Everybody, please have a seat.

We've got some work to do here.

(laughter)

This is not all fun and games.

Welcome to the White House, everybody.

Today, we celebrate extraordinary Americans who

have lifted our spirits, strengthened our union,

pushed us toward progress.

I always love doing this event, but this is a

particularly impressive class.

We've got innovators and artists.

Public servants, rabble rousers, athletes, renowned

character actors -- like the guy from Space Jam.

(laughter)

We pay tribute to those distinguished individuals

with our nation's highest civilian honor -- the

Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Now, let me tell you a little bit about each of them.

First, we came close to missing out on Bill and

Melinda Gates' incredible partnership.

Because apparently Bill's opening line was, "Do you

want to go out two weeks from this coming Saturday?"

(laughter)

He's good with computers, but --

(laughter)

Fortunately, Melinda believes in second chances.

And the world is better for it.

For two decades, the Gates Foundation has worked to

provide lifesaving medical care to millions -- boosting

clean water supplies, improving education for our

children, rallying aggressive international

action on climate change, cutting childhood mortality

in half.

The list could go on.

These two have donated more money to charitable causes

than anyone, ever.

Many years ago, Melinda's mom told her an old saying:

"To know that even one life has breathed easier because

you lived -- that is success." By this and just

about any other measure, few in human history have been

more successful than these two impatient optimists.

Frank Gehry has never let popular acclaim reverse his

impulse to defy convention.

"I was an outsider from the beginning," he says, "so for

better or worse, I thrived on it." The child of poor

Jewish immigrants, Frank grew up in Los Angeles, and

throughout his life he embraced the spirit of a

city defined by an open horizon.

He's spent his life rethinking shapes and

mediums, seemingly the force of gravity itself; the idea

of what architecture could be he decided to upend --

constantly repurposing every material available, from

titanium to a paper towel tube.

He's inspiring our next generation through his

advocacy for arts education in our schools.

From the Guggenheim, to Bilbao, to Chicago's

Millennium Park -- our hometown -- to his home in

Santa Monica, which I understand caused some

consternation among his neighbors --

(laughter)

- Frank's work teaches us that while buildings may be

sturdy and fixed to the ground, like all great art,

they can lift our spirits.

They can soar and broaden our horizons.

When an undergraduate from rural Appalachia first set

foot on the National Mall many years ago, she was

trying to figure out a way to show that "war is not

just a victory or a loss," but "about individual

lives." She considered how the landscape might shape

that message, rather than the other way around.

The project that Maya Lin designed for her college

class earned her a B+ --

(laughter)

-- and a permanent place in American history.

(laughter)

So all of you B+ students out there.

(laughter)

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial has changed the way

we think about monuments, but also about how we think

about sacrifice, and patriotism, and ourselves.

Maya has given us more than just places for remembering

-- she has created places for us to make new memories.

Her sculptures, chapels, and homes are "physical act[s]

of poetry," each reminding us that the most important

element in art or architecture is human emotion.

Three minutes before Armstrong and Aldrin touched

down on the moon, Apollo 11's lunar lander alarms

triggered -- red and yellow lights across the board.

Our astronauts didn't have much time.

But thankfully, they had Margaret Hamilton.

A young MIT scientist -- and a working mom in the '60s --

Margaret led the team that created the onboard flight

software that allowed the Eagle to land safely.

And keep in mind that, at this time, software

engineering wasn't even a field yet.

There were no textbooks to follow, so, as Margaret

says, "There was no choice but to be pioneers."

Luckily for us, Margaret never stopped pioneering.

And she symbolizes the generation of unsung women

who helped send humankind into space.

Her software architecture echoes in countless

technologies today.

And her example speaks of the American spirit of

discovery that exists in every little girl and little

boy who know that somehow, to look beyond the heavens

is to look deep within ourselves -- and to figure

out just what is possible.

If Wright is flight and Edison is light, then Hopper

is code.

Born in 1906, Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper followed

her mother into mathematics, earned her PhD from Yale,

and set out on a long and storied career.

At age 37, and a full 15 pounds below military

guidelines, the gutsy and colorful Grace joined the

Navy and was sent to work on one of the first computers,

Harvard's "Mark One." She saw beyond the boundaries of

the possible, and invented the first compiler, which

allowed programs to be written in regular language

and then translated for computers to understand.

While the women who pioneered software were

often overlooked, the most prestigious award for young

computer scientists now bear her name.

From cell phones to cyber command, we can thank Grace

Hopper for opening programming to millions more

people, helping to usher in the information age and

profoundly shaping our digital world.

