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
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
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
So basically, I graduated high school a semester early. — Jessica Szohr
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
College is the reward for surviving high school. Most people have great fun stories from college and nightmare stories from high school. — Judd Apatow
Happiness is seeing your son drafted the same day he's been accepted to an expensive college. — Johnny Carson
Short Great Graduation Quotes
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
I did graduate with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering in 1948. — Daniel J. Evans
Made it through high school, went to the University of Minnesota. — Dave Winfield
A good education is the most important gift we can give our young people. — Nicola Sturgeon
In the school of the woods, there is no graduation day. — Horace Kephart
You can pay for school, but you can't buy class — Jay-Z
A good education is another name for happiness. — Ann Plato
Climb the ladder to success escalator style — The Notorious B.I.G.
Remember to celebrate milestones as you prepare for the road ahead. — Nelson Mandela
Silence is a source of great strength.
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
One of the greatest benefits of the revolution is that even our prostitutes are college graduates. — Fidel Castro
Make today so awesome, yesterday gets jealous.
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
Great minds discuss ideas.Average minds discuss events.Small minds discuss people.
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
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
The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking spaces. — Will Rogers
Inspirational Graduation Quotes
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
Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.
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.
There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind. — C. S. Lewis
Just don't give up trying to do what you really want to do. — Ella Fitzgerald
A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality. — Yoko Ono
Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. — Steve Jobs
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
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
Acknowledge all of your small victories. They will eventually add up to something great.
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
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
You need a little bit of insanity to do great things.
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
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
Failure is a great teacher, and, if you are open to it, every mistake has a lesson to offer.
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
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
To a great mind, nothing is little.
The truth is, I was afraid the day I walked into Stanford. And I was afraid the day I walked out. — Carly Fiorina
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
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
Average people have great ideas. Legends have great execution.
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
Don't fear the failure... in great attempts it is glorious even to fail.
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
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
No one has ever made himself great by showing how small someone else is.
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
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
Good High School Graduation Quotes
Your education is a dress rehearsal for a life that is yours to lead. — Nora Ephron
People will frighten you about a graduation.... They use words you don't hear often: And we wish you Godspeed." It is a warning, Godspeed. It means you are no longer welcome here at these prices." — Bill Cosby
It is a warning, Godspeed. It means you are no longer welcome here at these prices. — Bill Cosby
Your dynamic with everyone will change when you graduate high school. High school is a pit of despair. It's a swirling tornado of insecurities and there's really nothing good about it. — Kristen Bell
I've always been a creative speller and never achieved good grades in school. I graduated from high school but didn't have the opportunity to attend college, so I did what young women my age did at the time - I married. — Debbie Macomber
For people who aren't familiar with my background, I didn't graduate high school. My career high salary was about $200,000. My last position was about $122,000. For a guy without a high school diploma, that's pretty good. — Edward Snowden
Trust me, high school ends. You graduate and get away from all the people you never want to see again-it's all good. — Chad Michael Murray
I was an educated girl. I'd done very well in school. I had a good point average and graduated from USC as an English teacher. My dad didn't even finish high school. — Marlo Thomas
College Graduation Quotes
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
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
I could be happy doing something like architecture. It would involve another couple of years of graduate school, but that's what I studied in college. That's what I always wanted to do. — Parker Stevenson
I'm not afraid of who I am. I'm not afraid to tell the world who I am. I'm Michael Sam, I'm a college graduate, I'm African-American and I'm gay. — Michael Sam
The things taught in schools & colleges are not an education but the means of education. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
One half who graduate from college never read another book. — Herbert True
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
Life has a very simple plot: first you're here and then you're not. — Eric Idle
High School Graduation Quotes
Never go to your high school reunion pregnant or they will think that is all you have done since you graduated. — Erma Bombeck
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
At 20, I realized that I could not possibly adjust to a feminine role as conceived by my father and asked him permission to engage in a professional career. In eight months I filled my gaps in Latin, Greek and mathematics, graduated from high school, and entered medical school in Turin. — Rita Levi-Montalcini
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
Students are suffering under incredibly high tuitions and high student loan interest rates. They graduate from school, and they're having a very difficult time finding a job. They don't feel as though there are honest leaders who are listening to them, and who will be a part of the solution. — Tulsi Gabbard
Right after I graduated high school, I joined a sushi restaurant to learn how to make Japanese food. And then spent seven years. Then that time - that's enough. Then sushi restaurant - butchering fish and they make your body smell like fishy. — Masaharu Morimoto
