Speaking at the Princeton University, acclaimed director Christopher Nolan urged students to “chase reality” instead of “chasing dreams”.

“In the great tradition of these speeches, generally what happens is the speaker says something along the lines of ‘you need to chase your dreams.’ But I am not going to say that because I don’t believe it. I don’t want you to chase your dreams. I want you to chase your reality. I want you to understand that you chase your reality not at the expense of your dreams, but as the foundation of your dreams,” he said.

Asking students to use their learnings to their advantage, he said, “It’s very, very important that you take the elevated position that you have achieved over these four years, the advantages that this fantastic education has conferred on you, and you do everything you can with it to improve the world. I would love for you to look at fundamentals. What are we really doing in the world? What is the change that is being effected? How can we actually move the ball forward and progress in this way?”

“You are going to go out of here and fill those gaps in your knowledge that you don’t even know you have. You are going to fill them with experiences — some of it marvellous and some of it terrible. You are going to learn that way. But what you have achieved here will see you through that,” he added.