Vice President Joe Biden, a Syracuse University College of Law alumnus, will be visiting campus on Thursday to speak about sexual assault prevention.

He also delivered the keynote address at the SU and the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry’s 2009 commencement ceremony. Here are five select quotes from that speech:

1. “Absent our input and leadership, the will continue to careen in the direction the momentum is now taking it. That, folks, is an inflection point. Do nothing, or take history into our own, and like few generations that are given the chance, bend it — bend it in the service of a better day.”

2. “Imagine a country that lifts up the windows of opportunities instead of slamming them down that has occurred over the last 15 years. Imagine a country where creativity and scientific knowledge are valued, not shoved aside. Imagine a country where every single American has a fighting chance, just a fighting chance, and a country that lives up to our promise of our ideals and leads the world with the power of our example, not just the example of our power.”

3. “You’re connected with each other like no generation ever has been. You’re connected to the world in ways that we could have never imagined as I walked off this field, and you’re using those connections to unite a global community and to deepen our understanding of the world around us.”

4. “So for those who tell you we’re doing too much, be smart enough not to listen. For those who say what we dream of cannot be done, be naïve enough to give it a shot. And for those that say now is not the time, say if not now, when?”

5. “Just as with every other generation that’s found itself at an inflection point in history, it is totally within your power to shape history, to literally bend it. This is not bravado. This has been the history of the journey of America from its inception.”