"You can take your diploma, walk off this stage, and chase only after the big house and the nice suits, but I hope you don't. Not because you have an obligation to those who are less fortunate, although I believe you do have that obligation. Not because you have a debt to all those who helped you get here, although I do believe you have that debt. It's because you have an obligation to yourself. Because our individual salvation depends on collective salvation. Because thinking only about yourself, fulfilling your immediate wants and needs, betrays a poverty of ambition."
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Democratic Party (United States) politiciansColumbia University alumniAutobiographers from the United StatesAfrican AmericansHarvard University alumni
Original Language: English
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Sources
Wesleyan Graduation Ceremony, Middletown, Connecticut (25 May 2008)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Barack_Obama
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Barack Obama
politician, lawyer, political writer
1961 · United States
1215 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Barack Obama →
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