If I had known I was going to follow a great speaker and a local hero like Jeb Bush, I would've gotten laryngitis. I'm going to do the best I can for you, so Governor, Mrs. Bush, President Young, trustees, members of the administration, faculty members, ladies and gentlemen - especially all of y'all that wrote big checks to the University of Florida lately - thank you. How many students have we got here? OK, take a look at these folks. These are your employees. YOU are the University of Florida. And you are the greatest of the future.

It's a distinguished crowd here, and this is a lot for a Florida farm boy like myself to deal with. To quote Jack Kennedy, "This is the most distinguished crowd that's gathered together since Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

Governor, I'm going to veer from my prepared remarks because you're here today, and I'm going to tell one story - it being as it is with the world and all. After Saddam Hussein decided Iraq ought rightfully to be his, I went flying into Baghdad. And all the American hostages had been taken from Kuwait City up to a fancy hotel in Baghdad called the Al Rasheed Hotel, which is still used today. (They've got some wonderful cameras and taping equipment up there.) And I landed in the middle of the night at the airport in Baghdad and there was this huge sign that said, "Welcome to the Al Rasheed Hotel. More than a hotel."

Now I began to report on things and they began a kind of charm offensive, which for the Iraqis is a challenge. But they did the best they could, and I interviewed the minister of information, a man called Jasm. Wonderful fellow and I talked with him on the record. And then afterwards he said, "All right, this was good, I like this conversation. Let's have tea, we'll talk."

And I said, "Well, sir, you really must understand, I'm happy to talk with you, but I have nothing to do with government policies. I speak only as a private citizen. I'm not involved in the government whatsoever."

And he said, "Yes, yes, we are all private citizens. Come talk."

So I sat down - I swear this is a true story - I sat down and I talked with him. And he said, "You know, we are trying to get President Bush and Margaret Thatcher to talk to us. They will not talk. Why?"

I said, "Well, it's a cultural thing. You know in our country, when you take men, women and children hostage, it slows things down."

And he said, "Well, what should we do?"

And I said, "Release the hostages." (Call me crazy.)

And he said, "We can't do that. They'll bomb us."

And I said, "OK, then release the women and children. As a gesture."

And he said, "OK, I'll think. I think I'll speak to someone very high about this. What else?"

And you know I'm thinking, and I said, "Well, I think you ought to go on Nightline, really. You know, they're not talking to you, you can talk to us. And we'll get somebody from the government, a senator or a representative. Somebody will run his mouth for sure. And you guys can talk to each other and it'll all be fine."

And he said, "I like this idea, this is good."

So the next day - I take no credit for this, this was already being talked about, I swear to God - the next day, the women and children were in fact released. And Saddam Hussein challenged President Bush and Margaret Thatcher to a debate. Which was NOT what I was thinking at all. And President Bush goes, "What??"

That afternoon I was on the plane out of Baghdad…and on to Saudi Arabia.

Now we've been talking a bit about history, so let's dig into some serious history here. Dec. 18, 1994, was a beautiful day in southwestern France. It was a clear blue sky and the light glinted off the limestone cliffs in a wonderful way. And there were three cave explorers, spelunkers led by Jean Marie Chauvet who had been all through this area in southwestern France, but wanted to go again. And just off this little path was a cave that many people had explored, but they thought they would try it. So they dug down in the cave and saw amazing formations. They decided to go a little deeper, and in they went. And there, one of the women who was with them flashed on the wall and said, "They were here."

What she had seen was in beautiful red ocher, a mastodon painted on the wall of the cave. Magnificent. As good as anything a modern artist could do. And she raised the flashlight across the walls and there were hundreds of animals: lions, jaguars, rhinoceros, giraffes, more mastodons, bison and hunters pursuing them. The Pleistocene era, laid across this wall. On the floor, some cave bones, and laid on a shelf, as if it were put there yesterday, a cave bear skull in a prominent location. They dated this cave. It turned out to be the oldest known cave of paintings in existence. Thirty to 35 thousand years ago. In other words, this magnificent set of paintings was done when man had moved into Europe. And there in the darkness, they lived in a holy place. It was not an abode - it was a temple. It was a place where they gathered. And it was a place where their humanity was sealed. As it turns out, at the same time there was another species of humans that was moving towards extinction, the Neanderthals.

