Although the choice is obviously subjective in nature, we noticed one speech that repeatedly makes various "Best Commencement Speeches" lists.

The late novelist David Foster Wallace gave a speech at Kenyon College in 2005 that topped most of these lists. Wallace — a graduate of the elite liberal arts college Amherst — told students that a liberal arts education teaches them how to be self-aware and how to think.

A liberal arts education, Wallace said, teaches you "to be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties."

"Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out," he added, "totally wrong and deluded."