A Graduation Quotes

#1. Go to a graduation party, put out a fish bowl, and you have a gold record.

Isaac Slade

#2. 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

#3. One of the most difficult speeches to prepare is an address to a graduation class, which is why I don't often do them.

Jerry Moran

#4. I was also going to give a graduation speech in Arizona this weekend. But with my accent, I was afraid they would try to deport me.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

#5. 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

#6. I could have said something profound, but you would have forgotten it in 15 minutes - which is the afterlife of a graduation speech.

Art Buchwald

#7. It's my goal to make martial arts compulsory for girls in school. In China, you have to do two years of martial arts' training without which you cannot get a graduation degree.

Akshay Kumar

#8. I have a 4-year-old and a 14-year-old, and think I missed a recital and a graduation, and they were like 'It's OK mommy, we'll take pictures.' It was my upset, though ... they were just fine! I just give them a kiss and a hug and let them know that I love them every day.

Kimberly Quinn

#9. No graduation speaker will ever tell you that the future is anything but uncertain. It never is. But graduations need not only be obsessed with looking ahead; a graduation can be a day on which we turn back and trace our steps to see how we ended up where we are.

Taylor Mali

#10. Don't be afraid to make an ass of yourself. I do it all the time, and look what I got. (Spoken at a graduation ceremony while holding aloft an honorary doctoral degree from McGill University)

William Shatner

#11. Some are born great. Some achieve greatness. Some get it as a graduation gift.

Robin Williams

#12. Live your fear." Why didn't we teach kids that? Why wasn't that in a graduation speech? Commencement speakers should start telling the truth: "You're going to fuck up, but most of the time, that's all right.

Mara Wilson

#13. Popular as he was as a graduation speaker, Vonnegut never graduated from college.

Kurt Vonnegut

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

Bill Cosby

#15. 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

#16. I was a lesbian for a semester at Wesleyan - it was a graduation requirement.

Ayelet Waldman

#17. Death is a graduation. When we're taught all the things we came to teach, learned all the things we came to learn, then we're allowed to graduate.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

#18. There are times when we do not recognize that it is time for us to move forward. When life is ready for us to move and we resist, life will move us by any means necessary. What may feel like a disaster is actually a graduation. Remain open to being guided, supported and protected by the universe.

Iyanla Vanzant

#19. Take control of your future by taking a choice of starting it right now.

Auliq Ice

#20. My first jobs after graduation in 1955 were as a project engineer for G.E. and later with the U.S. government in Washington, D.C., where I met and married my wife, Dolores Celini.

Oliver E. Williamson

#21. 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

#22. Really, the potential for, first of all, any college graduate today is enormously good. These are good times for anyone with a college degree today, particularly African Americans. With a college degree today, you really breach the unemployment rate.

Alexis Herman

#23. I waited a long time out in the world before I gave myself permission to fail. Please don't even bother asking. Don't bother telling the world you are ready. Show it. Do it.

Peter Dinklage

#24. In the summer we graduated we flipped out completely, drinking beer, cruising in our cars and beating up each other. It was a crazy summer. That's when I started to be interested in girls.

Ed O'Neill

#25. And remember whatever discipline you're in, whether you're a musician or a photographer, fine artist or a cartoonist, writer, a dancer, a singer, a designer... whatever you do, you have a thing that's unique. You have the ability to make art.

Neil Gaiman

#26. Coach said. "the quality of a man's life is in direct proportion to his commitment to excellence, regardless of his chosen field of endeavor".

Sherman Alexie

#27. People in my family and camp who grew up listening to rap music love 'We Are Young.' I've heard it play at weddings. I've heard it in graduation parties. It's a big idea and big song.

Janelle Monae

#28. When my mother took her turn to sit in a gown at her graduation, she thought she only had two career options: nursing and teaching. She raised me and my sister to believe that we could do anything, and we believed her.

Sheryl Sandberg

#29. I think young writers should get other degrees first, social sciences, arts degrees or even business degrees. What you learn is research skills, a necessity because a lot of writing is about trying to find information.

Irvine Welsh

#30. It takes a while. It's gonna take you a while. It's normal to take a while. You just have to fight your way through that.

Ira Glass

#31. From my point of view, which is that of a storyteller, I see your life as something artful, waiting, just waiting and ready for you to make it art.

Toni Morrison

#32. Let your life yield a sweet, winsome melody that this old world needs so desperately. Yes you can if you will.

Charles R. Swindoll

#33. I went to college at the University of Kansas, where I got a degree in political science.

Sara Paretsky

#34. CALUMNUS, n. A graduate of the School for Scandal.

