"Never Give Up"
"Wishes"
"I'm Proud of You"

"Never Give Up"
University of Connecticut, 1991

One of the most memorable commencement speeches I've ever heard about was delivered at Harrow in England. That's the school where Winston Churchill nearly flunked out three times. At any rate, after Churchill had become Prime Minister of England, Harrow invited him to give their commencement address. I can only begin to imagine his feelings as he went back to that school where so many years earlier he had had such a hard time. His commencement address was like none that that school had ever heard before-or since! Churchill walked up to the podium and said three words: "Never give up." Then he paused and said: "Never give up." And he paused even longer and said: "Never give up." And then Churchill sat down.

That's all he needed to say because he had lived it. He hadn't given up at Harrow and he hadn't given up what was important to him all along the way afterwards. And you can be sure that he had just as many obstacles as anybody else did.

I remember the early years of educational television. That's what public television was called in the 50s. I was producing, voicing a half-dozen puppets, playing the organ, and writing music for a daily, hour-long program called "The Children's Corner." Our above-the-line budget was $150 a week and that included salaries. Five hours of live television a week is a lot of work. Anyway, I remember the day I got word that the new general manager of the station wanted to fire me because I wasn't a television director. Producing an hour a day didn't seem for him to be enough for one employee to be doing.

Have you ever worked as hard as you knew how and people still didn't appreciate you? What do you do? You either give up or you keep on. Obviously, Winston Churchill never gave up. And somehow I kept on thinking that working for children was worth all the effort I could give it. The interesting thing was that in those early days some people with even more foresight than I came to my rescue. They told that new general manager that our "Children's Corner" was the only offering our station had with any promise for being a national program. The new manager didn't fire me.

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"Wishes"
University of West Virginia, 1995

Why didn't I become a concert pianist? Or a veterinarian? Why didn't I learn shorthand or Japanese or get to be a commercial pilot? Those were all things I had wished for many years ago. In fact, I probably wished more for those things than I ever wished to be in television. I got to thinking: What makes the difference between wishing and actually realizing our wishes?

Lots of things, of course; but the main one, I believe, is whether we link our wishes to our hopes and our hopes to our active striving. It might take months or years for a wish to come true, but it's far more likely to happen when we care so much about it that we'll do all we can to make it happen.

At some point in your life, some of you must have wished to be college graduates. Well, by now you know what it took to make that wish come true…and so do your parents and your teachers and your friends!

When I was a freshman in college, I met someone who knew a very famous songwriter. Ever since I was a little boy, I had wanted to meet that songwriter. I was convinced that if I could just get him to hear my songs (I think I had five songs then), he would be so impressed with them that he would introduce me to Broadway and I would be an instant, successful composer of show tunes.

I was able to get an interview with that man, and I remember so well going to New York and all the way thinking: "This is it. I'll probably have to give up college and get an apartment in the city, and my parents will be so proud of me, and before long my five songs will be sung by millions of Broadway show-goers."

That's not what happened. The famous composer was very welcoming to me. He asked me to play a couple of those original songs for him, and he listened intently while I played them and sang the words as well as I could. When I was finished, he said, "Very nice, Fred. Now, how many songs have you written?" I told him five, and I had brought them all. Then he said something that has become very important to me. He said, "I'd like you to come back after you've written a barrel-full, and we'll talk again."

Can you imagine how I felt? A barrel-full of songs! That would mean hundreds of songs—and at that moment I had only five. I can still remember the disappointment I felt as I rode all the way back to college. Nevertheless, that man's counsel was more inspired than I realized. It took me years to understand that. But, of course, what he knew was that if I really wanted to be a songwriter, I'd have to write songs, not just think about the five I had written. And so after the initial disappointment, I got to work; and through the years, one by one, I have written a barrel-full of songs.

In fact, the barrel's overflowing now…and I can tell you those songs didn't write themselves. I wrote them—and the more I wrote, the better the songs became. I wished to be a songwriter, and I attached my work to my wish and that wish came true.

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"I'm Proud of You"
Goucher College, 1993

I'm proud of you for the times you've said "yes" when all it meant was extra work for you and seemingly helpful to only somebody else.

I'm proud of you for the times you've said "no" when all it seemed to mean was a loss of pleasure yet eventually supported the growth of somebody else and yourself.

I'm proud of you for the times you came in second, or third, or fourth, but what you did was the best you had ever done.

I'm proud of you for standing for something you believed in-something that wasn't particularly popular but something which assured the rights of someone less fortunate than you.

I'm proud of you for anything you can think of that allows you to feel proud of yourself.

All commencement addresses © Fred M. Rogers, dates as indicated.