初中英语名人演讲稿珍惜现在把握未来_托尼.布莱尔耶鲁演讲素材201906261162

珍惜现在，把握未来—托尼·布莱尔耶鲁演讲

It is an honor to be here and say to the Yale College Class of 2008: you did it; you came through; from all of us to you: congratulations.

The issues you must wrestle with-the threat of climate change, food scarcity, and population growth, worldwide terror based on religion, the interdependence of world economy-my student generation would barely recognize. But the difference today is they are essentially global in nature.

Your understand this. Yale has become a melting pot of culture, language and civilization. You are the global generation. So be global citizens.

Each new generation finds the world they enter. But they fasion the world they leave. So: what do you inherit and what do you pass on?

The history of humankind is marked by great events but written by great people.

People like you.

Given Yale’s record of achievement, perhaps by you.

So to you as individuals, what wisdom, if any, have I learnt?

First, in fact, keep learning. Always to be alive to the possibilities of the next experience, of thinking, doing and being.

When Buddha was asked, near the end of his life, to describe his secret, he answered bluntly: “I’m awake”.

So be awake.

Understand conventional wisdom, but be prepared to change it.

Feel as well as analyze; use you instinct alongside your reason. Calculate too much and you will miscalculate.

Be prepared to fail as well as to succeed, realist it is failure not success that defines character.

I spent years trying to be a politician failing at every attempt and nearly gave up. I know you’re thinking: I should have.

Sir Paul McCartney reminded me that the first record company the Beatles approached rejected them as a band no-one would want to listen to.

Be good to people on your way up because you never know if you will meet them again on your way down.

Judge someone by how they treat those below them not those above them.

Be a firm friend not a fair-weather friend. It is your friendships, including those friends you made here at Yale, at this time, that sustain and enrich the human spirit.

A good test of a person is who turns up at their funeral and with what sincerity. Try not to sit the test too early, of course.

Recently, I attended a funeral and the speaker said he would like to begin by reading a list of all those whose funerals he would rather have been attending, but the list was too long. It was a sweet compliment to our friend.

Alternatively there was Spike Milligan, the quintessential English comic who when he was asked what he would like as the epitaph on his tombstone replied : “They should write: I told you l was ill.”

There was a colleague of mine in the British Parliament who once asked another:” why do people take such an instant dislike to me?” and got the reply:” Because it saves time.”

So, when others think of you, let them think not with their lips but their hearts of a good friend and a gracious acquaintance.

Above all, however, have a purpose in life. Life is not about living but about striving. When you get up, get up motivated. Live with a perpetual sense of urgency. And make at least part of that purpose about something bigger than you.

There are great careers. There are also great causes.

Ht least let some of them into your Lives. Giving hefts the heart in a way that getting ne ver can. Maybe it really was Oscar Wilde who said: “No one ever died, saying if only l had one more day at the office.”

One small but shocking sentence: each year three million children die in Africa from preventable disease or conflict.

The key word? Preventable.