Oprah Gives Solid, Unsurprising Stanford Commencement Address

By Margaret Lyons in News on Jun 16, 2008 12:30PM

Let the annual commencement-speech fervor begin! Oprah delivered a quite charming pep talk yesterday to Stanford's graduating class, which includes her goddaughter. The speech covered some well-worn O biography territory and platitudes, but inspirational, empowering stories are what Oprah does best. Quoth she:

...forget about the fast lane. If you really want to fly, just harness your power to your passion. Honor your calling. Everybody has one. Trust your heart and success will come to you.

So, how do I define success? Let me tell you, money's pretty nice. I'm not going to stand up here and tell you that it's not about money, 'cause money is very nice. I like money. It's good for buying things.

But having a lot of money does not automatically make you a successful person. What you want is money and meaning. You want your work to be meaningful. Because meaning is what brings the real richness to your life. What you really want is to be surrounded by people you trust and treasure and by people who cherish you. That's when you're really rich.

She also gave all the grads copies of Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth and Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, saying "I really wanted to give you cars but I just couldn't pull that off." [Transcript of the speech, a not-radically-different speech she gave at Wellesley in 1997, and a not-that-different-either speech she gave at Howard last year.]