Commencement speeches were invented largely in the belief that outgoing college students should never be released into the world until they have been properly sedated. — Garry Trudeau
There is a good reason they call these ceremonies 'commencement exercises'. Graduation is not the end; it's the beginning. — Orrin Hatch
A graduation ceremony is an event where the commencement speaker tells thousands of students dressed in identical caps and gowns that 'individuality' is the key to success. — Robert Orben
Graduation is not the end; it's the beginning. — Orrin Hatch
At commencement you wear your square-shaped mortarboards.My hope is that from time to time you will let your minds be bold, and wear sombreros. — Paul A. Freund
The fireworks begin today. Each diploma is a lighted match. Each one of you is a fuse. — Ed Koch
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. — Steve Jobs
Wherever you go and whatever ends you pursue, you must always fulfill the trust reposed in you by your nation, your parents and your alma mater — Samar Mubarakmand
Slow down, especially at the beginning of a speech. You'll get the audience's attention by pausing. — Bob Kerrey
Today we affirm a new commitment to live out our nation's promise through civility, courage, compassion and character. — George W. Bush
A speech is poetry: cadence, rhythm, imagery, sweep! A speech reminds us that words, like children, have the power to make dance the dullest beanbag of a heart. — Peggy Noonan
Graduation Speech Quotes
Never follow anyone else's path, unless you're in the woods and you're lost. — Ellen DeGeneres
You might as well take a chance on doing what you love. — Jim Carrey
Pausing allows you to take a beat to take a breath in your life. As everybody else is rushing around like a lunatic out there, I dare you to do the opposite. — Maria Shriver
I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which, was that you can fail at what you don't want so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love — Jim Carrey
So many of us choose our path out of fear disguised as practicality. — Jim Carrey
The effect you have on others is the most valuable currency there is. — Jim Carrey
Don't be afraid of fear. Because it sharpens you, it challenges you, it makes you stronger; and when you run away from fear, you also run away from the opportunity to be your best possible self. — Ed Helms
There is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction. — Oprah Winfrey
Sometimes just being still is the best thing you can do for yourself. — Silas House
High School Graduation Speech Quotes
Be yourself, it's the best thing you can do. — Greyson Chance
Life has a very simple plot: first you're here and then you're not. — Eric Idle
Karate is the best thing you can do for your child. — Chuck Norris
Life is an improvisation. You have no idea what's going to happen next and you are mostly just making things up as you go along. — Stephen Colbert
Your education is a dress rehearsal for a life that is yours to lead. — Nora Ephron
It is a warning, Godspeed. It means you are no longer welcome here at these prices. — Bill Cosby
People will frighten you about a graduation....They use words you don't hear often. — Bill Cosby
Live all of your life. Understand it, see it, appreciate it. And have fun. — Joss Whedon
When every high school graduate can spell the word, 'inauguration,' let's put lampshades on our heads and listen to his speeches until Obama's voice gives out. — Paula Poundstone
Commencement Quotes
Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don't. — Bill Nye
Continue to share your heart with people even if it's been broken. — Amy Poehler
Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death. — Albert Einstein
Education commences at the mother's knee, and every word spoken within hearsay of little children tends toward the formation of character. — Hosea Ballou
Nothing in life is worthwhile unless you take risks. Fall forward. Every failed experiment is one step closer to success. — Denzel Washington
Just about a month from now I'm set adrift, with a diploma for a sail and lots of nerve for oars. — Richard Halliburton
You cannot help but learn more as take the world into your hands. Take it up reverently, for it is and old piece of clay, with millions of thumbprints on it. — John Updike
Hitler took the guns. Stalin took the guns. Mao took the guns. Fidel Castro took the guns. Hugo Chavez took the guns. And I'm here to tell you, 1776 will commence again if you try to take our firearms. — Alex Jones
Interviewing is tough, especially if you don't know what you're looking for. — Charlyne Yi
Of course there's a lot of knowledge in universities: the freshmen bring a little in; the seniors don't take much away, so knowledge sort of accumulates. — Abbott Lawrence Lowell
Graduation Commencement Quotes
God wants us to know that life is a series of beginnings not endings. Just as graduations are not terminations but commencements. Creation is an ongoing process and when we create a perfect world where love and compassion are shared by all suffering will cease. — Bernie Siegel
Whatever you choose, however many roads you travel, I hope that you choose not to be a lady. I hope you will find some way to break the rules and make a little trouble out there. And I also hope that you will choose to make some of that trouble on behalf of women. — Nora Ephron
Nothing worth knowing can be taught. — Oscar Wilde
Spread joy. Chase your wildest dreams. — Patch Adams
Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. — Steve Jobs
Think of it as your ticket to change the world. — Tom Brokaw
Love what you do. Get good at it. Competence is a rare commodity in this day and age. And let the chips fall where they may. — Jon Stewart
I’ve found that nothing in life is worthwhile unless you take risks. — Denzel Washington
So, what's it like in the real world? Well, the food is better, but beyond that, I don't recommend it. — Bill Watterson
Acceptance Speech Quotes
Most of all, I want to thank my father, up there, the man who when I said I wanted to be an actor, he said, 'Wonderful. Just have a back-up profession like welding.' — Robin Williams
You're only two years older than me, darling. Where have you been all my life? — Christopher Plummer
I won and I get to scream and jump a little. But I got to go back to work tomorrow. — Benicio Del Toro
This is one night I wish I smoked and drank. — Grace Kelly
There is price you pay when you want freedom of speech. You must be willing to accept the good the bad and the ugly when trying something out of the box. — Sunny Leone
Neatness of phrase is so closely akin to wit that it is often accepted as its substitute. — Agnes Repplier
A lot of men who have accepted - or had imposed upon them in boyhood - the old English public school styles of careful modesty in speech, with much understatement, have behind their masks an appalling and impregnable conceit of themselves. — J. B. Priestley
