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
I did graduate with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering in 1948. — Daniel J. Evans
In Finland, getting a university degree is the first thing that you expect your kids to do. — Renny Harlin
Made it through high school, went to the University of Minnesota. — Dave Winfield
A college degree is not a sign that one is a finished product but an indication a person is prepared for life. — Edward Malloy
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
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
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
So basically, I graduated high school a semester early. — Jessica Szohr
We don't stop going to school when we graduate. — Carol Burnett
The problem with University degrees, particularly the more spectacular ones, is that people who possess them can fall into the trap of thinking people who don't have them don't know anything. — Robert Genn
You are educated. Your certification is in your degree. You may think of it as the ticket to the good life. Let me ask you to think of an alternative. Think of it as your ticket to change the world. — Tom Brokaw
Short University Graduation Quotes
After graduating from high school, I worked at an advertising agency as a designer. — Akira Toriyama
A university is not a political party, and an education is not an indoctrination. — David Horowitz
Just about a month from now I'm set adrift, with a diploma for a sail and lots of nerve for oars. — Richard Halliburton
Some people get an education without going to college. The rest get it after they get out. — Mark Twain
The fireworks begin today. Each diploma is a lighted match. Each one of you is a fuse. — Ed Koch
I didn't get my degree at NYU; I got it later, they gave me an honourary one. — Jim Jarmusch
A lot of fellows nowadays have a B.A., M.D., or Ph.D. Unfortunately, they don't have a J.O.B. — Fats Domino
College inspired me to think differently. It's like no other time in your life. — Larisa Oleynik
I studied at the Budapest Academy of Theatrical Arts for four years and emerged with a degree. — Bela Lugosi
I've loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.
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
A warm smile is the universal language of kindness.
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
Believe you deserve it and the universe will serve it.
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
College Graduation Quotes
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
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
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
Everything in the universe is whithin you. Ask all from yourself.
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
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
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
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
In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
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
Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else!
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
Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. — Steve Jobs
The most important day of a person's education is the first day of school, not Graduation Day. — Harry Wong
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
There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.
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
Be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars.
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
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
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
Follow your dreams and the universe will open doors where there we only walls.
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
When a man no longer confuses himself with the definition of himself that others have given him, he is at once universal and unique.
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
Living well is the best revenge.If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door. — Max Eastman
The horizon leans forward, offering you space to place new steps of change. — Maya Angelou
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
You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.
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
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
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
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
I believe in the principle that I can make a difference in this world. It may be ever so small, but it will count for the greater good. — Gordon B. Hinckley
Inspirational Graduation Quotes
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
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.
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
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 can steer yourself in any direction you choose. — Dr. Seuss
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
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
I wanted to be a marine biologist my whole life until I graduated high school. — Cobie Smulders
You just have to be yourself and go full with confidence and be courageous! — Gabby Douglas
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
Always be a first-rate version of yourself. — Audrey Hepburn
The things taught in schools & colleges are not an education but the means of education. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
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
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
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
Live all of your life. Understand it, see it, appreciate it. And have fun. — Joss Whedon
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
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
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
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
The function of the university is not simply to teach breadwinning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools, or to be a centre of polite society; if is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment from which forms the secret of civilization. — W. E. B. Du Bois
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
If you truly want to grow as a person and learn, you should realize that the universe has enrolled you in the graduate program of life, called loss. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
I spent eighteen months as a graduate student in physics at Columbia University, waiting unhappily for an opportunity to work in a laboratory and wondering if I should continue in physics. — Sidney Altman
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
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
This is a man who graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University in three years, editor of the Harvard Law Review, argued 39 cases before the Supreme Court. — Rod Parsley
Having a college degree gave me the opportunity to be... well-rounded. Also, the people I met at the university, most of them are still my colleagues now. People I've known for years are all in the industry together. — Jon Secada
I don't look to find an educated person in the ranks of university graduates, necessarily. Some of the most educated people I know have never been near a university. — John Keegan
In the world of entrepreneurs, you don't need a college education. You need a proper education. — Robert Kiyosaki
American universities are organized on the principle of the nuclear rather than the extended family. Graduate students are grimly trained to be technicians rather than connoisseurs. The old German style of universal scholarship has gone. — Camille Anna Paglia
I began working within the streets of Harlem, where, after graduating from Yale [University, New Haven, CT], I became the artist in residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem [New York, NY]. I wanted to know what that was about. I would actually pull people from off of the streets and ask them to come to my studio. — Kehinde Wiley
If you Google me, you'll find plenty of "dumb blonde" references - even though I graduated with honors from Stanford and studied at Oxford University. I don't let it bother me. — Gretchen Carlson
I got into medical school at the University of California in San Francisco and did well. A lot of smart kids in medical school, and believe me, I wasn't not nearly the smartest one, but I was the most focused and the happiest kid in medical school. In 1979, I graduated as the valedictorian and was honored with the Gold Cane Award. — Richard Carmona
American universities are organized on the principle of the nuclear rather than the extended family. Graduate students are grimly trained to be technicians rather than connoisseurs. The old German style of universal scholarship has gone. — Camille Paglia
After graduating in engineering I went to the University of Kansas to get an MA in economics as a vehicle for allowing me to decide if I wanted to continue in economics. — Vernon L. Smith
This is a value-added college education if I have heard one described. And what is the most remarkable about Delaware State University graduates - is they just keeping giving back. — Michael N. Castle
I first became interested in women and religion when I was one of the few women doing graduate work in Religious Studies at Yale University in the late 1960's. — Carol P. Christ
Nothing can kill the future dreams and goals of a new graduate than 50k of debt like an anvil over your head. I got to Indiana University not because I visited the campus and loved everything about it. I picked Indiana University because I saw a list of the top 10 business schools and it was the cheapest. — Mark Cuban
I didn't like university life much at Bologna. The subjects I studied - economics and business administration - didn't interest me. I wanted to make films. I was glad when I was graduated. Yet it's odd; on graduation day, I was overcome with a terrible sadness. I realized that my youth was over and now the struggle had begun. — Michelangelo Antonioni
After I graduated from the University of Glasgow, I was a self-employed archaeologist going from dig to dig around Scotland, and it was not well-paid. I was an excavator, not a lecturer as well, so paying rent on a flat was tricky. In the end I decided to retrain as a journalist as I couldn't see a future in it. — Neil Oliver
So when I got out of the military, I went back to school in biology, and earned a biology degree at the University of Texas, and then did some graduate work in it. — Elizabeth Moon
I was later to receive an excellent first two years' graduate education in the same University and then again was able to pursue my studies in the U.S. on a fellowship from the aforementioned fund. — Chen-Ning Yang
I wear tweed jackets and button-down shirts. I am a 1955 graduate of Harvard University who drives a 1968 Mercedes. — J. Anthony Lukas
Most people, once they graduate from the School of Hard Knocks, automatically enroll in the University of Adversity. — Peter McWilliams
Everyone has a right to a university degree in America, even if it's in Hamburger Technology. — Clive James
We are living in 1937, and our universities, I suggest, are not half-way out of the fifteenth century. We have made hardly any changes in our conception of university organization, education, graduation, for a century - for several centuries. — H. G. Wells
I went to college in Ohio, at Ohio University, and I graduated two years ago. — Piper Perabo
The whole of Paris is a vast university of Art, Literature and Music... it is worth anyone's while to dally here for years. Paris is a seminar, a post-graduate course in everything. — James Thurber
In Conclusion
Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of university graduation quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about university graduation to suggest. Let us know using our contact form.
Citation
Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes in this collection of university graduation quotations. For popular citation styles(APA, Chicago, MLA), please use this citation page.
