My Graduation Quotes

#1. 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

#2. When I made coffee and Xeroxed and distributed newspapers at ABC News, I thought my life was over.

Katie Couric

#3. 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

#4. 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

#5. 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

#6. I have no problems with private schools. I graduated from one and so did my mother. Private schools are useful and we often use public funds to pay for their infrastructures and other common needs.

Jim Clyburn

#7. 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

#8. It was only when I finished the course and left my graduation diploma on the bus that I realised I'd become an actor.

James D'arcy

#9. My daughter finished high school the same month I got my master's degree. I'm glad I didn't know when I gave birth to her at 21 what it would cost in terms of time, money and sacrifice to bring her to that graduation day.

Regina Brett

#10. 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

#11. 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

#12. 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

#13. 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

#14. I learned law so well, the day I graduated I sued the college, won the case, and got my tuition back.

Fred Allen

#15. 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

#16. 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

#17. I have the loving support of my girlfriend who still attends Wake Forest and is nearing graduation. She helps me cope with the everyday rigors of being an NBA player.

Tim Duncan

#18. 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

#19. I make my weaknesses my strengths and my stengths stronger.

Lisa Fernandez

#20. 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

#21. On the hot, fragrant afternoon of my graduation from college it seemed that good fortune was not merely latent but unavoidable, folded and in the bag.

Geoffrey Wolff

#22. 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

#23. 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

#24. 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

#25. I've always been short and stocky. So when I got into repertory theatre after graduation, I found myself doing character roles: because of my deep voice, shape and height, I was playing 40-year-old, 50-year-old roles at the age of 23.

David Suchet

#26. I finally just slept with my high school crush. But I swear; now he expects me to go to his graduation - like I know where I'm going to be in three years.

Amy Schumer

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

Tig Notaro

#28. 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

#29. 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

#30. 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

#31. Almost 50 years old now, some 30 years after graduation, I look at my Caltech classmates and conclude that math whizzes do not take over the world.

Sandra Tsing Loh

#32. 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

#33. I took three years off. I differentiated myself from the industry. Found my identity - sort of ... I haven't graduated yet. I'm not legitimately educated yet, but maybe one day.

Claire Danes

#34. At my high school graduation, I graduated from home school, so it was pregnant teens and gang members. But, when I got on stage, there were kids in the background who all screamed, "Marry me!," very loud.

Portia De Rossi

#35. One week before my 17th birthday, I had a blind date with June Rose, a television actress on network soap operas, a model, and a regular on the popular Dick Clark's Saturday night 'American Bandstand' show from New York. We were married five years later, one week after my graduation from Columbia.

Robert C. Merton

#36. 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

#37. 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

#38. If a student takes the whole series of my folklore courses including the graduate seminars, he or she should learn something about fieldwork, something about bibliography, something about how to carry out library research, and something about how to publish that research.

Alan Dundes

#39. 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

#40. After graduating in the summer of 1980, I knew I wanted my life to count.

Donna Rice

#41. I did my first film when I was in the final year of my graduation. At that time, I was still a kid, and I couldn't read the industry very well.

Uday Kiran

#42. I've seen over and over how much self-belief drives outcomes. And that's why I force myself to sit at the table, even when I am not sure I belong there - and yes, this still happens to me. And when I'm not sure anyone wants my opinion, I take a deep breath and speak up anyway.

Sheryl Sandberg

#43. I was about to get a degree in economics when I accepted that I'd be a lousy businessman, and if I didn't give acting a try I'd regret it for the rest of my life.

Peter Gallagher

#44. 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

#45. I graduated a the top of my class in the '84 Olympic Games; I won a gold medal.

Scott Hamilton

#46. I pretty much bailed on high school. I mean, I graduated, but I wasn't even there for my own graduation.

Tommy Caldwell

#47. The day after my high school graduation in 1952, I headed to Alaska. I was 17. I started out greasing equipment, then became a heavy-crane operator. I made and saved good money there for two years.

Dennis Washington

#48. I received my draft notice right after graduation from college and had three months before going into the Army in September to think about it.

Tim O'Brien

#49. My first class is biology. I can't find it and get my first demerit for wandering the hall. It is 8:50 in the morning. Only 699 days and 7 class periods until graduation.

Laurie Halse Anderson

#50. I was a Democrat before I was a Republican before I became an independent and I never changed my principles.

Michael Bloomberg

#51. I sewed good wishes and thoughts into my garments, especially so if they were wedding or graduation dresses.

Anne Ellis

#52. 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

#53. I think sleeping was my problem in school. If school had started at 4:00 in the afternoon, I'd be a college graduate today.

George Foreman

#54. I don't want to be in my meetings all sore or be at my son's graduation all sore just because of something I did in the past. (I'm) just learning and being smart.

Derrick Rose

#55. 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

#56. 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

#57. Following graduation from Amherst, a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship enabled me to test the depth of my interest in literary scholarship by beginning graduate studies at Harvard University.

