13 Years After Dropping Out, Zuckerberg Went Back to Harvard to Teach the Graduates How to Live

Zuck says a sense of purpose is what brings real happiness.

Editor's note: The prodigy who wrote games in high school, the Harvard dropout, the cold-blooded creep in a David Fincher film, the Silicon Valley CEO who determines how 2 billion people socialize, the 31-year-old with the world's fifth-largest personal fortune, a future US president... Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has collected no end of labels. Now there is one more: "Dr. Zuckerberg."

On the afternoon of May 25, US time, Zuckerberg put on a crimson gown and gave a speech at Harvard's commencement.

In 2004, a sophomore, he dropped out of Harvard. Facebook was born in his dorm room there.

Now he walked onstage to collect an honorary Doctor of Laws degree and talk for 40 minutes. And like every other successful entrepreneur who goes to a commencement — Gates, Jobs — what Zuckerberg taught the graduates was how to live.

Full text of the speech (original transcript):

President Faust, Board of Overseers, faculty, alumni, friends, proud parents, members of the ad board, graduates of the finest university in the world:

I'm honored to stand here with you today, because, honestly, you finished something I never could. In fact, if I get through this speech, it will be the first thing I ever finish at Harvard. Class of 2017, congratulations!

I'm really not the right person to be giving this speech — not just because I dropped out of here, but because we're the same generation. Less than a decade separates our time on this campus. We learned the same things. We both dozed off in Ec10. We got here by different routes, especially those of you who came all the way from the Quad. But what I want to share with you today is what I've learned about our generation, and about the world we're building together.

First, the last few days have brought back a lot of good memories.

How many of you remember exactly what you were doing when the email came saying you'd gotten into Harvard?

I was playing Civilization. I ran downstairs to find my dad. For some reason, his reaction was to film me opening the email. That may honestly be the most emotional video of me ever taken. I can tell you that getting into Harvard is still the thing my parents are proudest of me for.

Do you remember your first class at Harvard? Mine was Computer Science 121, taught by the great Harry Lewis. I was cutting it close, so I threw on a T-shirt. Only later did I realize it was not just inside out but upside down, so the tag was hanging off the front. I couldn't understand why nobody wanted to talk to me — except KX Jin, who didn't care. We ended up working through our problems together, and today he runs a big part of Facebook. Class of 2017, that is why you should be nice to people.

But my best memory of Harvard is meeting Priscilla. I had just put up the prank site Facemash, and the ad board wanted to "see me." Everybody assumed I'd be expelled. My parents came up to help me pack, and my friends threw me a going-away party. Luckily, Priscilla came to that party with a friend. We met in line outside the bathroom at the Pfoho Belltower. And I said one of the most romantic lines of all time: "I'm getting expelled in three days, so we need to start dating fast."

Actually, that line works for every one of you who's about to graduate.

In the end I wasn't expelled — I left on my own. And Priscilla started dating me. If you've seen the movie The Social Network, it looks like Facemash was crucial to the founding of Facebook. It wasn't.

But without Facemash I would never have met Priscilla, and she is the most important person in my life. So you could say Facemash is the most important thing I built while I was here.

All of us started friendships here that will last our whole lives, and some of us even started families. That's why I'm so grateful to this place. Thank you, Harvard.

Today I want to talk about purpose. But I'm not going to give you the standard speech about finding your purpose. We're millennials — we'll do that instinctively. I'm here to tell you that finding your purpose isn't enough. The challenge for our generation is to create a world where everyone has a sense of purpose.

Here's one of my favorite stories. When John F. Kennedy visited the NASA space center, he saw a janitor holding a broom. He walked over and asked what the man was doing, and the janitor said: "Mr. President, I'm helping put a man on the moon."

Purpose makes us feel we belong to something bigger than ourselves. It makes us feel needed. It makes us feel we can work toward something better. Purpose is what brings real happiness.

That matters especially in the era you're graduating into. When our parents graduated, your job, your church and your community gave you a reliable sense of purpose. Today, technology and automation are wiping out many jobs; communities are shrinking; a lot of people feel cut off from society and badly discouraged, and they're trying to fill that hole.