So the question becomes, what was it about this group who feared lions, who lived in the dark, who looked up at the sky and didn't know what it was - what was it about them that made them develop their genius so that they could spread it to every single part of the globe? Even Antarctica. We live even in Antarctica where we are so powerful, so forceful that we are literally a geological force on this planet. We are shaping the planet today. What was it about these humans? It wasn't there opposable thumbs, I assure you. There were other humans that had them. In fact, it wasn't their upright posture. There were other humans and other upright apes that had that. What was it? It was that cave. It was the telling of stories. It was a mutation that allowed us to have such a subtlety in our voice box that we could shape the sounds you're hearing now. It was the ability to bind together in the telling of stories about the people. About the history of their time together, so they moved forward as one. Because there is no such thing as one human being. You can't imagine it. We are a social creature.

And that gave them tradition. That gave them a sense of unity against whatever forces laid against them. It also gave them the opportunity to be innovative. To change and learn. Perhaps, as they're chipping a rock against a piece of flint, the edge goes off and they realize they have a knife. Perhaps, later on, they realize that this can become the point of a spear. And then the point of an arrow. And so they change and grow and they pass that knowledge down by the telling of stories in holy places.

Time goes on and these ideas build up. It was 10,000 years ago - only 10,000 years ago, which really is nothing - that agriculture was invented, ironically in the Tigress-Euphrates Valley, Iraq. That is the beginning of all agriculture for man today. Only a few years later, writing was invented on clay tablets so that the ideas could be put down and passed one to another to another and to another. And things began to speed up. Until we come rushing to where we are now. As we come rushing past Copernicus and Galileo and Newton and Darwin and Einstein to this day. Until we come to the present.

I think all of us would agree with the little bit of time that we've had, that Sept. 11 was a crack in time. Sept. 11 will stand as important or perhaps more important than Pearl Harbor. It divides history. Behind us, the 20th century, the American century. We began as a small agricultural country with no great designs. In fact, we were isolationists. We rather didn't like the British Empire, as it was known. We were forced into World War II. And yet we emerged from the century with an economy that overpowers the rest of the world. With a culture and a social structure that passes around the world like lightning and with a military force that is more powerful than anything that has been seen on this planet before. So powerful that only Britain of our allies can really talk to us when we're at war. The rest are peacekeepers. This, like it or not, is the age of an American empire. And when those planes came crashing into the buildings, the world was divided because the question became, what will that force be used for? And how? And those are the questions that lie before us now.

As you may know, the foreign minister of Britain, Jack Straw, recently said that he thinks the possibility of war is 60/40. I think it's somewhat less than that. The American forces that raid against Iraq are powerful. And the real question will not be whether the United States will win. (There are some questions about the costs.) The real question will be what happens on day three? What happens after the United States has won? Because then the world will be watching. The world that admires us, the world that fears us, will be watching to see how we handle it. "Will we be like other empires in the past?" they will wonder. Or will we step back from what we have gained… and as we have in the past, give it to the people of Iraq and hope that it will transform the region? Those questions will lie before us.

There are many, many powerful other questions that we must face. The environment, disease - HIV runs rampant in Africa. The truth is, these are going to be tough times. But it is tough times that humans have always faced and have always made us greater. We have two choices: we can back away from the challenge and fall into chaos and despair, or we can rise to what was in that cave and embrace the genius that lies before us.

Which brings us to this room, which I have always loved and I forgot how much I loved it. To this university because, you see, the media are noisy and loud and glamorous and often mistaken. And politicians and business people are spinning like tops. But this, with a ring around it of calm and quiet, seeks only one thing: the truth. It dares to stare the truth directly in the face and wonder what it might be. The greatest lights of our civilization are our academies, our universities, because they are the ones that lead, like that flashlight, into the future. So, we've had 150 years that this place has been important to us. Our temples, our synagogues, our churches, our mosques, our holy places of the spirit… THIS is a holy place of the mind. And it must be respected as just that.

I gave a speech once about technology. And someone I think had rhetorically asked me, "What's the difference between data and knowledge?"

Well, it's obvious. Data is just little streams, bits of information that don't make sense unless you begin to arrange them into information, and now you have a little more. And knowledge is the narrative, the storytelling, the structure, the meaning, the context we put around all of that. And it's important. But there is one thing more that is far more important… and that is wisdom. And it is wisdom that we hope to gain in our universities, in our academies. And so I could not be more honored than I am today to be here. To celebrate 150 years. We look back; we celebrate all of those who built brick by brick, stone by stone, mind by mind what we admire today. We stand to thank all of you - students, faculty, administration and government alike - who build what we have today. And we gather to pray for the future so that we can embrace the genius that was seen in that cave. Thank you.