Graduation quotes
499 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside graduation — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"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."
"Always be a first-rate version of yourself."
"Keep true to the dreams of your youth."
"You all have opportunities and skills and education that so many folks who came before you never could have dreamed of. So just imagine the kind of impact that you're going to make. Imagine how you can inspire those around you to reach higher and complete their own education."
"It doesn't matter how far you might rise. At some point you are bound to stumble because if you’re constantly doing what we do, raising the bar. If you're constantly pushing yourself higher, 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."
"You don't have to be famous. You just have to make your mother and father proud of you."
"You might as well take a chance on doing what you love."
"Our fearlessness shall be our secret weapon."
"Don't just get involved. Fight for your seat at the table. Better yet, fight for a seat at the head of the table."
"Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another."
"The definition of success changes. Success is to live your life with integrity and not give in to peer pressure to be something you're not. Follow your passion, stay true to yourself, never follow someone else's path; unless you're in the woods and you're lost and you see a path, then by all means, you should follow that."
"Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never -- in nothing, great or small, large or petty -- never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense."
"In life, the things that go wrong are often the very things that lead to other things going right."
"Act as if you are, and you will become such."
"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."
"It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."
"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."
"As knowledge increases, wonder deepens."
"The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed."
"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."