Traveling around, I've sat with kids in juvenile detention and with opioid addicts, and they told me that if they'd had an after-school program to go to, somewhere to be, they wouldn't be living the lives they're living. I've met factory workers who know they can't go back to the jobs they had and are struggling to find their place.

For our society to keep moving forward, our generation has to meet one challenge: we have to create not just new jobs, but new purpose.

I still remember the night I launched Facebook from my little room in Kirkland House. My friend KX and I went to Noch's. I remember telling him how excited I was to connect the people at Harvard — but that someday, someone would connect the whole world.

The truth is, I never once thought that someone would be us. We were college kids. We knew nothing about it. There were plenty of big technology companies with plenty of resources, and I assumed one of them would do it. But we were clear about the idea itself: everyone wants to connect with other people. So every day we kept pushing toward that.

I know a lot of you will go through the same thing. You'll see something the world obviously needs, and assume someone else will do it. But they won't. Only you will.

Still, having your own sense of purpose isn't enough. We have to create purpose for others too.

I learned that the hard way. My goal was never to build a company; it was to have an impact. As people joined us, I assumed that was what they cared about too, so I never explained what I hoped we were building.

Over a few years, some big companies wanted to buy us. I didn't want to sell. I wanted to see whether we could connect more people. We were building the first News Feed, and I thought that once we shipped it, it would change the way we understand the world.

Almost everyone else wanted to sell. They had no higher sense of purpose, and selling was how their startup dream came true. It split the company. After one furious argument, an adviser told me that if I didn't agree to sell, I'd regret the decision for the rest of my life. Relations turned poisonous, and within about a year every single person on the management team had left.

That was the hardest stretch of my time running Facebook. I believed in what we were doing, but I felt alone. Worse, it was my own fault. I didn't know whether I'd gotten it wrong, whether I was a fraud, whether I was just a 22-year-old kid who didn't understand how the world works.

Now, years later, I know it came from the absence of a higher sense of purpose. That purpose is ours to create, so that we can all keep moving forward together.

Today I want to talk about three ways to build a world where everyone has a sense of purpose: take on big, meaningful projects together; redefine equality so that everyone has the freedom to pursue purpose; and build community everywhere in the world.

The first way is to take on big, meaningful projects.

Our generation has to face the fact that tens of millions of jobs will be taken by automation — by self-driving cars and trucks. But together we can do far more than that.

Every generation has the feat that defines it. More than 300,000 people — the janitor included — worked to put a man on the moon. Millions of volunteers vaccinated children against polio all over the world. Millions more built the Hoover Dam and other great works.

Those projects didn't just give the people doing the work a purpose. They gave the whole country a kind of pride: we can do great things.

Now it's our turn to do something great. I know what you may be thinking: I have no idea how to build a dam, or how to get a million people to work on anything.

But let me tell you a secret: nobody does at the start. Ideas don't arrive fully formed. They only get clearer as you work on them. All you have to do is begin.

If I'd had to understand everything about connecting people before I started, I would never have built Facebook.

Movies and pop culture get this wrong. They tell you there's a single moment when the light goes on and you shout "Eureka!" That's a dangerous lie. It makes those of us who haven't had the flash feel inadequate, and it stops people whose good idea is just beginning to surface from ever getting to work. Oh — and do you know what else movies get wrong about innovation? Nobody writes math formulas on glass. I've never seen anyone do that.

Idealism is good, but be ready to be misunderstood. Anyone working toward a big vision gets called crazy, even if the result proves them right. Anyone trying to solve a complicated problem gets accused of not grasping the difficulty, even though nobody could know everything in advance. Anyone who takes initiative gets criticized for moving too fast, because someone always wants you to slow down.

In our society we often fail to do big things, because we're too afraid of making mistakes — and if we do nothing, we make no mistakes. The truth is, anything we do today will run into trouble later. That's no reason not to start.

So what are we waiting for? It's time to do something for everyone, something that defines our generation. Could we try to stop climate change before we destroy the planet, and get millions of people making and installing solar panels? Could we try to cure all disease, with volunteers tracking their own health data and sharing their genomes? Today we spend 50 times more treating sick people than on finding ways to keep them from getting sick in the first place. We can fix that. Could we try to modernize democracy so everyone can vote online, and personalize education so everyone can learn?

