Mark Zuckerberg: Let's take on big, meaningful projects. Our generation is going to have to deal with tens of millions of jobs replaced by automation, like self-driving cars and trucks. But we have the potential to do so much more than that.

Every generation has its defining works. More than 300,000 people worked to put that man on the moon, including that janitor. Millions of volunteers immunize children around the world against polio. And millions of more people built the Hoover Dam and other great projects. And now it's our generation's turn to do great things.

Now I know, maybe you're thinking, I don't know how to build a dam, I don't know how to get a million people involved in anything. Well, let me tell you a secret. No one does when they begin.

Ideas don't come out fully formed. They only become clear as you work on them. You just have to get started.

If I had to know everything about connecting people before I got started, I never would have built Facebook. Movies and pop culture just get this all wrong. The idea of a single Eureka moment is a dangerous lie. It makes us feel inadequate, because we feel like we haven't had ours yet. And it prevents people with seeds of good ideas from ever getting started in the first place.

Oh, and you know what else movies get wrong about innovation? No one writes math formulas on glass.

[laughter]

All right. That's not a thing.

It's really good to be idealistic. But be prepared to be misunderstood. Anyone working on a big vision is going to get called crazy, even if you end up right.

Anyone taking on a complex problem is going to get blamed for not fully understanding it, even though it's impossible to know everything up front. Anyone taking initiative will always get criticized for moving too fast, because there's always someone who wants to slow you down.

In our society, we often don't take on big things, because we're so afraid of making mistakes that we ignore all the things wrong today if we do nothing. The reality is, anything we do today is going to have some issues in the future. But that can't stop us from getting started.

So what are we waiting for? It is time for our generation defining great works. How about stopping climate change before we destroy the planet and getting millions of people involved--

[cheering]

--manufacturing and installing solar panels? How about curing all diseases and getting people involved by asking volunteers to share their health data, track their health data, and share their genomes? Today, our society spends more than 50 times as much treating people who are sick as we invest in finding cures so people don't get sick in the first place. It makes no sense.

We can fix this. How about modernizing democracy so everyone can vote online?

[cheering, applause]

And how about personalizing education so everyone can learn? These achievements are all within our reach. Let's do them all in a way that gives everyone in our society a role. Let's do big things, not just to create progress, but to create purpose.