My favorite animal is the turtle. The reason is that in order for the turtle to move, it has to stick its neck out. — Ruth Westheimer
Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. — Neil Gaiman
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
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
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
If your uniform isn't dirty, you haven't been in the game. — Ben Bernanke
I’ve found that nothing in life is worthwhile unless you take risks. — Denzel Washington
And will you succeed? Yes, you will indeed! — Dr. Seuss
A great many college graduates come here thinking of lawyers as social engineers arguing the great Constitutional issues. — Archibald Cox
I won't say there aren't any Harvard graduates who have never asserted a superior attitude. But they have done so to our great embarrassment and in no way represent the Harvard I know. — Derek Bok
When I was a graduate student at Harvard, I learned about showers and central heating. Ten years later, I learned about breakfast meetings. These are America's three great contributions to civilization. — Mervyn King
Live all of your life. Understand it, see it, appreciate it. And have fun. — Joss Whedon
There's few things that get you over your own crap more than working hard. — Adam Savage
Stony Brook is a great school scholastically and I enjoyed my time there. It taught me a lot about life and about the future that I am living now. It is an honor to have graduated from there and to be recognized as an alumnus. — Chris Algieri
I was 16 when I came to New York. I had graduated to a tenor banjo in the school jazz band, and it was kind of boring - just chords, chords, chords. Then my father took me to a mountain music and dance festival in Asheville, North Carolina, and there I saw relatively uneducated people playing great music by ear. — Pete Seeger
I grew up as a fifth-generation Jew in the American South, at the confluence of two great storytelling traditions. After graduating from Yale in the 1980s, I moved to Japan. For young adventure seekers like myself, the white-hot Japanese miracle held a similar appeal as Russia in 1920s or Paris in the 1950s. — Bruce Feiler
I've observed a few things about the few really great people I've had a chance to meet and cover...They need to be around people. You and I require sleep. They require people. — David Brooks
As far as writing, I like watching bad movies. Nothing stops me in my tracks more than watching a great film like 'The Godfather' or 'Dog Day Afternoon' or 'The Graduate.' You watch one of those, and you never want to write again. Whereas with bad movies, it makes you think, If that counts, I certainly could write. — Jason Reitman
Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory. — Susan B. Anthony
It really pains me greatly to hear from graduate students that graduate education is a lower priority here. — Ruth J. Simmons
What my father gave me more than anything else is great tutoring and a great brain, frankly. You know, my father's brother was a top person at MIT, went to MIT, graduated from MIT, was a teacher at MIT, a professor at MIT, a great engineer. I mean, you know, I have very good genes. — Donald Trump
I love the music, I love the times, so to me that was exciting personally just to play something that starts in 1986 with graduating high school, we've got a great soundtrack in the pilot. — Will Estes
Yale places great stress on undergraduate and graduate teaching. I like teaching, and I do a lot of it. — James Tobin
When I graduated from school, World War II was still going on. At the time, my eldest sister, Nancy, was working in New York City at Lord & Taylor, and she had a great friend named Sally Kirkland who she worked with there and who later went to work as an editor at Vogue. I always told them, "I want to work in fashion like you do," and finally, in the late '40s, I got a job at Lord & Taylor, too. — Polly Allen Mellen
I went to graduate school as a lieutenant colonel after I had been in the army for 12 or 13 years. I learned so much from all the great management theorists. It gave me a greater understanding of my army experience and showed me the gaps in my knowledge. — Colin Powell
Humor can be a great way to lift spirits and relate with soon-to-be high school grads. Whether you're in need of a funny senior year quote for a card, your yearbook, or a gift, you can use this list of funny graduation quotes by famous leaders and comedians to get inspired. To those of you who received honors, awards and distinctions, I say well done. And to the C students, I say you too may one day be president of the United States. — George W. Bush
I went to the graduation the other night of my first great grandchild - he's 21 or 22; and right at the graduation I looked, and 92 percent of those who graduated at the University of Illinois were females. Where can a Black female, who are now the lawyers, the engineers; they are the ones graduating with top degrees; where will they find in a Black male a counterpart that is equal to them? We are filling the jails, we are filling the prisons. — Louis Farrakhan
My great grandfather, Raj, was from Punjab, India. My grandmother graduated Rajasthan University. — Joe Biden
If it wasn't for her literally doing my homework for me, I would not have even graduated high school. Guaranteed . . . My mom always said, 'Luck is nothing but preparation and opportunity.' I think because I've had that history of not really being great in school, I probably try to overcompensate. That's why I try to read so many books. Just so I don't feel . . . uneducated. — Channing Tatum
One of the proudest things I see is, now, 25 years after I graduated, when I go to a Syracuse sporting event, there's a senior or a junior from WAER broadcasting sports just the way we did, and just the way it happened a couple generations before us. That's a great legacy for the university and a great tradition that still continues to this day, and makes those of us who were a small part of it very very proud. — Mike Tirico
I had a great time in high school. I really did. I went to a private Christian high school and I graduated in a class of 67 kids, so it was pretty small, and I knew and loved everybody. — Odette Annable
Сollege is the best days of your life. You know, I hate to say that 'cause you're so young and you got plenty ahead of you. But it college is just wonderful. You know, you certainly have some responsibility. You’ve got to show up for class and you have to make your grades, but it's a great time and I hope you enjoy those days, 'cause they're the best. — Jerry Bruckheimer
I developed a mania for Fitzgerald - by the time I'd graduated from high school I'd read everything he'd written. I started with 'The Great Gatsby' and moved on to 'Tender Is the Night,' which just swept me away. Then I read 'This Side of Paradise,' his novel about Princeton - I literally slept with that book under my pillow for two years. — A. Scott Berg
In Conclusion
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