5/21/2015 – On May 16, 2015 nearly 2,700 students graduated at the Saint Louis University in Missouri, USA. The speaker at this Spring Commencement ceremony was the thirteenth World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov, who also received an honorary doctor of laws degree from the University. It is well worth the 17 minutes it takes to watch this well-crafted and inspiring speech.
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Kasparov received the honorary law degree along with Anita Lyons Bonds,
who in 1950 became one of the University’s first African-American
graduates, and Gene Kranz, who graduated in 1954 and was NASA’s mission
control commander when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.
You can watch Garry Kasparov's speech, which was held in the packed 11,000-seat
Chaifetz Arena, located on the SLU campus, in the following Youtube video.
For those of our readers who are "only interested in chess" the
relevant section begins at 4:45 min in the video. A full transcript of the
17-minute speech was provided by the Garry
Kasparov web site.
The Happiest Day of Your Life
Thank you everyone. My thanks to President Pestello for having me here,
the first commencement for both of us. It is an honor to be speaking to
you all, and to receive my honorary doctorate from Saint Louis University.
That is especially true considering the two other honorees here today, Anita
Lyons Bond and Gene Kranz. There could be no better examples of the power
of dreams, values, and courage that I am here to talk about. And thank you,
Rex [Sinquefield], for that flattering introduction. However, he omitted
one important fact about me; that I was born in the Deep South, right next
to Georgia. That is, in the Deep South of the Soviet Union, at the shores
of the Caspian Sea in Baku, Azerbaijan, right next to the Republic of Georgia.
I hope you can understand my Southern accent!
I also hope you have read about the USSR in history books. It is an odd
feeling to think that most of you were not yet alive when the country I
was born in ceased to exist in 1991. It’s always difficult to explain
what it was like to be born and raised in a totalitarian country to those
who have enjoyed the fruits of freedom and democracy from birth. To make
a modern metaphor, I would say it was like being the only kid on the block
whose family doesn’t have internet or television and your parents
keep telling you how lucky you are not to have those things.
I have been visiting St. Louis frequently in recent years, as the city
has become the world capital of chess, leading the way in education and
at the competitive level. This is actually restoring an old tradition. You
might not know that St. Louis hosted the first official world chess championship,
back in 1886. It’s a great pleasure to be here for today’s special
occasion, and to finally find out what a Billiken is.
When I was a little boy, growing up in Baku, my mother told me I could
become the world chess champion someday. I don’t know if anyone else
believed her, but I believed her. Years later, the sports authorities in
the Soviet Union told me that I was a troublemaker, and that I could not
become the world chess champion. Well, in 1985 I did become world champion,
and this taught me the first important lesson I wish to share with you all
today: listen to your mother!
Six years after that, the Soviet Union and all of its sports authorities
ceased to exist while my mother is still going strong. And she is still
telling me what I am capable of – and to eat my vegetables. Everyone
will tell you to believe in yourself, and this of course is true. Only you
can decide your course and only you can make it happen. But you must also
listen to those who believe in you and to take strength from their love
and from their support. Often they remind us to aim high, higher than you
might aim on your own, especially when you are young. I am quite sure that
if you all accomplish what your mothers believe you can accomplish, that
this will be the most successful graduating class in the history of the
world.
And for those of you who lost a parent or parents at a young age, as I
lost my father when I was seven, your achievement here today reflects a
special kind of strength. We are all shaped by absence as well as by presence.
By the way, as soon as this is over I have to hurry to New York for the
graduation of my eldest daughter, Polina. And so, congratulations as well
to all my fellow parents of graduates. Well done, parents! We did it!
When I won the world championship in 1985 I was 22 years old and it was
the greatest day of my life. I imagine today is a similar feeling for many
of you. You are young, you are strong, and you have a long-time goal in
your hands.
On that day in 1985, a strange thing happened. I was standing there on
the stage, still with my flowers and my medal, the happiest person in the
world, when I was approached by Rona Petrosian, the widow of a former world
chess champion from the 60s, Tigran Petrosian. I was expecting another warm
congratulations, but she had something else in mind. “Young man,”
she said, “I feel sorry for you.” What? Sorry for me? Sorry
for me? The youngest world champion in history, on top of the world? “I
feel sorry for you,” she continued, “because the happiest day
of your life is over.”