When they called my name, I had this feeling I could hear half of America going, 'Oh no. Come on... Her, again?' You know. But, whatever. — Meryl Streep
I refuse to accept the view . . . that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Graduation Ceremony Quotes
Even though I disagree with many of the changes, when I see the privates graduate at the end of the day, when they walk off that drill field at the end of the ceremony, they are still fine privates; outstanding, well motivated privates. — R. Lee Ermey
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying says that death is the graduation ceremony, while living is just a long course in learning and preparing for the next journey. If we acknowledge death as the beginning, then how can we fear it? — Nikki Sixx
Death is very likely the single best invention of life. — Steve Jobs
The truth is, I was afraid the day I walked into Stanford. And I was afraid the day I walked out. — Carly Fiorina
Harry taught me that death isn't the end, it's the beginning. — Jennifer Love Hewitt
These are days you'll remember. If you recall nothing else from your graduation ceremony, remember you heard the New Jersey Governor quote from 10,000 Maniacs. — Bill Vaughan
Like a christening, a wedding, a graduation ceremony, a holy war, a revolutioneven?a fireworksdisplay, agaudy promise of what life ought to be, not life itself. — Alistair Cooke
Аs I've mentioned many times, sitting through graduation ceremonies is one of life's drearier milestones. — Emily Yoffe
Some are born great. Some achieve greatness. Some get it as a graduation gift. — Robin Williams
The horizon leans forward, offering you space to place new steps of change. — Maya Angelou
A college education is not a quantitative body of memorized knowledge salted away in a card file. It is a taste for knowledge, a taste for philosophy, if you will; a capacity to explore, to question to perceive relationships, between fields of knowledge and experience. — Alfred Whitney Griswold
A modern school where football is taught. — Ambrose Bierce
I am terminally sentimental about graduations. They are more individual than weddings, more conscious than christenings, or bar mitzvahs or bat mitzvahs. They are almost as much a step into the unknown as funerals-though I assure you, there is life after graduation. — Gloria Steinem
I’ve been waiting more than 30 years to say this: “Dad, I always told you I’d come back and get my degree.” I want to thank Harvard for this timely honor. I’ll be changing my job next year … and it will be nice to finally have a college degree on my resume. — Bill Gates
Life is the most exciting opportunity we have. — Andrew Shue
Life is to be lived through action not by dreaming. — Kenneth G. Wilson
There is no spark like the one ignited under the aspirations of a new graduate. — Henny Youngman
Inspirational Graduation Quotes
Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. — Steve Jobs
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined... — Henry David Thoreau
If you don't go after what you want, you'll never have it. If you don't ask, the answer is always no. If you don't step forward, you're always in the same place. — Nora Roberts
Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened. — Dr. Seuss
What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us. — Henry David Thoreau
Every person that you meet knows something you don't; learn from them. — H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
You have to go wholeheartedly into anything in order to achieve anything worth having. — Frank Lloyd Wright
The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking spaces. — Will Rogers
Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. — Steve Jobs
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. — Steve Jobs
Inaugural Speech Quotes
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself-and possibly teh bogey man. — Pat Paulsen
I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody. — Muhammadu Buhari
The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God. — John F. Kennedy
Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law. — Barack Obama
We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations — Barack Obama
So let us begin anew - remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof — John F. Kennedy
Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it. — Thomas Paine
Let us strive on to finish the work we are in. — Abraham Lincoln
I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." — Abraham Lincoln
With firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right. — Abraham Lincoln
Commencement oratory must eschew anything that smacks of partisan politics, political preference, sex, religion or unduly firm opinion. Nonetheless, there must be a speech: Speeches in our culture are the vacuum that fills a vacuum. — John Kenneth Galbraith
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters. I wish you all very good lives. — J. K. Rowling
Music is the literature of the heart; it commences where speech ends. — Alphonse De Lamartine
The commencement speech is not, I think, a wholly satisfactory manifestation of our culture. — John Kenneth Galbraith
President Obama and Mitt Romney both gave commencement speeches over the last few days. Obama was like, 'You can be whatever you want to be,' while Romney was like, 'I can be whatever you want me to be.' — Jimmy Fallon
Don't be afraid to fail big, to dream big. — Denzel Washington
You will never see a U-Haul behind a hearse. — Denzel Washington
Sometimes you find out what you are supposed to be doing by doing the things you are not supposed to do. — Oprah Winfrey
President Bush delivered a commencement speech at a university in Wisconsin. A very inspirational speech. Apparently Bush told the students, 'You can do anything in life if your parents work hard enough.' — Conan O'Brien
One of the panelists on CNN, after the Hillary Clinton commencement speech, literally started crying, "I can't believe, I can't believe the election actually happened and she lost." I don't need to see that. I don't need to see a bunch of whimpering leftists who themselves are incapable of grounding themselves in reality, whining and moaning. — Rush Limbaugh
The question I have is out of all these commencement speeches that are happening, what`s the really worthwhile advice that a 21, 22 year old person will walk away from the speech and say, I can apply this maybe five years, 10 years later. How many speeches actually push the button like that, other than yours? — David Corn
George W. Bush gave a commencement speech at Southern Methodist University this weekend. It was pretty inspirational. He said, 'As I like to tell the 'C' students, you too can be president.' Even George W. Bush has George W. Bush comedy material in his act. — Jimmy Fallon
There happen to be whole large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. — David Foster Wallace
In Conclusion
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