166 Inspirational Graduation Quotes

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

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Famous Inspirational 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

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

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

The greatest gift you can give someone is the gift of inspiration. — Cornel West

Young people need to be inspired, told they can achieve anything they set their minds to. — Jim Stynes

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 mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. — William Arthur Ward

When people are inspired, they achieve more than they ever thought possible. — Michael Abrashoff

The fireworks begin today. Each diploma is a lighted match. Each one of you is a fuse. — Ed Koch

Lead by inspiration, not intimidation. — Rebecca Aguilar

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 most important thing is to try and inspire people so that they can be great in whatever they want to do. — Kobe Bryant

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

Short Inspirational Graduation Quotes

  • Inspiration the seed. Design but the flower. — Michael Langham
  • Success is 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration! — Thomas A. Edison
  • The most important day of a person's education is the first day of school, not Graduation Day. — Harry Wong
  • College inspired me to think differently. It's like no other time in your life. — Larisa Oleynik
  • Quotes are nothing but inspiration for the uninspired — Richard Kemp
  • A good teacher can inspire hope, ignite the imagination, and instill a love of learning. — Brad Henry
  • Teaching is more than imparting knowledge, it is inspiring change. — William Arthur Ward
  • Good art inspires; Good design motivates. — Otl Aicher
  • By far for me the most important thing is inspiration. — Jay-Z
  • Great accomplishments start with great aspirations. — Gary Hamel
Inspirational graduation quote I knew when I met you an adventure is going to happen.
I knew when I met you an adventure is going to happen.

Inspirational 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

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

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

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

Inspirational graduation quote Just because my path is different doesn't mean I'm lost.
Just because my path is different doesn't mean I'm lost.

Success is the best revenge for anything. Keep ya head down and work hard to achieve. — Ed Sheeran

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

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

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

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

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

Inspirational graduation quote Fear has two meanings - Forget Everything And Run or Face Everything And Rise. The choice is yours.
Fear has two meanings - Forget Everything And Run or Face Everything And Rise. The choice is yours.

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

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

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

Memorable Graduation Quotes

We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn. — Mary Catherine Bateson

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

The horizon leans forward, offering you space to place new steps of change. — Maya Angelou

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

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 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

One of the greatest benefits of the revolution is that even our prostitutes are college graduates. — Fidel Castro

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

So many of us choose our path out of fear disguised as practicality. — Jim Carrey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The things taught in schools & colleges are not an education but the means of education. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

High School Commencement Quotes

Sometimes just being still is the best thing you can do for yourself. — Silas House

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

Be yourself, it's the best thing you can do. — Greyson Chance

Think of it as your ticket to change the world. — Tom Brokaw

Life has a very simple plot: first you're here and then you're not. — Eric Idle

Harry taught me that death isn't the end, it's the beginning. — Jennifer Love Hewitt

Live all of your life. Understand it, see it, appreciate it. And have fun. — Joss Whedon

College Graduation Quotes

There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind. - C. S. Lewis

There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind. — C. S. Lewis

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

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

One half who graduate from college never read another book. — Herbert True

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

You are graduating from college. That means that this is the first day of the last day of your life. No, that's wrong. This is the last day of the first day of school. Nope, that's worse. This is a day. — Andy Samberg

If knowledge is power and power is knowledge, then how so many idiots be graduating from college? — Coolio

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Read quotes by William Arthur Ward

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Read quotes by Robert Orben

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Read quotes by Steve Jobs

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Read quotes by Cornel West

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More Inspirational Graduation Quotes

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

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 quote

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

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

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

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

Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. — John Hughes

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

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

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

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

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

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

Be aware that even before you have reached your ultimate professional destination, if you always strive for excellence, you can and should have a substantial impact on the world in which you live. — Sandra Day O'Connor

The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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