Excerpt from Walter Isaacson Address at Lehigh University:

… I do not remember my graduation speaker. Just as 20, 30 years from now, you are going to have trouble remembering me. But I do remember the minister of the Memorial Church at my college and his sermon that morning. And his sermon was called “what we forgot to tell you.” And he said we told you this was an exclusive place. We told you you were special. We told you were going to go out and be powerful and successful because you made it through all these exclusive gates. What we forgot to tell you was that it’s not about exclusivity. It’s about inclusivity. It’s about how many people you include in your march through life — how many people you help — how many people you reach out a hand to. That’s what made all the creative people I wrote about great.

 

I talked about Steve Jobs and his passion. In the Summer of 2011 when it was clear that he was not going to outrun the cancer, I sat with them for hours on end by his bed. And I asked him, you talked about the passion for product and the products you make — is that your legacy? And he said, no, I’ve come to realize that life is like a river. You get to take beautiful things out of the river — wonderful things people have invented — wonderful products they’ve made — wonderful services they’ve come up with. And if you’re lucky, you took a lot out of that river. But I’ve come to realize that it’s not what you take out of the river, but what you put back into the river that’s going to give your life meaning.

 

And, likewise, with Einstein on his deathbed. He was at Princeton Hospital. He had an aorta that burst. He knew he had only one or two days left. And on his last night after the visitors had to leave, he had his secretary bring some equations he was working on. He talked about the need to create a unified field theory. And so he wrote nine more pages of equations while the pain was getting so great, knowing he was never going to complete it, but nine pages of equations with math cross-outs and everything else that was supposed to figure out how you would unify the forces of gravity, of electromagnetism, of particles — well, in other words, why does the compass needle twitch and point north? And as for Benjamin Franklin, during his lifetime he donated to the building fund of each and every church that was built in Philadelphia. And at one point they were building a new hall. If you go to Philadelphia and you look to the left of Independence Hall, it’s still called the New Hall. And he wrote the fundraising document because it was for itinerant preachers who might be coming to Philadelphia and needed a pulpit. And he began by saying even if the mufti of Constantinople were to send somebody here to preach Islam to us and teach us about the prophet Muhammad. We should offer a pulpit. And we should listen. For we might learn something. And on his deathbed, he was the largest individual contributor to the Mikveh Israel Synagogue, the first synagogue built in Philadelphia. So when he died, instead of his minister accompanying his casket to the grave, all 35 ministers, preachers, and priests of Philadelphia linked arms with a rabbi of the Jews to march with him to the grave. That form of tolerance, of respect, of a belief that we’re all in it together. That was the wonderful thing that the Founders created when they made a new type of nation. That’s what they were fighting for almost three centuries ago. And that is what it’s up to you to be fighting for today around the world and even here at home.