Graduation Commencement Quotes

It doesn't matter how far you might rise. At some point you are bound to stumble ... If you're constantly pushing yourself higher ... the law of averages, not to mention the Myth of Icarus, predicts that you will at some point fall. And when you do I want you to know this, remember this: There is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction. ~ Oprah Winfrey

Work hard and be kind and amazing things will happen. ~ Conan O'Brien

It was a myth that's often perpetuated at commencement that holds that only hope and promise lie beyond the halls of academe. Don't worry, be happy. Everything is fine. ~ Paul Tsongas

The world is waiting for us to graduate from ourselves. ~ Shannon L. Alder

In the end, you won't remember much beyond those final all-nighters, the gauche inside joke that sullies an acknowledgments page that only four human beings will ever read, the awkward photograph with your advisor at graduation. All that remains might be the sensation of handing your thesis to someone in the departmental office and then walking into a possibility-rich, almost-summer afternoon. It will be difficult to forget. ~ Anonymous

Be nice to people on your way up because you will meet them on your way down. ~ Wilson Mizner

Upon graduation I had felt a heavy sense of doom, a sense that nothing would ever be simple again. But look, look what we had found! We were making it work, with our cash and our bad wrapping jobs, with our fried overdyed hair and our fried overprocessed foods. Everything took on a hazy romance: having a pimple, eating a doughnut, being cold. Nothing was a tragedy, and everything was a joke. ~ Lena Dunham

College atheletes used to get a degree in bringing your pencil. ~ Ruby Wax

People are the stocks into which we are to invest our time ... the best of all investments you can make is to help people come to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior. You can make a commitment right here and now ... I'm asking you today not to graduate but commence a new life for God every step of the way. ~ Billy Graham

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. ~ George Saunders

If this day means anything, it means that you are now in the contingent of the responsible. You must be kind, yes, but you must also look beyond your own house. We're depending on you for your efforts and your vision. We are depending on your eye and your imagination to identify what wrongs exist and persist, and on your hands, your backs, your efforts, to right them. ~ David Remnick

I snicker, but the idea is momentarily appealing. Part of me is scared of leaving school. Part of me wants to go desperately. Tension of opposites. ~ Mitch Albom

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

Have you ever seen the dawn? Not a dawn groggy with lack of sleep or hectic with mindless obligations and you about to rush off on an early adventure or business, but full of deep silence and absolute clarity of perception? A dawning which you truly observe, degree by degree. It is the most amazing moment of birth. And more than anything it can spur you to action. Have a burning day. ~ Vera Nazarian

Moreover, an archetype exists in the nation's consciousness that connects student loan debt with irresponsibility. This is a result of well-publicized accounts of loan defaults in decades past in which students took out loans with no intention of ever paying them back and simply filed for bankruptcy after graduation. This perception was sufficiently strong that in the 1970s, Congress was convinced to remove bankruptcy protections from student loans. However, according to a March 2007 paper by John A. E. Pottow of the University of Michigan, this perception had a fatal flaw: "The fatal problem is that there are no empirical data to buttress the myth that students defraud creditors any more than other debtors."1 In fact, it was shown that when student loans were dischargeable in bankruptcy, there was a less than 1 percent bankruptcy rate among student debtors.2 Nevertheless, this misconception has been so often repeated that it is now indelibly etched in the public's mind. ~ Alan Collinge

With Betsy already famous for feelings, Nabby took pride in her independent spirit and level head. She declared that because love was founded in self-interest she would never be swept off her feet by a cad, and she shocked her friends by leaving a Harvard commencement party early. She shared her father's skepticism about human nature: in her opinion one was more likely to be good because one was happy than happy because one was good. "I believe our happiness is in great measure dependent upon external circumstances," Nabby wrote to Betsy, disagreeing with her cousin's view that we take an active role in our well-being. If success could be attained by effort or merit, why, she reasoned, should she be showered by "ten thousand sources of happiness" while others, who were equally devastating, were starved of the most basic needs? ~ Diane Jacobs

