Carpe Every Diem: The Best Graduation Advice from More Than 100 Commencement Speeches : A Graduation Book - Hardcover

Rogge, Robie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593139755 ISBN 13: 9780593139752

Publisher: Clarkson Potter, 2021

Synopsis

A thoughtfully curated, cleverly designed keepsake that distills the wisdom of all those powerful graduation speakers—from Barack Obama and Gloria Steinem to Kermit the Frog—into the best advice for grads of all ages.

Carpe Every Diem is a thought-provoking collection of quotes from famous graduation speakers meant to motivate and inspire the next generation of leaders. Paired by theme, many of the quotes complement one another. George Saunders, for example, riffs on the “failures of kindness” of his youth, encouraging grads to be kinder. Jimmy Buffett offers a simpler nugget of kind-spiration: “Be Santa Claus when you can.” Other quotes, however, are paired with conflicting advice, giving graduates the opportunity to choose what to believe in. Some may prefer John Waters’s call to arms to horrify and outrage others with their art. Which of these affirmations will you choose? 

Each quote is accompanied by a short bio of the speaker and stamped with the year and institution where the commencement speech was delivered. With advice from the likes of Abby Wambach, Angela Davis, David Foster Wallace, Oprah Winfrey, Spike Lee, and more, readers will be swept away by the wit and wisdom contained in this book—perfect for graduates, creative thinkers, or anyone seeking inspiration.

About this title

About the Author

Robie Rogge is a New York City-based packager who has created many successful guided journals and novelty products for Clarkson Potter, Chronicle Books, and the Museum of Modern Art, including Clarkson Potter's best-selling Do One Thing Every Day journal series.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Okay, you’ve graduated. Commencement is over. But how will the rest of your life commence?

You could start with the advice here, distilled from over one hundred graduation speeches given by people who have been at the crossroads, like you, but have achieved enough success to be invited as commencement speakers. Your advisory board includes artists, academics, authors, and actors; presidents, poets, politicians, philanthropists, entrepreneurs, and community activists. They have won Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes, Presidential and Olympic Gold medals, as well as Oscars and Emmys.

In researching the best advice from these august speakers, we have discovered a variety of recommendations. Sometimes the suggestions are contradictory; sometimes they reach a similar conclusion but through different channels. We have carefully paired the advice for you to review and judge. (You are, after all, the graduate.)

From now on, you get to choose your own adventure. You decide what to make or what to wreck (John Waters); whether your perspective on the challenges of the environment is global (Paul Hawken) or personal (Kermit the Frog); and what you can learn from your failures (Conan O’Brien). Consider Russell Baker’s ten ways to avoid making the world worse, David McCullough’s list of what to read instead of watching television, the rules of success shared by self-made billionaire Robert F. Smith, and Ellen DeGeneres’ suggestion of the best path
to take.

Congratulations for being in a position to try out different paths and figure out where you want to go. And along the way you might just pick up enough wisdom to get your own invitation to be a commencement speaker someday.

Carpe every diem.

Edition details

• Publisher: Clarkson Potter
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0593139755
• ISBN 13: 9780593139752
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 128