Speaking of really smart people --

(laughter)

-- in the summer of 1950, a young University of Chicago

physicist found himself

at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Dick Garwin was there, he said, because Chicago paid

its faculty for nine months but his family ate for 12.

So by the next summer, Dick had helped create the

hydrogen bomb.

And for the rest of his life, he dedicated himself

to reducing the threat of nuclear war.

Dick's not only an architect of the atomic age.

Ever since he was a Cleveland kid tinkering with

his father's movie projectors, he's never met a

problem he didn't want to solve.

Reconnaissance satellites, the MRI, GPS technology, the

touchscreen all bear his fingerprints.

He even patented a "mussel washer" for shellfish --

which I haven't used.

The other stuff I have.

(laughter)

Where is he?

Dick has advised nearly every President since

Eisenhower -- often rather bluntly.

Enrico Fermi -- also a pretty smart guy himself --

is said to have called Dick "the only true genius" he

ever met.

I do want to see this mussel washer.

(laughter)

Along with these scientists, artists, and thinkers, we

also honor those who have shaped our culture from the

stage and the screen.

In her long and extraordinary career, Cicely

Tyson has not only succeeded as an actor, she has shaped

the whole course history.

Cicely was never the likeliest of Hollywood stars.

The daughter of immigrants from the West Indies, she

was raised by a hardworking and religious mother who

cleaned houses and forbade her children to attend

the movies.

But once she got her education and broke into the

business, Cicely made a conscious decision not just

to say lines, but to speak out.

"I would not accept roles," she said, "unless they

projected us, particularly women, in a realistic light,

[and] dealt with us as human beings." And from "Sounder,"

to "The Trip to Bountiful," to "The Autobiography of

Miss Jane Pittman," Cicely's convictions and grace have

helped for us see the dignity of every single

beautiful member of the American family.

And she's just gorgeous.

(laughter and applause)

Yes, she is.

In 1973, a critic wrote of Robert De Niro, "This kid

doesn't just act -- he takes off into the vapors." And it

was true, his characters are iconic.

A Sicilian father turned New York mobster.

A mobster who runs a casino.

A mobster who needs therapy.

(laughter)

A father-in-law who is scarier than a mobster.

(laughter)

Al Capone -- a mobster.

(laughter)

Robert combines dramatic precision and, it turns out,

comedic timing with his signature eye for detail.

And while the name De Niro is synonymous with "tough

guy," his true gift is the sensitivity that he brings

to each role.

This son of New York artists didn't stop at becoming one

of the world's greatest actors.

He's also a director, a philanthropist, co-founder

of the Tribeca Film Festival.

Of his tireless preparation -- from learning the

saxophone to remaking his body -- he once said, "I

feel I have to earn the right to play a part." And

the result is honest and authentic art that reveals

who we really are.

In 1976, Lorne Michaels implored the Beatles to

reunite on his brand new show.

In exchange, he offered them $3,000.

(laughter)

And then he told them they could share it equally, or

they could give Ringo a smaller cut.

(laughter)

Which was early proof that Lorne Michaels has a good

sense of humor.

On Saturday Night Live, he's created a world where a band

of no-names become comedy's biggest stars.

Where our friends the Coneheads, and cheerleaders,

and land sharks, and basement deadbeats, and

motivational speakers, and an unfrozen caveman lawyer

show up, and Tom Hanks is on "Black Jeopardy."

(laughter)

After four decades, even in this fractured media culture

that we've got, SNL remains appointment viewing; a

mainline into not just our counterculture but our

culture; still a challenge to the powerful, especially

folks like me.

And yet even after all these years, Lorne jokes that his

tombstone should bear just a single word that's often

found in the show's reviews -- "uneven."

(laughter)

As a current U.S. Senator

would say: Doggone it, Lorne - that's why

people like you.

He produced a Senator, too, that's pretty impressive.

Ellen DeGeneres has a way of making you laugh about

something rather than at someone.

Except when I danced on her show -- she laughed at me.

(laughter)

But that's okay.

It's easy to forget now, when we've come so far,

where now marriage is equal under the law -- just how

much courage was required for Ellen to come out on the

most public of stages almost 20 years ago.

Just how important it was not just to the LGBT

community, but for all of us to see somebody so full of

kindness and light, somebody we liked so much, somebody

who could be our neighbor or our colleague or our sister

challenge our own assumptions, remind us that

we have more in common than we realize, push our country

in the direction of justice.

What an incredible burden that was to bear.

To risk your career like that.

People don't do that very often.

And then to have the hopes of millions on

your shoulders.