Harold E. Varmus

#58. The morning after my high-school graduation found me up early job hunting. The dream of college I put on the back burner.

Martha Reeves

#59. I had the luxury of skipping the cabinet meeting to attend my daughter's graduation. So many people don't have the luxury of taking an hour away from the workplace to attend indispensable family commitments. We have to change that dynamic.

Thomas Perez

#60. I decided to move out of the apartment I was sharing with my best friend before graduation and move back home. My parents had recently separated, and I wanted to move back home with my mom and my siblings.

Katherine Schwarzenegger

#61. My school was so tough the school newspaper had an obituary section.

Norm Crosby

#62. I had received a t-shirt from my best friend Veronica at my police academy graduation. It reads, 'Throw your donut in the opposite direction and the cops won't get you.' I love wearing that t-shirt.

Suzie Ivy

#63. I got all my work done to graduate in two months and then they were like, I'm sorry, you have to take driver's ed. I just kind of went, Oh, forget it.

Fiona Apple

#64. After graduation in June of 1984, I moved to Manhattan. My first stop was a psychiatrist, who in less than our first fifty-minute session again diagnosed me with depression.

Andy Behrman

#65. The first time I saw him again, it was another year, at my college graduation. And I just knew.

Jenny Han

#66. Following graduation from high school in 1948, I attended Harvard University where I became a physics major. Having grown up in a small town, I found Harvard to be an enormously enriching experience. Students in my class came from all walks of life and from a great variety of geographical locations.

David Lee

#67. I'm not retiring. I am graduating. Today is my graduation day. Retirement means that you'll just go ahead and live on your laurels and surf all day in Oceanside. It ain't going to happen.

Junior Seau

#68. I commuted to the prestigious Hibiya High School from my uncle's home in Tokyo. During the high school years, I developed an interest in chemistry, so upon graduation, I chose to take an entrance examination for the Department of Chemistry of the University of Kyoto, the old capital of Japan.

Susumu Tonegawa

#69. 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

#70. My father, who was from a wealthy family and highly educated, a lawyer, Yale and Columbia, walked out with the benefit of a healthy push from my mother, a seventh grade graduate, who took a typing course and got a secretarial job as fast as she could.

George Weinberg

#71. My main objective is to prepare candidates for professional baseball; however, the majority of our graduates will go home as much better qualified amateurs.

Jim Evans

#72. At my graduation, I thought we had to marry what we wished to become. Now you are becoming the men you once would have wished to marry.

Gloria Steinem

#73. I see myself being a great-grandmother at my great-grandson's graduation from a school that has my name on it.

Jill Scott

#74. 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

#75. I thank God for a gracious completion of my doctorate degree.

Lailah Gifty Akita

#76. When I started singing as a freshman, I didn't sing for anybody - my parents or my friends. By the time I was a senior, the teacher asked me if I wanted to audition for a solo at my graduation. I was really nervous but I got it.

Toby Lightman

#77. 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

#78. 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

#79. I wrote a novel for my degree, and I'm very happy I didn't submit that to a publisher. I sympathize with my professors who had to read it.

David Eddings

#80. I was really desperate. I don't know if you can remember back that far, but when I went to graduate school they didn't want females in graduate school. They were very open about it. They didn't mince their words. But then I got in and I got my degree.

Shannon Lucid

#81. When I was going for my graduate degree, I decided I was going to make a feature film as my thesis. That's what I was famous for-that I had my thesis film be a feature film, which was 'You're a Big Boy Now.'

Francis Ford Coppola

#82. He was some sort of boxing champion," she told me the night she took me out to celebrate my graduation. "He was always punching someone in the nose."
"Macho," I said.
"No," she said. "It was the clarity of expression that appealed to him.

Melissa Bank

#83. Upon graduation from high school, following my brother by a couple of years, I joined the U.S. Air Force.

Dennis L. McKiernan

#84. In my second year in graduate school, I took a computer course and that was like lightening striking.

Ted Nelson

#85. So in my uncertainty, I went to graduate school and there it all happened.

Ted Nelson

#86. You must realize that honorary degrees are given generally to people whose SAT scores were too low to get them into schools the regular way. As a matter of fact, it was my SAT scores that led me into my present vocation in life, comedy.

Neil Simon

#87. When I finished high school, I wanted to take all my graduation money and buy myself a motorcycle. But my mom said no. See, she had a brother who died in a horrible motorcycle accident when he was 18. And I could just have his motorcycle.

Anthony Jeselnik

#88. I was going to be an architect. I graduated with a degree in architecture and I had a scholarship to go back to Princeton and get my Masters in architecture. I'd done theatricals in college, but I'd done them because it was fun.

James Stewart

#89. When I was in college, my graduation thesis was called 'Female Directors.' I interviewed all of the important female directors from Mexico. There were four. That was it.

Patricia Riggen

#90. I didn't get my degree at NYU; I got it later, they gave me an honourary one.

Jim Jarmusch