A 2005 address championing the liberal arts might be the best graduation speech of all time

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May 7, 2017 7:09 PM

David Foster Wallace's 2005 speech was one for the history books.

But historically, one speech repeatedly makes various "Best Commencement Speeches" lists: one from late novelist David Foster Wallace, given at Kenyon College in 2005.

Wallace — a graduate of the elite liberal arts college Amherst — told students that a liberal-arts education teaches them how to be self-aware and how to think.

A liberal arts education, Wallace said, teaches you "to be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties."

"Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out," he added, "totally wrong and deluded."

Harking back to his original assertion that their education taught them how to think, Wallace said, "The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're gonna try to see it. This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship."

You can listen to the entirety of David Foster Wallace's 2005 speech here:

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