Popular entertainer Bill Cosby delivered the keynote address at
Carnegie Mellon University's 2007 commencement ceremony. The experience
inspired Mr.
Cosby to give Carnegie Mellon its first live mascot, a Scottish terrier named Scotty who arrived in Pittsburgh in May 2008.
Entertainer and philanthropist Dolly Parton delivered the commencement address for the University of Tennessee College of Arts and Sciences class of 2009. Parton was also awarded an honorary doctorate of humane and musical letters for her find more:http://quotesandquotes.org/
JK Rowling is the famous author of the highly successful Harry Potter series, and is also well known for her rags-to-riches story, where she grew from living in poverty to a multi-millionaire in 5 years. Today her net worth is estimated to be at least $1 billion. In this speech, she shares her story of how she fell to the rock bottom when she was 27. Her marriage had failed after just 1 year, she was a single parent, she was extremely poor, and she was jobless. It was at her lowest point in her life, and she contemplated suicide.
Yet this failure had given her the solid foundation to build her life. Because she had failed on such an epic scale, there was nothing else there. It helped her to cut away the inessential, see beyond the unimportant and focus on the important – which was (a) her daughter, and (b) writing her fantasy novel (the Harry Potter series, which would later propel her to success). What matters the most to you in life? Are you pursuing that? Or are you letting the fear of failure prevent you from doing what you love?
“You might never fail on the scale I did. But some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all. In which case, you fail by default.” – JK Rowling