Entrepreneur Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal and Facebook’s angel investor, delivered Hamilton College’s graduation commencement on Sunday and told students to embrace their ignorance.
Thiel said that throughout his career, older professionals with much more experience would mock the same ideas that made him billions. His youth and naiveté allowed him to dream beyond the limitations that years had imposed on his elders.
“At this moment in your life, you know fewer limits, fewer taboos, and fewer fears than you ever will in the future. So, do not squander your ignorance,” Thiel said. “Go out and do what your teachers and parents thought could not be done, and what they never thought of doing.”
The tech investor said that America, Western civilization, and technology all have a similar desire to embrace what’s new.
“Here at Hamilton, in America, and in that part of the world called the West, we are all part of an unusual kind of tradition,” he continued. “The tradition we’ve inherited is itself about doing new things. The New Science of Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton discovered truths that had never been written down in books. Our whole continent is a New World. The Founders of this country set out to create what they called a New Order for the Ages. America is the frontier country. We are not true to our own tradition unless we seek what is new.”
He said that the worst problem with technology today is that the term has been whittled down to just information technology, whereas in the 1960s people thought of it in broader terms. Thiel said we should reject the idea that America is a developed country, and embrace the idea that we are still making history rather than it being over.
Watch the full speech below:
