Make a Difference

Listen to Justin Timberlake innovator award acceptance speech!



"Growing up in school, no one ever called me anything close to an innovator. They called me different. They called me weird. They called me a couple of other words I can't say on TV. But thankfully my mother taught me that being different was a good thing. That being different meant that you could actually make a difference. So, tonight, I want to thank my mom.

If you're a young person, like I used to be, and you're at home watching and you're being called weird, or you're being called different, or whatever the hell you're being called, I'm here tonight to tell you, your critics do not count. Their words will fade. You won't. 

Stay foolish, stay hungry. Dream, work hard and who knows, maybe someday, you'll find yourself standing on a stage and maybe someday, somebody will be giving you an award calling you innovator.

I'm gonna leave you with a couple of quotes that have stuck with me. Ten years ago, a great innovator named Steve Jobs, gave one of the most inspiring speeches ever at a collage commencement. At the end, Steve Jobs quoted some powerful words he'd seen as a young man that he wanted to pass on. Those words were, 'stay hungry, stay foolish.' Now, if any of you, like before you saw some of the SNL stuff that I've done, you know that I have no issue being foolish and anyone who's ever had to deal with me in person, knows that I'm always hungry, literally and figuratively.

When I was a teenager, I read some words that I found extremely powerful that I've been carrying with me ever since. And those words were from our 26th president of the United states, Theodore Roosevelt, 'It is not the critic who counts. Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who was actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood. Who strives valiantly. Who errs. Who comes short again and again because there is no effort without error and shortcoming, but who does always actually strive to do the deed. Who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions. Who spends himself in a worthy cause. who at the best, knows in the end, the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."