Steve Jobs -  This is from 2005 Stanford University graduating class.  He talks about living as if today were your last day and it's quite poignant given his recent passing.  I especially like his bit on being enthralled with a calligraphy class in college.  His love of the form and grace of the stroke is seen in his font and typeface innovations at Apple.  You never know where your random interests will take you.

 Here it is.

David Foster Wallace -  Also gone, this novelist gave the 2005 graduating class commencement speech at Kenyon College,  a private liberal arts college in Gambier, Ohio.  DFW relates our obsession with "blind certainty" with a story about an atheist and believer.  "A closed mindedness amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn't ever know he's locked up."  If you think you're special, the most important person, the absolute center of the universe, check out his speech here.  He suggests self-centeredness is our default setting.  There is no experience that you're not the center of.  It's a bit humbling.

Dasher Keltner -  Mr. Keltner gave the UC Berkeley Department of Psychology's 2012 graduation ceremony.    Dacher Keltner is a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and founder of my fave site, Greater Good Science Center.  Entitled "Generation Wii... or Generation We?", he encourages us to not be fooled by false claims like "Greed is Good" but "instead. . . [be] guided by the wisdom of the ages, now fortified by science: to care is good, to be thankful is good. There is so much good and beauty to revere in this world."  Listen or and Read it.

Conan O'Brien -  I am not a Conan fan only because I didn't stay up those hours of the day/night.  Also, I was raised on David Letterman and no one else quite lives up to his antics. Here is O'Brien's commencement speech and was thoroughly entertained by the 20 minute stand-up routine.  But the meat is in the the final 4 minutes when he shares his personal views on  perceived failure, disappointment and reinvention, and changing dreams.  Watch it .  

There are more.  Oh, yes, many more.  There are the Obamas, the Clintons and according to this post, 2 moving speeches in 2008 by Bono and R.K. Rowlings. 

So, if your bank account, or the climate deniers, or news of 200 kidnapped girls or the sad, sad state of animals subjected to factory farming, have got your down, these speeches can have an uplifting effect.  So, take a bit of time out of your day to be inspired.  You can pretend it's graduation day and like a adopt a new grad approach to your future with a sense of wonder and excitement. 

Recycled from 5/27/12 with edit and updating.  

 Ansel Adams