Speeches
Search in Speeches:
 
printer friendly document

President of the Republic on the Reception for the Best University Graduates in Kadriorg on June 18, 1998
18.06.1998

It is wonderful to live here, said the song that just ended, but we shall see about that. It may be wonderful to live here, or it may not be so - it is all for you to decide, for Estonia is, year after year, symbolically handed over to the coming generations in this very garden here.

Estonia will never be complete, and the weather in Estonia is such as it is - today there is both sunshine and rain. Unlike the elements of nature, the Estonia that we have been shaping and that is now your task to shape, is in human hands. Mankind has got the world, but it also creates the world.

You were born in Estonia and new Estonia will be born of you. You are a generation. There have been a hundred, five hundred generations in Estonia; when we go to Tartumaa we will see a grove that still looks the same as it did in the ancient times. It is rare for trees to be more than two hundred years old, but there are trees in Läänemaa that are more than five hundred years old - one of them stands on Kotkamäe, on Cape Puhtu - and right beside it, there is an oak that may have grown there for eight hundred years.

Imagine that some forest or other biological association could be more than five thousand years old. And the nation lives in the same way. In a millennium, forests change very little. Lately I read from a thesis that was defended in the Helsinki university that there are insects in the parks of central Helsinki that neither fly nor crawl, and yet they have existed there since the end of the Ice Age. Imagine this mechanism that preserves a biological association. Centuries fade when faced with this prevailing force.

This is the way a nation prevails, too. From trees and insects, let us proceed to nations - in case of nations we nowadays call this force by the scientific term ''identity''. We anticipate the meaning of this word.

If you have chosen theoretical physics or astronomy, it might seem to be as purely scientific as distilled water that consists of two elements only, and yet this will be Estonian science, because science is based on thinking, and your thinking proceeds from your professors, from your school, from your schoolteachers, your environment and first and foremost from your parents.

You have got a better education than anybody from my generation could ever hope for. For us, graduation form university was formal in many senses, because 20% of our lectures dealt with military training, 20% with the Russian language and 15-20% with the so-called disciplines of marxism-leninism, and not much time was left to educate oneself. As for me, I considered that I had higher education when I had been elected an Honorary Member of the Fenno-Ugric Society in 1981, and when several other scientific societies did the same.

My real studies, and I make no secret of this, started after the graduation from the university. This was not the necessity of times, the same is going to happen to you. Not because your university bears any likeness to mine, but because this is the secret of human life. If you think that today you are finished with something, you are mistaken. This is the beginning, the beginning of the most serious studies. But now, you will no longer be shaping your own knowledge, you will be shaping our country, our future, our children.

The Estonia that you are going to build will have no boundaries, it will be likewise close to the sister universities of Tartu University in Heidelberg and Uppsala, or to the Columbia University or the University of St. Petersburg or the University of Beijing. In your hands the world will become small, and together with Estonia we hand this small world over to you. Shape it to be happy, let this day be a summary that says: there may be rain or sunshine, but it is possible for man to cup light and sunshine in the palm of his hand and shine in the darkest of nights, just like nature.

You are the Estonia of tomorrow, carry Estonia to the day after tomorrow, for Estonia deserves it. I have no better Estonia to offer you.

I wish you a lot of luck and a lot of strength, above all a lot of strength.

Thank you!

 

back | archive of speeches | main page

© 2001 Office of the President of the Republic
Phone: +372 631 6202 | Fax: +372 631 6250 | sekretar@vpk.ee
Reden Kõned Speeches Statements Interviews