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
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
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
But youth has a future. The closer he came to graduation, the more his heart beat. He said to himself: “This is still not life, this is only the preparation for life. — Nikolai Gogol
The fireworks begin today. Each diploma is a lighted match. Each one of you is a fuse. — Ed Koch
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
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
The most important day of a person's education is the first day of school, not Graduation Day. — Harry Wong
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
A good speech should be like a woman's skirt: long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest — Winston Churchill
No one ever complains about a speech being too short! — Ira Hayes
TRYING TO BE POPULAR IN HIGH SCHOOL IS LIKE TRYING TO BE MAYOR OF A CITY THAT WON'T EXIST IN FOUR YEARS. — Jenny Holzer
Short Graduation Speech Quotes
In the school of the woods, there is no graduation day. — Horace Kephart
I participated on debating teams and in student government, and served as senior class president. — Paul D. Boyer
Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today. — Malcolm X
Don't let schooling interfere with your education. — Mark Twain
Sometimes just being still is the best thing you can do for yourself. — Silas House
Be yourself, it's the best thing you can do. — Greyson Chance
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
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
It is a great thing to know the season for speech and the season for silence.
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
Commencement Speech 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
Never follow anyone else's path, unless you're in the woods and you're lost. — Ellen DeGeneres
Don't exercise your freedom of speech until you have exercises your freedom of thought.
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
You might as well take a chance on doing what you love. — Jim Carrey
I have often regretted my speech, but never my silence.
Music is the literature of the heart; it commences where speech ends. — Alphonse De Lamartine
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
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
Graduation Ceremony Quotes
There is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction. — Oprah Winfrey
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
Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock.
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
Do not hurt anyone with your speech, for the divine dwells in every heart.
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
Graduation Commencement Quotes
Nothing in life is worthwhile unless you take risks. Fall forward. Every failed experiment is one step closer to success. — Denzel Washington
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
Interviewing is tough, especially if you don't know what you're looking for. — Charlyne Yi
It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
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
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
Don't exercise your freedom of speech until you have exercised your freedom of thought.
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
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
If money is speech, then speech is no longer free - it's expensive. It's high time we overturn citizens united.
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
Graduation Quotes
One of the greatest benefits of the revolution is that even our prostitutes are college graduates. — Fidel Castro
Give me an Army of West Point graduates and I'll win a battle... Give me a handful of Texas Aggies and I'll win a war. — George S. Patton
Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. — John Hughes
Give me but a firm spot on which to stand, and I shall move the earth. — Archimedes
Go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. — Neil Gaiman
You will be wounded many times in your life. You'll make mistakes. Some people will call them failures but I have learned that failure is really God's way of saying, "Excuse me, you're moving in the wrong direction." It's just an experience, just an experience. — Oprah Winfrey
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. — H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You're on your own, and you know what you know. And you are the guy who'll decide where to go. — Dr. Seuss
I've told my children that when I die, to release balloons in the sky to celebrate that I graduated. For me, death is a graduation. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind. — C. S. Lewis
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
Graduation Day Quotes
I learned law so well, the day I graduated I sued the college, won the case, and got my tuition back. — Fred Allen
The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder. — Ralph Washington Sockman
It is soooooo necessary to get the basic skills, because by the time you graduate, undergraduate or graduate, that field would have totally changed from your first day of school. — Leigh Steinberg
When people go through something rough in life, they say, "I'm taking it one day at a time." Yes, so is everybody. Because that's how time works. — Hannibal Buress
If you don't step forward, you're always in the same place. — Nora Roberts
Work hard but work smart. Always. Every day. Nothing is handed to you and nothing is easy. You're not owed anything... No job or task is too small or beneath you. If you want to get ahead, volunteer to do the things no one else wants to do, and do it better. Be a sponge. Be open and learn. — Bobbi Brown
We cannot lead a choiceless life. Every day, every moment, every second, there is a choice. If it were not so, we would not be individuals. — Ernest Holmes
I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years. — Ray Bradbury
You can't make a cloudy day a sunny day, but can embrace it and decide it's going to be a good day after all. — Jane Lynch
The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. — David Foster Wallace
Inspirational High School Graduation Quotes
Just don't give up trying to do what you really want to do. — Ella Fitzgerald
You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. — Dr. Seuss
I thought I should go to New York because it was the place to go to study. I went and tried to get an application from the Juilliard School but they wouldn't even give me one because I didn't have my high school graduation. — Maureen Forrester
Success is the best revenge for anything. Keep ya head down and work hard to achieve. — Ed Sheeran
You just have to be yourself and go full with confidence and be courageous! — Gabby Douglas
Always be a first-rate version of yourself. — Audrey Hepburn
Living well is the best revenge.If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door. — Max Eastman
Just the example Delaware State University graduates set by the way they live their lives, should be an inspiration to other high school students to go to Delaware State. — Michael N. Castle
In the world of entrepreneurs, you don't need a college education. You need a proper education. — Robert Kiyosaki
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
The effect you have on others is the most valuable currency there is. — Jim Carrey
Try putting your iPhones down every once in a while and look at people's faces. — Amy Poehler
We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. — Marianne Williamson
The most important aspect of freedom of speech is freedom to learn. All education is a continuous dialogue - questions and answers that pursue every problem on the horizon. That is the essence of academic freedom. — William O. Douglas
Your need for acceptance can make you invisible in this world. Risk being seen in all of your glory. — Jim Carrey
Risk being seen in all of your glory. — Jim Carrey
Sometimes you find out what you are supposed to be doing by doing the things you are not supposed to do. — Oprah Winfrey
This is your time and it feels normal to you, but really, there is no normal. There's only change and resistance to it and then more change. — Meryl Streep
... I could have said something profound, but you would have forgotten it in 15 minutes - which is the afterlife of a graduation speech. — Art Buchwald
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
One of the most difficult speeches to prepare is an address to a graduation class, which is why I don't often do them. — Jerry Moran
I gave the graduation speech at my high school. Not because I was valedictorian but because the grade voted for me to do it. And I gave a slightly contentious speech. I was a little critical of the administration. But for a long time it said on Wikipedia that I took my balls out and exposed myself to the crowd. — Nick Kroll
I'd done some acting in high school. Then I went to Kenyon College and got thrown in jail and kicked off the football team. Since I was determined not to study very much, I majored in theater the last two years. Got my degree in speech; they didn't actually have a degree in theater. I graduated at two o'clock in the afternoon, and at three-thirty I was on the train for Williams Bay, Wisconsin, for summer stock, and then I did winter stock. — Paul Newman
The school asks a person who has achieved a certain level of career success to give you a speech telling you that career success is not important. — David Brooks
I was also going to give a graduation speech in Arizona this weekend. But with my accent, I was afraid they would try to deport me. — Arnold Schwarzenegger
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