Wow, I couldn’t believe it. What a thing to say. But as I got over
my shock I began to wonder… what if she’s right? And while I
did not think much more about it on that celebratory day, I slowly came
to realize that Rona Petrosian had given me a new goal in my life: to prove
her wrong!
Now I realize she did me a favor that day, and so I will pass her gift
on to you. Is the happiest day of your life over? Or do you already have
a new dream, a new goal, a new plan? Graduation is about the future, and
not just about your future. Few people expect to change the history of the
world, but in some way you all will. It is up to you to decide if you will
change the world with your presence – or if it will change in your
absence.
Watching the news, looking at the many problems and crises we face today,
it’s easy to feel like a pessimist. Inequality is at record levels,
there is uncertainty over the impact of all the new technology in our lives,
there are worries about violence from terrorism and dictatorships. And although
I spend a lot of my time analyzing and discussing these difficult issues,
I am an optimist. I am an optimist because I believe we have the power to
change things. We are not helpless spectators to economic cycles or the
forces of history. We have the ability to take action, to change the course
of the world. You, you all have that ability. By dreaming big and recapturing
the spirit of risk and innovation we can do something about these problems
instead of passively biding our time.
Dreaming of changing the world means being prepared to take risks, to sacrifice,
and to fail, and to try again. When I retired from professional chess ten
years ago to join the pro-democracy movement in Russia, many people thought
I was crazy. And some of them told me so! I was still the number one player
in the world, after all, and challenging Vladimir Putin’s dictatorship
was far more complex than the black and white world of the chessboard. Of
course I understood this. In chess we have fixed rules and unpredictable
results. In Putin’s Russia’s phony elections it’s exactly
the opposite.
I made this bold move because I realized that my own dream was not just
about chess, but had always been about making a difference. I had accomplished
everything I could in the world of professional chess, from world championship
matches to battling against super-computers. I hoped I could still make
a difference in Russia, and in human rights. I wanted to learn and contribute
in other areas that fascinated me, like education, and human plus machine
intelligence, and decision- making. I was 42 at the time, which tells you
that it is never too late to dream.
You often hear in chess and other sports that “this player is more
talented” but “that player works harder.” This is a fallacy.
Hard work is a talent. The ability to keep trying when others quit is a
talent. And hard work is never wasted. No matter what career you end up
in, or even if you have a dozen different careers, the hard work represented
here today will never be wasted. Your being here shows that you have that
talent and it will serve you well no matter how you decide to make a difference
in this world. Human beings cannot upgrade our hardware, that’s our
DNA. But with hard work we can definitely upgrade our mental software.
But what is intelligence, education, and effort without the guiding hand
of morality? 483 years ago today, on May 16, 1532, Thomas More resigned
his position as Chancellor to the King of England, Henry VIII. Three years
later More’s downfall was completed with his execution, when More
said that he died “as the king’s good servant, but God’s
first.”
Thomas More was a complicated figure, a man of principle. As you might
expect of a lawyer like More, in his novel Utopia he writes often of the
law on his fictional perfect island. But instead of describing a flawless
set of laws as he imagined them, More wrote that in an ideal society based
on clear principles, many laws were not necessary. He wrote, “They
have but few laws, and such is their constitution that they need not many.”
And so More’s Utopia also had no lawyers. Don’t worry, I’m
happy to tell those of you coming from Scott Hall today that a world with
no lawyers is only possible in Utopia.
How many laws we have is not the point. The world is a complicated place,
far more complicated today than when Thomas More wrote his novel 500 years
ago, and laws must keep up with the times. What has not changed, what should
not change, what cannot change, is the need to base our laws, and our lives,
and our dreams, on eternal human values.
We can fight for our values or we can trade them away for comfort and temporary
security. This is a challenge for all of us in today’s globally connected
world. Every day we make choices large or small: individuals, companies,
entire nations. Are those choices guided by the values we treasure? Are
we loyal to the principles of individual freedom, of faith, of excellence,
of compassion, of the value of human life? Or do we trade them away, bit
by bit, for material goods, for a quiet life, and to pass the problems of
today on to the next generation?
