Bill Cosby is the most prolific graduation speaker of all time -- or at least he sure seems to be. We don't know if anyone is keeping track of these numbers, but he appears to be the keynote or Commencement Speaker on every college campus year after year!

Bill Cosby graduated from Pennsylvania's Temple University. He now serves on its Board of Directors and is one its traditional Commencement Speakers for graduation.

Bill Cosby began his career as a stand up comic in the racially charged 1960s. He presented himself as a clean cut man with an observatory style of comedy, just as Jerry Seinfeld would decades later. Cosby frequently used his childhood and the friends of his youth as basis for his comedy. In later years, he would move on to make comedic observations about his wife and children and in his role as husband and father.

In the 1970s he was given the opportunity to add television to his resume and became a dramatic series star opposite Robert Culp in I Spy. He was selling out live stand up comedy performances, was selling tons of comedy albums and was a television star when the landmark show named for him arrived to break television and cultural history again. The Cosby Show put him into the stratosphere of stardom and began his evolution toward social commentary and advisor.

Cosby is in a unique position in America. He is a black man who has made his career by not paying overt attention to race. He was funny in any color. He was a dignified comic who clowned around without costumes. He has participated in 60s, the 70s, the 80s, the 90s and continues to be an iconic American force in the 21st Century.

He performs his comedy to college audiences and is a top get each year as a Commencement Speaker. He loves the role of advisor, mentor and icon.

The following are sequential excerpts from the Graduation Speech Bill Cosby delivered in 2003 to the graduating class of students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

"… I want to tell you how much I love you. I want to tell you how much we all love you. And I want to tell you right now, Class of 2003, whatever is outside I want you to go inside, inside and discover something that you may have been running away from up until today. And that is your own integrity.

Be a person who believes that you should, through hard work, have an earned position to move in and up. And not to just look at others passing you by and living through them – to live through yourself.

And I’m saying to all of you now as a friend, and as someone who loves you, that your integrity, your honesty, your responsibility, you need to check it and bring it out. And the way to start it is to trust all of these people that you’ve come in contact with since they of not even knowing you were alive and you can’t remember it. Because these are the people who have told you over and over the truth."

"… Some of them haven’t even gone to college and they are here today for you with hope. I don’t want you to fool them anymore. … I want you to tell them the truth. I want you to hug them when you see them today and give them your heart and your love. I’m serious about that because some of these people, they didn’t finish high school, for whatever reason. Those people are not dumb because they can recognize gold. They can recognize a worthful person. And they saw more in you than you saw in yourself. That makes them beautiful people because they love you."

"Today is a day for you to cheer and throw the beach ball back and forth, but you’ve got to come outside of this stadium. This is not a protection area anymore. You’re out. You belong to us now. And some of us are not going to tell you how wonderful you are when you aren’t. … And you’re going to find out that some tricks are being played outside. You’re going to feel that you’re not wanted in a lot of places. So you’re going to want to come back home, disgusted. Stay out there."