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Key Note

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The Speech of Vicente Fox
Graduation 2011

I want to start by giving thanks to Christian, to Habib Chamoun and his lovely wife and to all of you that have welcomed us to this great, beautiful, magnificent city of Vienna.

Cicero would say „How pleasant it is, to come back to a University.”He would say “how rewarding and enriching it is come back to the sources of knowledge”. It’s, he said, like coming back to the fountain of youth, and I am very pleased to be sharing here with this group of students - young at heart - that decided to attend this university and to come back to the sources of knowledge and wisdom.

Commencement means beginning. It is a surprise that we speak about commencing, that we speak about starting, when you are finishing one most important stage in your life. But it does have a meaning, because we are always commencing. We commence every day.

Deepak Chopra tells us: “Give yourself with 5 minutes in silence every day. Cope within yourself, question yourself, evaluate yourself, confirm that what you doing is your purpose of life. After those 5 Minutes with ourselves we have this unique opportunity of 24 hours - 24 lone hours to make our dreams and our purpose a reality. 24 hours every day for action - in a little we always take advantage of those seconds and minutes that compose these 24 hours.

Purpose is a very strong word – it’s a key word. Everything in life, every human action must have a purpose, and I’m absolutely sure, that each one of you today has purpose. Purpose and and meaning in what you mean doing this next 24 hours. And the word of purpose is a good cause. The modern purpose has to do with others.

The greater the mission, the more we achieve results. For this reason we should never forget about being in the shoes of those others that do not have the opportunities that you have today. Especially the poor, especially the excluded, especially those like it happens in Latin America. Those 78% out of each 100 kids that don’t have the opportunity to be in a university of excellence like this. That will bring to all of us a sense of responsibility, commitment and purpose - but the rewarding job is happiness in our heart.

In times of such turbulence, these times, when the world doesn’t seem to know where are we where are we going after this crisis, itis important that the leaders of the Western civilization, the European Union, the US have a sense of purpose that takes account of others.

Today it seems to be that they have hit the roof and they don’t seem to be the leaders that will show us the way, the path to the next step in our journey in this world.

The leaders seem to be stuck. They don’t seem to know how and when the solutions will come to be able to manage the impact of crisis we are involved, to make democracy deeper - how to make democracy be the way of life that bring solutions to problems.

They don’t seem to have the capacity to reach an agreement. The disagreement is only among 2 parties – the Republicans and the Democrats - and I don’t know if they are aware, that if they don’t come to agreements and decision, if they don’t come to consensus and if they don’t come together with the leaders in the rest of the world, that show the way to go - the rest of the world is in trouble.

Sometime we don’t see the strong impression, the philosophy, the wisdom, the capacities of the private sectors, of those who take initiative in industry to promote growth and employment, of those of having the vision of creating wealth or creating jobs or bringing opportunities to the rest of the people.

The business community seems to be sitting back, on the back chair – waiting and expecting that decision makers - the public sector - will come with answers to the crisis that is hitting so badly today our nations, our families, our communities and our people.

The future belongs to the leaders, to those in the private sectors, in the businesses that take initiative and do not wait for the public sector to act.

We should never forget that we are all leaders. You are a leader, you there are leader and you over there are a leader. We are all leaders all the time of our life – we never finish making ourselves leaders.

It’s a life work. That’s why we can commence every day. That’s why we have to be aware of our leadership. That’s why we have to be conscious of our capacities. That’s why leaders have that power within to move ahead, to build the world that we want for the 21st century.

That’s why you are sitting in this room and that’s the core of humanity. So we have the opportunity to commence again, to take intiative and to lead.

Let me finish with one really short story: there is this man walking on the sidewalk of Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles/California. And now this man in this story, he sees this big, black Cadillac and this other guy in a car, driving who is proud of what he has accomplished. Our man in the story started complaining to God. “God - why didn’t you give me, what you gave him?” He started to be outraged at God “It’s not fair the way you have treated me.” And he kept walking. Suddenly in front of him on the same side, there was another man on a wheelchair. He didn’t have arms and didn’t have legs. Our man in the story started thinking and reflecting and immediately.
He started asking God for forgiveness for what he had said. Because he understood in that moment that God has given him arms and legs to build his own future. He is fond of his future – and so he started thanking God for the capacity, the power within, the resources to build a better world we that we all trying to build.

To the students here, to their families, that have made parental sacrifices of untold hours and hours at night and day, just remember those hours and hours created the opportunity to work and build a better world today.

Greetings from Mexico to this lovely city and this university.

Marta and I dream - as next year – we can put academic programs together between this great university of IMADEC and Centro FOX, our foundation, a foundation dedicated to the kind leadership that we are talking about here in Vienna today.

Gracias.

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