Ambrose Bierce

#35. Take action. Every story you've ever connected with, every leader you've ever admired, every puny little thing that you've ever accomplished is the result of taking action. You have a choice. You can either be a passive victim of circumstance or you can be the active hero of your own life.

Bradley Whitford

#36. Pg. 231-232: They'd given me a minivan. They could have picked any car and they picked a minivan. A minivan. O God of the Vehicular Justice, why dost thou mock me? Minivan, you albatross around my neck! You mark of Cain! You wretched beast high ceilings and few horsepower!

John Green

#37. I received my undergraduate degree in engineering in 1939 and a Master of Science degree in mathematical physics in 1941 at Steven Institute of Technology.

Frederick Reines

#38. 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

#39. 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

#40. There are many more jobs out there than you have ever heard of. Your dream job might not yet exist. If you had told 'College Me' that I would become a professional YouTuber, I would've been like, "That is not a word, and it never should be."

John Green

#41. You know what has made me the happiest I've ever been? Seeing my son and daughter graduate from college. More than wanting them to be educated, I wanted them to be nice people. To see that they have become both is just a wonderful thing.

Gil Scott-Heron

#42. All my graduation money went to paying for bartending classes so I could have a side gig. I bartended for two months before I was supposed to move to New York and then two months later I got the job as an understudy in 'Sister Act' and haven't looked back since.

Patina Miller

#43. Sucess is like a mountain that keeps growing ahead of you as you hike it ... Err in the direction of kindness.

George Saunders

#44. They said, we have education, but what about jobs? So I started telling them, you should be taking a pledge, and the pledge should be: 'I'm not a job seeker; I'm a job giver.' Prepare yourself to be a job giver.

Muhammad Yunus

#45. According to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving. Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now.

George Saunders

#46. GUYS, Owen Meany said. That spring, less than a month before Gravesend Academy's graduation exercises, the TV showed us a map of Thailand; five thousand U.S. Marines and fifty jet fighters were being

John Irving

#47. 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

#48. 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

#49. Real courage is holding on to a still voice in your head that says, 'I must keep going.' It's that voice that says nothing is a failure if it is not final. That voice that says to you, 'Get out of bed. Keep going. I will not quit.'

Cory Booker

#50. It's not how much you spend, it's how you spend it. We have been putting a lot of money into education in the state of Nevada, and it's gotten us to 50th in the country in graduation rates. We needed more accountability in our system.

Brian Sandoval

#51. 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 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

#52. Stay fluid and roll with those changes. Life is just a big extended improvisation.

Jane Lynch

#53. Dreams come a size too big so we can grow into them.

Josie Bissett

#54. Don't ever rob a bank. Enjoy life. Have fun. Choose to be happy now; don't wait until you're 'successful,' because honestly, I was as happy when we were unemployed and scrounging around for a buck.

Peter Farrelly

#55. I had never really given any thought to working for the CIA, but graduation was upon me; I was getting married just a week or two after graduation; I had no job, no prospects for a job. And so I said sure, I'd be interested in working for the CIA.

John Kiriakou

#56. You know, sometimes I'll go to an 8th-grade graduation and there's all that pomp and circumstance and gowns and flowers. And I think to myself, it's just 8th grade ... An 8th-grade education doesn't cut it today. Let's give them a handshake and tell them to get their butts back in the library!

Barack Obama

#57. I encourage you to live with life. Be courageous, adventurous. Give us a tomorrow, more than we deserve.

Maya Angelou

#58. At the School of Visual Arts in New York, you can get your degree in Net art, which is really a fantastic way of thinking of theater in new ways.

Laurie Anderson

#59. I went to a public high school, and after graduation, college wasn't really much of an option for me. I didn't believe I had the money or the grades at the time, so I continued to work and save money to support my acting career.

Christie Laing

#60. 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

#61. Throughout your career people will try to distract you. Some will scream at you, others will say things behind your back, and a few feral animals will literally try to throw their stiletto heel in in your lane and trip you. Keep your eyes straight ahead and just run your race.

Sharyn Alfonsi

#62. school graduation. I love him, even though the times - a lot of times I really needed it - he couldn't say, 'I'm here.

Nora Roberts

#63. The most important day of a person's education is the first day of school, not Graduation Day.

Harry Wong

#64. Living well is the best revenge.If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door.

Max Eastman

#65. Those words are from Lynda Barry's novel 'Cruddy.' I've carried them with me for some time. There's a lot in my life I wasn't expecting. One is the realization that I stood at this pulpit and delivered a reading for my own graduation ... 15 years ago. Unexpectedly, I'm old.

Jack Dorsey

#66. When I graduated college I had a series of just humiliating jobs that I couldn't believe I was at.

