Spokane Scholars Banquet

April 19, 2010

Prepared remarks by William H. Gates Sr, Co-chair

Thank you, Lou, for that kind introduction.

To the Scholars: Congratulations on being named Spokane Scholars! If you haven’t already, I encourage you to take a moment during this celebration, stop listening to all the people who are praising you, and just be proud of yourselves for what you’ve accomplished.

I want to thank you for asking me to speak to you this evening. Talking to students is one of my favorite things.

I am sure I am not the first person my age to give you advice, and I will not be the last. Listening to words of wisdom comes with the territory of being intelligent young people with great promise.

In preparation for this event, I asked you each to write a question that I might answer, so I could get a sense of what is on your minds and say something relevant.

Of the more than 100 questions, several common themes emerged.

A lot of you wanted to know what my son was like when he was your age. One of you asked specifically if he was a prankster!

Others asked questions about the Gates Foundation. How did it get started, and what does it do?

Many of you asked questions about character, what it means to be successful, and how to set priorities.

In a few minutes, I will touch on these themes when I answer a few of your questions at length. But before I do, I want to share a few thoughts about you.

I want to get you thinking about the new phase of your life that is about to start. I hope to contribute to your thinking about who you want to become.

My conviction is that at your age, the important thing to be thinking about is how to make yourself the very best person you can be.

You may be thinking that you are already the person you are going to be. Do not believe that. In college, you will regularly be exposed to exciting challenges, new ideas, and transforming experiences.

If you use your head and your will, you will learn how to think about and decide how these experiences should shape your life. And in doing so, you will create attitudes and patterns that will settle the question of what kind of person you are going to be.

I have no intention of giving you a menu of all the things that you should be. Let me contribute to this process by asking you three questions.

First, can you be trusted?

Here’s a story.

When I was your age, I had an experience where a friend of mine told me something very personal and important to her. She asked that I not tell anyone else about it. I didn’t keep my word.

The news was so juicy that I couldn’t resist the temptation to be a big shot and tell somebody else about it.

I lost a friend. But I did learn an important lesson: All commitments are to be kept. Even those which arise from a casual conversation.

You cannot afford to be a person who’s not trustworthy. It’s simple to say, but sometimes hard to do.

And – there is another lesson here—it is a less I learned. Making a commitment comes all too easy.

In fact, I’d say most of the difficulty in being true to a commitment grows out of being too casual about making commitments in the first place.

My second question is: Have you thought about what it means to be a citizen?

One of my heroes is Martin Luther King. He took citizenship seriously.

But for every Martin Luther King there were thousands of courageous black southerners, citizens whose names we don’t know.

And there were millions of white citizens who said they would no longer accept racism. These folks didn’t storm any barricades, but they did the small, necessary things.

They told their politicians that the issue mattered. They donated money to the cause. They made sure their children learned about civil rights in school.

All those individual, deliberate acts of citizenship added up to the public will to make a change – a very big change and a fundamental one.

It’s an abstract concept, public will. But I think it is the real substance of democracy.

So think about what it means to be a citizen. Join a club. Read a newspaper. Sign a petition. Write a letter. Vote. Have a friendly argument.

I can’t think of a better place than college to start contributing your share to the public’s will to make society better.

Here’s the third question: How do you feel about sharing?

I believe in the axiom, “We are all in this together.” Life is not a zero-sum game, in which people fight tooth and nail to get what is theirs. If we cooperate, if we share, there is more for everybody.

We all have valuable assets that have nothing to do with money. We have time. We have energy. We have affection. And we’re surrounded by people who need us to share those things.

The next four years of your lives is a critical period that has everything to do with who you’ll be when you’re my age. So as you explore all of the great things available to you as part of the college experience, I urge you to be thoughtful, and to be intentional about the kind of person you are making yourself into.