On a graduate's future...

(please note that all quotes on this page come from one address)

From Baccalaureate address, University of Buffalo, June 11, 1933 (Samuel P. Capen Papers, 1894-1955, 4/7/19, #22.8):

Students graduating from American universities during the last few years have faced great uncertainties. They have not been practically assured, as was once the case, of securing appropriate employment... Many must have been overwhelmed by a sense of frustration... I am reminding you then, then, that there is a hard struggle ahead. But I reminding you also that it is an inspiring struggle in which the stakes are high...What matter if you must forego for a time the superficial accompaniments of success that used to be easily won by any American who was not an absolute fool -- and by some who were? Such sacrifices have never daunted those who are young and strong and who have a purpose that reaches beyond the selfish satisfactions of the moment. Youth and strength are yours.

DETAIL, Dedication of Foster Hall, 1922

Your claim to the role [of university alumni] lies in your familiarity with the terrain on which the great drama is staged. It lies in your ability to deal with them in the spirit and by the method of science, viewing them against the background of man's long evolutionary history. And particularly it lies in your freedom from fear of ideas - of you have attained this freedom... Your part can be played and well played by each of you wherever you are and whatever you may be doing. It demands first that each of you continue unremittingly to study those questions, those absorbingly interesting questions, which involved the economic, political and social life of America and its relations with the rest of the world... It demands that in your association with your fellows you have courage to defend your views, even though they be unpopular. In sort, it demands that you spread about you the influence of an informed and open mind.

The most important acts of your lives will be those by which you will help to direct the thinking of America. Whether you are doctors or lawyers or teachers or housewives or pharmacists or business men or engineers, you stand committed to bear your share in this great task. No words of mine, spoken at the eleventh hour, commit you. Your past commits you... the University of Buffalo commits you.

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