Lena Dunham

#67. Some go on to trade schools or get further training for jobs they are interested in. Some go into the arts, some are craftsmen, some take a little time out to travel, and some start their own businesses. But our graduates find and work at what they want to do.

Daniel Greenberg

#68. I made my name". What does this mean? It means that a man has successfully graduated through the process of inner self-development

Sunday Adelaja

#69. Your life will have chapters, complete with crazy characters, villains and a plot you can't even imagine as you sit here today. It's a lot like a Scooby Doo episode.

Sharyn Alfonsi

#70. You'll find out that nothing that comes easy is worth a dime. As a matter of fact, I never saw a football player make a tackle with a smile on his face. Never.

Woody Hayes

#71. And we didn't have cell phones. If you made plans to meet someone in a snow storm, and they didn't show up, you just had to assume they were devoured by wolves and go on with your life.

Stephen Colbert

#72. 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

#73. On My Eighth-Grade Graduation Ceremony They're celebrating you graduating from eighth grade? We just went to your sixth-grade graduation two goddamned years ago! Jesus Christ, why don't they just throw a fucking party every time you properly wipe your ass?

Justin Halpern

#74. I wish that someone had said to me that it's normal to feel lost for a little while.

Ira Glass

#75. Even though I didn't get a business degree, I enjoyed learning about economics.

Herb Ritts

#76. Don't be deceived by life's outcomes. Life's outcomes, while not entirely random, have a huge amount of luck baked into them.

Michael Lewis

#77. Your education is a dress rehearsal for a life that is yours to lead.

Nora Ephron

#78. When anything huge happens to me, I always think, this isn't my moment, this is a moment.

Tig Notaro

#79. Everybody wants you to do good things, but in a small town you pretty much graduate and get married. Mostly you marry, have children and go to their football games.

Faith Hill

#80. A university is a city of ideas, and we're grateful you became citizens of our city.

Mary Karr

#81. 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

#82. When you have kids, there's no such thing as quality time. There's just time. There's no, 'Ooh, his graduation's better than going to the mall.' It's all kind of equal. Changing her diaper and her winning a contest - it's all good.

Chris Rock

#83. Read. Read all the time. Read as a matter of principle, as a matter of self-respect. Read as a nourishing staple of life." (Wellesly High School commencement speech, "You Are Not Special", 6-12)

Teacher David McCullough

#84. You're not a failure if you don't make it. You're a success because you tried.

Susan Jeffers

#85. The most important aspect of freedom of speech is freedom to learn. All education is a continuous dialogue - questions and answers that pursue every problem on the horizon. That is the essence of academic freedom.

William O. Douglas

#86. You're young. Maybe there'll be time for a do-over if you don't get it right the first time. But there are no guarantees. There will come a time as it has for me when there's no time for a do-over.

Elizabeth Edwards

#87. Success is a lot like a bright, white tuxedo. You feel terrific when you get it, but then you're desperately afraid of getting it dirty, of spoiling it in any way.

Conan O'Brien

#88. It's very interesting, if you look at a study that was done by the Brookings Institute back in 2009, they determined that if Americans do three things, they can avoid poverty. Three things. Work, graduate from high school, and get married before you have children.

Rick Santorum

#89. The college graduate is presented with a sheepskin to cover his intellectual nakedness.

Robert M. Hutchins

#90. Be careful who you call crazy. Some of us think it's a compliment.

Marilynn Dawson

#91. It is a warning, Godspeed. It means you are no longer welcome here at these prices.

Bill Cosby

#92. Flora hadn't signed my yearbook. When I got it back from the cheerleaders, I skimmed over the last few pages and saw that every one of them signed except for her. I was disappointed but I wasn't surprised.

We were too much of everything to be summed up in a few sentences. -Sean Foster

Rainbowbrook

#93. Just after graduation in 1966, like many of my contemporaries, I applied for research training at the National Institutes of Health. Perhaps because his wife was a poet, Ira Pastan agreed to take me into his laboratory, despite my lack of scientific credentials.

Harold E. Varmus

#94. A classical education enables you to despise the wealth that it prevents you from achieving.

Russell Green

#95. North Dakota State. What do you have to do there to graduate? Milk a cow with your left hand?

Bobby Heenan

#96. Time it was And what a time it was, it was A time of innocence A time of confidences Long ago it must be I have a photograph Preserve your memories They're all that's left you

Paul Simon

#97. I went to my son's graduation this weekend, and I heard a great quote I've never heard before from Albert Einstein. It was that the greatest danger to the world is not the bad people but it's the good people who don't speak out.

Hamilton Jordan

#98. Education is the key to unlocking the world, a passport to freedom.

Oprah Winfrey

#99. We were nostalgic for a time that wasn't yet over.

Nina LaCour

#100. 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