All of this is within our power. Let's do it together, and let everyone contribute something to our society. Let's do great things — not just to create progress, but to create purpose.

We can build a world where everyone has a sense of purpose, and starting one big, meaningful project is the first step.

The second step is to redefine equality, and give everyone the freedom to pursue purpose.

Many of our parents held one steady job their whole lives. Now all of us are entrepreneurial — we're starting a project, or looking for one, or helping push one along. That's good. Entrepreneurial culture is exactly why we've made so much progress.

Entrepreneurial culture thrives when it's easy to try a lot of new ideas. Facebook wasn't my first project. I'd made games, chat systems, study tools and music players. And I wasn't alone. J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter was rejected 12 times before it was published, and even Beyoncé recorded hundreds of songs before she got to "Halo." The freedom to fail is what produces the greatest successes.

But the wealth gap we live with now hurts everybody. If you don't have the freedom to take an idea and turn it into a company that matters historically, we all lose. Our society pays too much attention to the rewards of success, and does far too little to give everyone an easy shot at trying again and again.

Let's be honest: our system is broken. I could drop out of here and make billions of dollars in ten years, while millions of students can't pay off their loans, let alone start a company.

I know a lot of entrepreneurs, and I've never heard of one who gave up because the money wasn't good enough. But I know plenty of people who gave up on their dreams because there was no cushion under them if they failed.

We all know that success doesn't come from a good idea or hard work alone. It also takes luck. If I'd had a family to support and no time to write code, if I hadn't known I'd live a decent life even if Facebook failed, I wouldn't be standing here today. Honestly, we all know how lucky we've been.

Every generation widens the definition of equality. The generation before us fought for voting rights and civil rights; they had the New Deal and the Great Society. Now it's our turn to write a new social contract for our generation.

We should have a society that measures progress not only by economic numbers like GDP, but by how many of us are doing work we find meaningful. We should look at ideas like universal basic income, so that everyone has a cushion to try something new.

We'll change jobs many times, so we need affordable childcare to free up the time to work, and health care that doesn't depend on a single employer. We'll all make mistakes, so we need a society that shackles us less and stigmatizes us less. Technology keeps changing, so we need to take lifelong learning far more seriously.

Yes, giving everyone the freedom to pursue purpose costs money. People like me should pay for it. Many of you will do well in the years ahead, and you should give something too.

That's why Priscilla and I started the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, putting our wealth behind equality of opportunity. These are our generation's values. Whether we would do this was never the question; the only question was when we'd start.

Millennials are already the most generous generation in history. Every year, three out of four young American millennials give to a cause, and 70% raise money for charity.

But money isn't all you can give — you can give time. I promise you, an hour or two a week is enough to help someone reach their potential. Helping one person takes only that much.

Maybe that still sounds like a lot. I used to think so too. After Harvard, Priscilla became a teacher. Before the two of us started working on education together, she told me I needed to teach a class. I complained: "Well, I'm busy. I'm running a company." She wouldn't let it go. So I ended up teaching a middle-school entrepreneurship program at the local Boys and Girls Club.

I taught them product development and marketing. They taught me what it feels like to be bullied for your race, or for having a family member in prison. I told them stories about my own school days; they told me they hoped they'd get to college someday. For five years now I've had a meal with these kids every month. One of them threw the first baby shower for Priscilla and me. Next year they're going to college — every one of them, and every one of them the first in their family to go.

All of us can find the time to help someone. Let's help everyone have the freedom to pursue their own purpose — not only because it's right, but because we all gain when more people turn their dreams into something great.

Work isn't the only source of purpose. The third way to give everyone purpose is to build community. When our generation says "everyone," we usually mean "everyone in the world."

A quick show of hands: how many of you are from outside the United States? And how many of you are friends with one of them? We can all talk to each other now; we grew up in touch with people everywhere in the world.

A survey of millennials worldwide asked what defines our identity. The most common answer wasn't nationality, or region, or ethnicity. It was "citizen of the world." That matters.

