182 Graduation Quotes

Following is our list of graduation quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about college graduation.

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Famous Graduation Quotes

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

There is a good reason they call these ceremonies 'commencement exercises'. Graduation is not the end; it's the beginning. — Orrin Hatch

So basically, I graduated high school a semester early. — Jessica Szohr

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

We don't stop going to school when we graduate. — Carol Burnett

Just about a month from now I'm set adrift, with a diploma for a sail and lots of nerve for oars. — Richard Halliburton

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

The man who graduates today and stops learning tomorrow is uneducated the day after. — Newton D. Baker

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

A college degree is not a sign that one is a finished product but an indication a person is prepared for life. — Edward Malloy

The most important day of a person's education is the first day of school, not Graduation Day. — Harry Wong

Children enter school as question marks and leave as periods. — Neil Postman

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

Short Graduation Quotes

  • One of the greatest benefits of the revolution is that even our prostitutes are college graduates. — Fidel Castro
  • 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
  • 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
  • There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind. — C. S. Lewis

Graduation Image Quotes

The most important thing is to not stop questioning. - Albert Einstein quote

The most important thing is to not stop questioning. — Albert Einstein

A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. - Karl Marx quote

A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. — Karl Marx

Kindergarten Graduation Quotes

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sand pile at Sunday School. — Robert Fulghum

From kindergarten to graduation, I went to public schools, and I know that they are a key to being sure that every child has a chance to succeed and to rise in the world. — Dick Cheney

If American schooling is inadequate now, just imagine how much more obsolete it will be when today's kindergarten students graduate from high school in just 12 years. — Janet Napolitano

When it comes to educating all of us about the most basic things in life, it seems to me we need more kindergartens and fewer graduate schools. — Andy Rooney

I moved straight from kindergarten ,at age 4, to graduate school to my position at Lake Forest ,at age 26. No break. No bumming around Europe. No peace corps. No corporate cubicle job. No stint as a Starbucks barrista. — Davis Schneiderman

I was homeschooled on the road for kindergarten, then went to elementary school and a private Christian school while living with my grandparents until I graduated, and I loved it. But my parents were gone a lot. — Hillary Scott

Boredom is the specter that haunts children from kindergarten to graduation on every continent. — Amanda Ripley

College Graduation Quotes

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

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

Americans in particular are myopic. They're not traveling as much. When you were a college student, the next thing you would do on graduation was to take a year off and travel. That's what I did. I went to Indonesia. — Julie Taymor

I attended the University of Louisville my freshman year, transferred to what was then Western Kentucky State Teachers College for my sophomore and junior years, and then graduated from the University of Louisville in the summer of 1961. — Sue Grafton

I learned law so well, the day I graduated I sued the college, won the case, and got my tuition back. — Fred Allen

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

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

It is clear the future holds great opportunities. It also holds pitfalls. The trick will be to avoid the pitfalls, seize the opportunities, and get back home by six o'clock. — Woody Allen

I want to go to college, definitely. If it’s possible, I want to. — Sadie Sink

The essays in The Great Taos Bank Robbery were my project to win a Master of Arts degree in English when I quit being a newspaper editor and went back to college. — Tony Hillerman

High School Graduation Quotes

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined... — Henry David Thoreau

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

Just don't give up trying to do what you really want to do. - Ella Fitzgerald

Just don't give up trying to do what you really want to do. — Ella Fitzgerald

Never go to your high school reunion pregnant or they will think that is all you have done since you graduated. — Erma Bombeck

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

In fact, if they didn't let me commute, I would not have taken the role because I wanted to graduate high school with my classmates. I remember my agent's jaw dropping when I told him if I couldn't commute I didn't want the role. — Sarah Chalke

After graduating from high school, I worked at an advertising agency as a designer. — Akira Toriyama

I wanted to be a marine biologist my whole life until I graduated high school. — Cobie Smulders

University 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

Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. — Steve Jobs

Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. — Steve Jobs

I attended schools in Seattle through the University of Washington, from which I was graduated in 1931. I spent the next year at Northwestern University. — George Stigler