These moral values are also the values of innovation and the free market,
by the way. It is no coincidence that these founding American values created
the greatest democracy in the world and also the greatest economy in the
world. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus urged his believers to be a “City
on a Hill”, a shining example to the world, a phrase used to describe
America by John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. I saw that America from the
other side of the Iron Curtain and I can tell you that it mattered. And
it matters still.
If America is to continue as a “light of the world” it will
be up to you and to your generation to hold fast to these values and not
to trade them away for a safe and stagnant status quo. Risk is not only
for entrepreneurs. Risk is for anyone who will fight for these values in
their lives and in the world every day.
On my sixth birthday I woke up to find an enormous globe next to my bed.
It was the best present I have ever received. I had to rub my eyes to make
sure it was real. My favorite childhood stories were the ones my father
read to me about the voyages of Marco Polo, Columbus, and Magellan. Our
favorite game was to trace the journeys of these great explorers across
the globe. These are the last and fondest memories I have of my father,
and this love of exploration was his greatest gift to me.
We have heard time and again that the frontiers have all been explored.
And every generation likes to say that everything important or easy has
already been invented. Unfortunately, believing this can become a self-fulfilling
prophecy. If you think there is nothing new to discover, why try? Why take
risks? Why leave the house? St. Louis was once the beginning of the unknown,
the Gateway to the frontier. Imagine if the pioneers had stopped at the
Mississippi, the way America hasn’t sent a man back to the moon since
Eugene Cernan in 1972. We cannot turn back. We cannot stop. We must not
settle for “good enough.”
Life is more complicated today, yes, but our tools are infinitely more
powerful. It’s easier today to reach Mars than it was to cross the
oceans in the time of Thomas More. At least we know where we’re going
and how far away it is. Columbus and Magellan had no maps while everyone
here has GPS. Can you imagine Columbus trying to get venture capital today?
You want to go where? You don’t know? You don’t have a map?
Today, you all have a device in your pocket that can instantly communicate
with half the people on the planet and access every piece of information
in human history. One iPhone has more computing power than all the computers
NASA had combined, back in 1972. But raw computing power isn’t enough.
We need human creativity and human ambition to make a difference.
There are still new frontiers today, and a limitless number of new inventions
waiting to be discovered by people with the curiosity and courage to look
for them, and the freedom to do so. It will require belief, hard work, and
the values of innovation and liberty. It will require your belief, your
hard work, and your ideas. You might say you aren’t ready for a new
challenge right away, that you want time to relax, to celebrate, to rest
on your new laurels. I’m sorry, but the world will not wait for you.
The world needs you now.
Today you have fulfilled one dream, and tomorrow you set course on a new
one. If you always have a dream, the happiest day of your life is never
over. Thank you and God Bless.
The ascension of Vladimir Putin – a former lieutenant colonel
of the KGB – to the presidency of Russia in 1999 should have
been a signal that the country was headed away from democracy. Yet
in the intervening years – as America and the world's other
leading powers have continued to appease him – Putin has grown
not only into a dictator but a global threat. With his vast resources
and nuclear weapons, Putin is at the center of a worldwide assault
on political liberty.
For Garry Kasparov, none of this is news. He has been a vocal critic
of Putin for over a decade, even leading the pro-democracy opposition
to him in the farcical 2008 Presidential election. Yet years of seeing
his Cassandra-like prophecies about Putin's intentions fulfilled have
left Kasparov with the realization of a darker truth: Putin's Russia,
like ISIS or Al Qaeda, defines itself in opposition to the free countries
of the world. He is still fighting the Cold War, even as Americans
have first moved beyond it, and over time, forgotten its lessons.
Lest we be drawn into another prolonged conflict, Kasparov now urges
a forceful stand – diplomatic and economic – against him.
For as long as the world's powerful democracies continue to recognize
and negotiate with Putin, he can maintain credibility in his home
country. He faces few strong enemies within his country, so meaningful
opposition must come from abroad.
Argued with the force of Kasparov's world-class intelligence, conviction,
and hopes for his home country, Winter is Coming is an unmistakable
call to action against a threat we've ignored for too long.
You can pre-order Kasparovs book, which is due
for release in October 2015,
in hardcover for $20 at Amazon,
Barnes
& Nobel, or IndiBound
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