"When I was asked to make this address I wondered what I had
to say to you boys who are graduating. And I think I have one thing to say.
If you wish to be useful, never take a course that will silence you. Refuse
to learn anything that implies collusion, whether it be a clerkship or a
curacy, a legal fee or a post in a university. Retain the power of speech no
matter what other power you may lose. If you can take this course, and in so
far as you take it, you will bless this country. In so far as you depart from
this course you become dampers, mutes, and hooded executioners.
As a practical matter a mere failure to speak out upon
occasions where no opinion is asked or expected of you, and when the utterance
of uncalled-for suspicion is odious, will often hold you to a concurrence in
palpable iniquity. Try to raise a voice that will be heard from here to Albany
and watch what comes forward to shut off the sound. It is not a German
sergeant, nor a Russian officer of the precinct. It is a note from a friend
of your father's offering you a place in his office. This is your warning from
the secret police. Why, if any of you young gentleman have a mind to make
himself heard a mile off, you must make a bonfire of your reputations and a
close enemy of most men who would wish you well.
I have seen ten years of young men who rush out into the
world with their messages, and when they find how deaf the world is, they
think they must save their strength and wait. They believe that after a while
they will be able to get up on some little eminence from which they can make
themselves heard. 'In a few years,' reasons one of them, 'I shall have gained
a standing, and then I will use my powers for good.' Next year comes and with
it a strange discovery. The man has lost his horizon of thought. His ambition
has evaporated; he has nothing to say. I give you this one rule of conduct.
Do what you will, but speak out always. Be shunned, be hated, be ridiculed, be
scared, be in doubt, but don't be gagged. The time of trial is always. Now
is the appointed time."
-- John Jay Chapman
Commencement address
to the graduating class
Hobart College, 1900