When I first came to Arsenal, I realised the back four were all university graduates in the art of defending. As for Tony Adams, I consider him to be a doctor of defence. He is simply outstanding. — Arsene Wenger

A university is not about results in the next quarter; it is not even about who a student has become by graduation. It is about learning that molds a lifetime, learning that transmits the heritage of millennia; learning that shapes the future — Drew Gilpin Faust

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

I don't have my diploma from the University of Nebraska hanging on my office wall, and I don't have my diploma from Columbia up there either-but I do have my Dale Carnegie graduation certificate proudly displayed. — Warren Buffett

Death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. — Steve Jobs

When I was in school, my mother stressed education. I am so glad she did. I graduated from Yale College and Yale University with my master's and I didn't do it by missing school. — Angela Bassett

Graduation Day Quotes

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

In the school of the woods, there is no graduation day. — Horace Kephart

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

I don't fear death; I welcome it with open arms and a smirk. But until that wondrous day, I will continue to savor and celebrate all those who have graduated before me. — Nikki Sixx

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

Never follow anyone else's path, unless you're in the woods and you're lost. — Ellen DeGeneres

Interviewing is tough, especially if you don't know what you're looking for. — Charlyne Yi

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

You might as well take a chance on doing what you love. — Jim Carrey

Nothing worth knowing can be taught. — Oscar Wilde

Spread joy. Chase your wildest dreams. — Patch Adams

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

Cool Graduation Quotes

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

Do not follow where the path may lead. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Always be a first-rate version of yourself. — Audrey Hepburn

You are the guy who'll decide where to go. — Dr. Seuss

I was horrible at science and math. I couldn't pass a test to save my life! I'm surprised that it didn't take me until I was 20 to graduate. That's why my role is so cool - Grissom is the complete opposite of me. — William Petersen

Senior Graduation Quotes

You'll never know what you're capable of if you don't try. — Sarah Michelle Gellar

My high school wasn't a big public school; it was tiny. There were 36 girls in my graduating class. We were a big group of girls that by the time senior year came along couldn't wait to get away from school fast enough but we loved each other. It's really fun to see the girls at reunions now. — Cecily von Ziegesar

Living well is the best revenge.If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door. — Max Eastman

Openness isn't the end. It's the beginning. — Margaret Heffernan

Whether we're a preschooler or a young teen, a graduating college senior or a retired person, we human beings all want to know that we're acceptable, that our being alive somehow makes a difference in the lives of others. — Fred Rogers

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

Education is the key to unlocking the world, a passport to freedom. — Oprah Winfrey

I’ve found that nothing in life is worthwhile unless you take risks. — Denzel Washington

I had only played five games in my senior year in high school. I was not large enough. Hell, when I graduated, I was about five foot four and weighed 120 pounds. I didn't go with the Dodgers until spring training of 1940 and I weighed all of 155 pounds soaking wet. — Pee Wee Reese

Your education is a dress rehearsal for a life that is yours to lead. — Nora Ephron

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

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

People will frighten you about a graduation....They use words you don't hear often. — Bill Cosby

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

Great Graduation Quotes

Each of us has a fire in our hearts for something. It's our goal in life to find it and keep it. — Mary Lou Retton

Successful and unsuccessful people do not vary greatly in their abilities. They vary in their desires to reach their potential. — John C. Maxwell

It was the beginning of film for television. So we had all of these great opportunities. Northwestern was probably the only major film school of its kind at the time that was graduating anybody important. — Richard Donner

Don't look for big things, just do small things with great love...the smaller the thing, the greater must be our love. — Mother Teresa

You're going to fall down, but the world doesn't care how many times you fall down, as long as it's one fewer than the numbers of times you get back up. — Aaron Sorkin

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

We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. — Marianne Williamson

You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps. — David Lloyd George

I see myself being a great-grandmother at my great-grandson's graduation from a school that has my name on it. — Jill Scott

Inspirational Graduation Quotes

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.