I'm an artist. And I'm happy that I was there at the commencement of this music, this Jamaican music, to put my contribution and help to establish it. ~ Jimmy Cliff

I attended an evangelical Christian university on the outskirts of suburban Los Angeles and by the time of my graduation was neither evangelical nor Christian. ~ Mallory Ortberg

Every in group distinguishes itself from the outgroup by some process of "going through the mill" or enduring sufferings which are subsequently worn as the proud badge of graduation ~ Alan W. Watts

And even though we may be involved with the most important affairs, achieve distinction or fall into some great misfortune- all the same, let us never forget how good we all once felt here, all together, united by such good and kind feelings as made us, too, ... perhaps better than we actually are. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

My personal advice is to go to school first and get a liberal arts education, and then if you want to pursue acting, go to graduate school. ~ Jillian Bach

After graduation, due to special circumstances and perhaps also to my character, I began to travel throughout America, and I became acquainted with all of it. Except for Haiti and Santo Domingo, I have visited, to some extent, all the other Latin American countries. Because of the circumstances in which I traveled, first as a student and later as a doctor, I came into close contact with poverty, hunger and disease; with the inability to treat a child because of lack of money; with the stupefaction provoked by the continual hunger and punishment, to the point that a father can accept the loss of a son as an unimportant accident, as occurs often in the downtrodden classes of our American homeland. And I began to realize at that time that there were things that were almost as important to me as becoming famous for making a significant contribution to medical science: I wanted to help those people. ~ Ernesto Che Guevara

I just listened to that inner voice. By the way, it's always a good move to listen to that inner voice ... if it doesn't lead to a crime ~ Lisa Kudrow

Because as tough as things have been, I am convinced you are tougher. I've seen your passion and I've seen your service ... I've seen a generation eager - impatient even - to step into the rushing waters of history and change its course. ~ Barack Obama

The great thing about taking big chances when you're younger is you have less to lose, and you don't know as much. So you take big swings. ~ Amy Poehler

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

When I was your age, we didn't have the Internet in our pants. We didn't even have the Internet not in our pants. That's how bad it was. ~ Dick Costolo

No matter what happens in life, be good to people. Being good to people is a wonderful legacy to leave behind. ~ Taylor Swift

Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education, at least in my own case, is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract thinking instead of simply paying attention to what's going on in front of me. Instead of paying attention to what's going on inside of me. As I'm sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your head. What you don't yet know are the stakes of this struggle. In the twenty years since my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand these stakes, and to see that the liberal arts cliche about "teaching you how to think" was actually shorthand for a very deep and important truth. "Learning how to think" really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. ~ David Foster Wallace

Are you afraid of dying?"
"I was at first, maybe I still am a little bit. But it's not death that scares me so much as not being alive anymore. It's missing all the things that I would have seen if I hadn't gotten AIDS. Things like my daughter's graduation, her wedding, my grandchildren. I'll never see those things, and that makes me sad. ~ Deanna Lynn Sletten

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

When you graduate from college, they tell you to follow your dreams. Does anyone say you have to wake up first? ~ Bill Cosby

The effect you have on others is the most valuable currency there is. ~ Jim Carey

I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life. ~ J.K. Rowling

At home, she toed the party line: "The greatest calling for a woman is to be a Catholic wife and mother." But I sensed that she hated the 1960s convention of stay-at-home motherhood. In my thirties, when my father shipped me my old Barbie-doll cases that had been sealed in storage since my mother's death, I found evidence of her unhappiness. My Barbie stuff was a mirror of her values. She never told me that marriage could be a trap, but she refused to buy my Barbie doll a wedding dress. She didn't say, "I loathe housework," but she refused to buy Barbie pots and pans. What she often said, however, was "Education is power." And in case I was too thick to grasp this, she bought graduation robes for Barbie, Ken, and Midge. ~ M.G. Lord

Pausing allows you to take a beat to take a breath in your life. As everybody else is rushing around like a lunatic out there, I dare you to do the opposite. ~ Maria Shriver