Every generation widens the circle of who counts as "one of us." For us, "one of us" takes in the whole world.

We know that as human beings gathered in larger and larger groups — from tribes to cities to nations — we pressed harder on the great course of history and did things no one could do alone.

We know we're facing some of the greatest opportunities there have ever been: we could be the generation that ends poverty, that ends disease.

And we know that challenges this large require the whole world to meet them together. No country can fight climate change or head off a pandemic on its own. Progress on these fronts takes not just cities and nations working together, but help exchanged across the entire globe.

But we're living in unsteady times. In every part of the world, people have been left behind by globalization. When just getting by on your own ground is hard, it's harder still to care about people somewhere else. And turning inward to search for yourself brings its own strain.

That's the struggle of our time. The forces of freedom, openness and one global community are fighting authoritarianism, isolationism and nationalism. The forces of knowledge, trade and the movement of people are fighting the forces that would hold them back. This isn't a fight between countries; it's a fight between ideas. In every country there are people who want the world connected, and plenty who don't.

The United Nations can't settle any of this. These things touch every place, and only when enough people feel that purpose and stability in their own lives will we open up and start caring about everyone. The best way to get there is to start now, by building communities close to home.

The communities we belong to are what give us meaning. Whether it's a neighborhood or a sports team, a church or a music group, they make us feel part of something larger, they tell us we aren't alone, and they give us the strength to look outward.

Which makes this a startling fact: over the past few decades, membership in communities of every kind has fallen by as much as a quarter.

All those people now have to look elsewhere for their purpose.

But I know we can rebuild our communities and create new ones, because many of you are already doing it.

I met Agnes Igoye, who graduates today. Where are you sitting, Agnes? She spent her whole childhood dodging between conflict zones in Uganda. Today she trains thousands of law enforcement officers to keep communities safe.

I met Kayla Oakley and Niha Jain, who also graduate today. Would you two stand up? Kayla and Niha started a nonprofit that connects people living with illness to the people in their communities who want to help.

And I met David Razu Aznar, graduating today from the Kennedy School. David, please stand. He's a former city councilman who led a successful fight to make Mexico City the first city in Latin America to pass marriage equality — and Mexico City got there before San Francisco did.

My own story is no different. A student in a dorm room, given one chance, connected one community — and will keep at it until the whole world is connected.

Change starts close to home. Even global change starts small, with ordinary people like us. There is only one measure of whether our generation connects more people and reaches our biggest ambitions: whether you can build communities, and build a world where everyone has a sense of purpose.

Class of 2017, the world you're graduating into needs purpose, and that purpose is yours to create.

Now you may be wondering: can I really do this?

Remember I said I taught a class at the Boys and Girls Club? One day after class I was talking with them about college when one very good student raised his hand and said he wasn't sure he could go, because he was an undocumented immigrant. He didn't know if a college would take him.

On his birthday last year I took him out to breakfast to celebrate. I wanted to give him a present, so I asked what he wanted. He started talking about classmates of his he'd watched struggling, and said: "You know what I really want? A book about social justice."

It knocked me over. This young man had every reason to be cynical. He didn't know whether the country he calls his own — the only country he knows — would refuse him his dream of going to college. But he wasn't feeling sorry for himself. He wasn't even thinking about himself. He had a bigger purpose: to bring everyone forward with him.

That story says everything about the moment we're living in — I can't even tell you his name, because I don't want to put him at risk.

But if a high school senior who doesn't know what his own future holds can do his part to push the world forward, then the rest of us owe the world our part too.

Before you walk out through these gates for the last time, as we sit here together in front of Memorial Church, I'm reminded of a prayer: Mi Shebeirach. I say it whenever I face a challenge, and when I tuck my daughter in and sing to her, thinking about her future. It goes:

"May the source of strength who blessed the ones before us help us find the courage to make our lives a blessing."

I hope you find that courage too — the courage to make your lives a blessing.

Congratulations, Class of 2017. And good luck.

Translated by the Panda Translation Society: Qingshan Liu, Gongyi Qian, Zhongjun Ge

Cover image from Visual China Group / Wikimedia Commons