The best advice from the greatest commencement speeches of all time

JOSHUA LOTT/AP

Stephen Colbert participates as grand marshall during the Northwestern University homecoming parade in 2006.

In a sea of graduation clichés, some commencement speeches stand out.

They're witty, they're wise, and they offer real advice - not just about professional success, but about personal success. They're about forging a good career, but they're also about what it means to be a good person.

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Here, we've gone through our favorite speeches of all time and distilled them down to one piece of concrete advice.

Whether you graduated this spring or you've been out of school for decades, these are words to live by.