A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality. — Yoko Ono

I did graduate with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering in 1948. — Daniel J. Evans

If you think you're too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito. — Anita Roddick

You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it. - Yann Martel

You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it. — Yann Martel

The secret of success is to do the common things uncommonly well. - John D. Rockefeller

The secret of success is to do the common things uncommonly well. — John D. Rockefeller

No! Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try. — George Lucas

When you take risks you learn that there will be times when you succeed and there will be times when you fail, and both are equally important. — Ellen DeGeneres

Be present. I would encourage you with all my heart just to be present. Be present and open to the moment that is unfolding before you. Because, ultimately, your life is made up of moments. So don't miss them by being lost in the past or anticipating the future. — Jessica Lange

Graduating Class Quotes

Every year, I am reminded of the kids who aren't in the freshman class and aren't graduating. I remember every single one of them. That is the worst of times for me, to see the future snuffed out. — Donna Shalala

First class in life has nothing to do with the clothes you wear, the car you drive or the house you live in. First class is and always will be about the content of your character, the quality of your ideas and the kindness in your heart. — Cory Booker

If students don't think that you care and can relate, especially as they get older, they tune you out. I didn't get it in my classes at the graduate school of education. I got it intuitively from my own experiences as a student. — Pedro Noguera

Fifty percent of all doctors graduate in the bottom half of their class - Hope your surgery went well! — Simone Elkeles

In the Army when we had judo classes, out of the class of 27 just me and another guy graduated. I grew to enjoy it because I knew I could do it well. I tried to do everything well. — Jack Kirby

In 1980, when I graduated from high school, my goal was to be on 'The Tonight Show' with Johnny Carson at least once before our ten-year class reunion. Our class reunion was in June of 1990, and I was on 'The Tonight Show' in April 1990, so I made it by a few months. — Jeff Dunham

I don't know why people question the academic training of an athlete. Fifty percent of the doctors in this country graduated in the bottom half of their classes. — Al McGuire

There is already a generation of European graduates who feel they have been robbed of the better future they were led to expect. They are members of a new class: the precariat. — Timothy Garton Ash

We've got a support system that gives our players a wonderful opportunity to graduate. If they go to class and give good effort, they can graduate from this school, and I believe that's important when you go out recruiting. — Steve Spurrier

In 1986, our commencement speaker was George Schultz, secretary of state, fourth in line to the president. You get me-basic cable's second most popular fake newsman. At this rate, the class of 2021 will be addressed by a zoo parrot in a mortar-board that has been trained to say "congratulations. — Stephen Colbert

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Read quotes by Robert Orben

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Read quotes by Jessica Szohr

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More Graduation Quotes

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

Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning. — Mahatma Gandhi

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

Even the best of Christians are troubled by the question, "Why does an almighty God send, or at least allow, suffering?" When you are nagged by thoughts like this, say to yourself, "I am still in elementary school. When I graduate from the university of Christian life, I will understand His ways better and doubts will cease. — Richard Wurmbrand

Use your knowledge, and your heart, to stand up for those who can't stand, speak for those who can't speak, be a beacon of light for those whose lives have become dark. — Julie Andrews

That diploma you hold in your hands today is really just your learner's permit for the rest of the drive through life. Remember, you don't have to be smarter than the next person, all you have to do is be willing to work harder than the next person. — Jimmy Iovine

Take pride in how far you've come. Have faith in how far you can go. But don't forget to enjoy the journey. — Michael Josephson

Respect people with less power then you. I don’t care if you’re the most powerful cat in the room, I will judge you on how you treat the least powerful. So there. — Tim Minchin

Everybody has a secret world inside of them. I mean everybody. All of the people in the whole world, I mean everybody — no matter how dull and boring they are on the outside. Inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds... Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe. — Neil Gaiman

And after about two years, I realized that creative writing was not going to help you ace those biological tests. So I switched over to journalism. I didn't graduate with honors, but I did graduate on time and with some doing. — Bob Schieffer

I went to graduate school at Harvard for one year I worked in the state legislature in Sacramento for one year. I taught school in Compton for two years. — Harry Shearer

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