
and serve others, and hopefully find
those who will love and serve you in
return.”
Stephen Colbert - 2011 at Northwestern
University
www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6tiaooiIo0

3. David Foster Wallace - 2005 at Kenyon
College
”There are all different kinds of
freedom, and the kind that is most
precious you will not hear much talk
about in the great outside world of
wanting and achieving [...]. The
really important kind of freedom
involves attention and awareness and
discipline, and being able truly to
care about other people and to
sacrifice for them over and over in
myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.
That is real freedom. That is being
educated, and understanding how to
think. The alternative is
unconsciousness, the default
setting, the rat race, the constant
gnawing sense of having had, and
lost, some infinite thing.”
www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYGaXzJGVAQ

4. J.K. Rowling - 2008 at Harvard
University
www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHGqp8lz36c
“Imagination is not only the
uniquely human capacity to envision
that which is not, and therefore the
fount of all invention and
innovation; in its arguably most
transformative and revelatory
capacity, it is the power that
enables us to empathize with humans
whose experiences we have never
shared.”

5. Ellen Degeneres - 2009 at Tulane
University
“For me, the most important thing in
life is to live your life with
integrity, and not to give into peer
pressure. to try to be something
that you're not. To live your life
as an honest and compassionate
person. To contribute in some way.
So to conclude my conclusion: follow
your passion, stay true to yourself.
Never follow anyone else's path,
unless you're in the woods and
you're lost and you see a path, and
by all means you should follow that.
Don't give advice, it will come back
and bite you in the ass. Don't take
anyone's advice. So my advice to you
is to be true to yourself and
everything will be fine.”
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JccudODwwY

6. Carol Bartz - 2012 at UW Madison
“I think the greatest strength that
we have in the US and especially in
Silicon Valley is that we actually
view failure as a sign of
experience. We view failure as a way
of life and those people are willing
to take on risks on the road to
innovation. I have a saying that I
have used at my companies: Fail.
Fast forward. Take risks. Fail. You’
re not going to get hurt by that.
Try and figure it out as quickly as
possible that it is not the right
thing. That’s the fast part. And
move forward. Fail. Fast forward. Do
not be afraid to take risks. Most of
all, be really passionate and
excited about what is in front of
you.” www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYWHVv4vRVU

7. Steve Jobs - 2005 at Stanford University
“You can't connect the dots looking
forward; you can only connect them
looking backward. So you have to
trust that the dots will somehow
connect in your future. You have to
trust in something — your gut,
destiny, life, karma, whatever. This
approach has never let me down, and
it has made all the difference in my
life.”
www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc

8. Denzel Washington - 2011 at the
University of Pennsylvania
“In deciding what you want to do
with life, people have told you to
make sure you have something to
“fall back on.” But I’ve never
understood that concept, having
something to fall back on. If I’m
going to fall, I don’t want to fall
back on anything [...] I want to
fall forward. At least I figure that
way I’ll see what I’m about to hit.
Here’s what I mean:
Thomas Edison conducted 1,000 failed
experiments. Did you know that? I
didn’t either - because #1,001 was
the light bulb.
Fall forward.
Every failed experiment is one step
closer to success.”
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpW2sGlCtaE

9. Steve Ballmer - 2014 at USC
“I have to reinforce this notion
that ideas matter. People think
business is about leadership, they
think it’s about working hard, they
think it’s about a lot of things -
which it is. But at the end of the
day the ideas that you have will
power the organizations that you
join. They will create the value. A
great team, great energy and great
hard work will never make up for a
bad idea.”
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggMgAoSQpbI

10. Sheryl Sandberg - 2012 at Harvard
Business School
“Motivation comes from working on
things we care about but it also
comes from working with people we
care about, and in order to care
about someone, you have to know
them. You have to know what they
love and hate, what they feel, not
just what they think. If you want to
win hearts and minds, you have to
lead with your heart as well as your
mind. I don’t believe we have a
professional self from Mondays
through Fridays and a real self for
the rest of the time. That kind of
division probably never worked, but
in today’s world, with a real voice,
an authentic voice, it makes even
less sense.”
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggMgAoSQpbI

11. Arianna Huffington - 2011 at Sarah
Lawrence College
“A key component of wisdom is
fearlessness, which is not the
absence of fear, but rather not
letting our fears get in the way. I
remember one of the low points in my
life, when my second book was
rejected by 37 publishers. [...]
Instead, I remember running out of
money and walking, depressed, down
St. James Street in London and
seeing a Barclays Bank. I walked in
and, armed with nothing but a lot of
chutzpah, I asked to speak to the
manager and asked him for a loan.
Even though I didn't have any
assets, the banker [...] gave me a
loan. It changed my life, because it
meant I could keep things together
for another 13 rejections.” www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggMgAoSQpbI

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