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Johnny Cash
Country Music Legend
I grew up in the '40s and I heard all these great speeches, like Winston Churchill. His most famous, or infamous commencement exercise speech was one that consisted of seven words. He stood before this graduating class and said: "Never, never, never, never, never give up." And then somebody else said: "Every day in every way I'm getting better and better." I didn't especially believe that about myself, but I said it every day and I made myself believe it and it worked. I persevered. I never gave up my dream to "sing on the radio." And that dream came true in 1955.
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Johnny Cash
Country Music Legend
Johnny Cash: Sam Phillips, at Sun Records. There was a label called Sun Records in Memphis that was pretty hot, with Elvis Presley, and two or three locally well-known country acts, and some black, blues and gospel singers. When I got out of the Air Force I went and knocked on that door and was turned away. I called back for an interview three or four times, was turned away. So one morning I found out what time the man went to work. I went down with my guitar and sat on his steps until he got there. And when he got there I introduced myself and he said, "You're the one that's been calling." I said, "Yeah." You know, I had to take the chance, he was either going to let me come in, or he was going to run me off, turn me down again. Evidently, he woke up on the right side of the bed that morning. He said, "Come on in, let's listen." So he did. He said, "Come back tomorrow and bring some musicians." So I went down to the garage where I worked, where my brother, Roy worked, and was introduced to two musicians down there. Brought them back to the studio and the next day was our first session. We recorded, and released the songs that we recorded the second day.
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Johnnetta Cole
Past President of Spelman College
I was asked to give a speech. It was graduation time. And for this particular high school I said, of course I would. The schedule worked. And I went and I sat, waiting for my turn to speak, when I noticed that we were about to hear a song. And one of the graduating seniors stood, a young man went to the piano, and she began her song, and then she broke down, emotionally overtaken. And the audience clapped and she went back to her seat. I was then introduced to speak. And it hit me that I could not go and give that commencement speech, not at that moment. And so, I went to where the young senior sat and I reached out to her and I took her, literally grabbed her and brought her back to that microphone. I put my arms around her and I said, "You've got to try it again." And the young man looked at me as if to say, "This is a little out there, but I'll go along." He began to play and she sang. She was immediately overtaken again by the emotion. And I held her tightly, helped her sing it, encouraged her classmates to join us, and together we got through that song. I went to the microphone and I said, "Well, young graduates, that is your commencement message."
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Johnnetta Cole
Past President of Spelman College
Margaret Mead once said, "Never doubt the ability of a small group of committed individuals to change the world." It's the only way it ever happens. I think once you believe that, once you believe it really is possible -- to use the most frequently articulated phrase --"to make a difference," then you become an empowered force to do that. Surely, that's what was a part of someone like a Martin Luther King, Jr. He could not have done what he did if he didn't believe in the possibility of change. How could Nelson Mandela have sat for 27 years in prison if he didn't believe in the possibility of change? How could those great sisters, suffragettes that they were, have held on -- until finally in 1920 we women folk got the right to vote -- if they didn't believe that their action could lead to change?
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Francis Collins
Presidential Medal of Freedom
Francis Collins: I think you have to really care about what you're doing, because anything worth doing is going to be challenging and it's going to have a high risk of failure. I have failed more times in my life than I could tell you about. Hunting for disease genes is a very failure-prone process and that's mostly what I've done in my scientific career -- for cystic fibrosis, for Huntington's disease. We're right now hunting for the genes for adult onset diabetes, which is the hardest thing I've ever done and I don't know if it's going to work. I have a sign on my wall which is a quote from Winston Churchill, which says, "Success is nothing more than going from failure to failure with undiminished enthusiasm."
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Francis Collins
Presidential Medal of Freedom
I don't know any scientists who have a success rate of their experiments greater than about one in ten. Ninety percent, total flops, learn nothing, something was dreadfully wrong, just wasted time. Of the ten percent that actually succeed, maybe ten percent of those actually contribute in some way to new knowledge, and the rest just sort of confirmed something that was already known. So if one is going to do this -- and don't get me wrong, it's the most exhilarating thing in the world to do if you decide that this is your calling -- that one has to expect failure. If you're doing experiments that work all the time, you're not working on anything very interesting. You're not really at the cutting edge, you're just sort of replicating things that were already known.
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