When I look back my Graduation day, I still feel overwhelmed and grateful. Will I ever forget the day when I donned that much-coveted mortarboard cap and glossy gown? It was a special day. As I took a step on the podium, my family, friends and teachers looked at me with pride.
All of us wait for this awesome and memorable day of our lives. This day comes after years of hard work, dedication, grit and some sweat. Well, here is a collection of graduation quotes from famous personalities, see what they have to say about the graduation day.
Graduation Quotes
1.“Graduation is not the end; it’s the beginning.” – Senator Orrin Hatch
2.“The fireworks begin today. Each diploma is a lighted match. Each one of you is a fuse.” – Edward Koch
3.“Your families are extremely proud of you. You can’t imagine the sense of relief they are experiencing. This would be a most opportune time to ask for money.” – Gary Bolding
4.“To those of you who received honors, awards and distinctions, I say well done. And to the C students, I say you too may one day be president of the United States.” – George W. Bush
5.“Graduation is only a concept. In real life every day you graduate. Graduation is a process that goes on until the last day of your life. If you can grasp that, you’ll make a difference.” – Arie Pencovici
6.“Graduation day is tough for adults. They go to the ceremony as parents. They come home as contemporaries. After 22 years of child-raising, they are unemployed.” – Erma Bombeck
7.“Now that you’ve graduated, just remember: Bosses don’t usually accept notes from your mother.” – Melanie White
8.“We don’t stop going to school when we graduate.” – Carol Burnett
9.“God will not look you over for medals degrees or diplomas, but for scars.” – Elbert Hubbard
10.“The idea of winning a doctor’s degree gradually assumed the aspect of a great moral struggle, and the moral fight possessed immense attraction for me.” – Elizabeth Blackwell
11.“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
12.“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
13.“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
See our funny retirement quotes
14.“It is virtually impossible to compete in today’s global economy without a college degree.” – Bobby Scott
15.“Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing worth knowing can be taught.” – Oscar Wilde
16.“Your graduation is a milestone in your life.” – Unknown
17.“It makes little difference how many university courses or degrees a person may own. If he cannot use words to move an idea from one point to another, his education is incomplete.” – Norman Cousins
18.“What I like about graduation speeches is that they’re an opportunity for someone to make sense of their life and to impart that wisdom to someone else. It’s like a sanctioned self-help moment.” – Bruce Eric Kaplan
19.“Graduation is the same thing as taking that first baby step as a child. It is only the beginning, not the end. Thus, take the advent of graduation as that first step where life’s difficulties or failures only spark new attempts with the full understanding that nobody can discourage your progress except you.” – Byron R. Pulsifer
Related: Funny Quotes about Graduation
20.“The first of many graduations in life. From elementary school to senior school, each one holds successes for you to enjoy.” – Catherine Pulsifer
21.“Commencement. These graduates go out to a new season and our paths will never cross again in the same way. But while they have journeyed here in this season, they have impacted my life; and even though new students will come I will never be the same.” – Marsha Woodard
22.“The man who graduates today and stops learning tomorrow is uneducated the day after.” – Newton D. Baker
23.“Graduation is a time of completion, of finishing, of an ending, however, it is also a time of celebration of achievement and a beginning for the new graduate.” – Catherine Pulsifer
24.“The college graduate is presented with a sheepskin to cover his intellectual nakedness.” – Robert M. Hutchins
25.“Since graduation, I have measured time in 4-by-5-inch pieces of paper, four days on the left and three on the right. Every social engagement, interview, reading, flight, doctor’s appointment, birthday and dry-cleaning reminder has been handwritten between metal loops.” – Sloane Crosley
26.“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
27.“Having the right mindset is critical to graduation, no matter at what age you decide to take the leap. The mindset? You must acquire the right mindset that places you in the right frame of mind to make the right decisions, which will lead to the right habits, eventually leading you down the right path as you grow beyond where you are right now.” – Mike Finley
28.“For many, graduation marks the end of formal student life – the end of long spring breaks and of thinking that a 10 A.M. class is far too early.” – Alexa Von Tobel
29.“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
30.“I grew up very differently than a lot of other people in my hometown in Mississippi. But I can’t imagine my life any other way. I flew home and surprised my best friend at his graduation, and I remember turning to my mom and saying, ‘My graduation was so much cooler than this.’ I had Melissa Joan Hart give my commencement speech.” – Taylor Spreitler
31.“A commencement is a time of joy. It is also a time of melancholy. But then again, so is life.” – Paul Tsongas
32.“The commencement speech is not, I think, a wholly satisfactory manifestation of our culture.” – John Kenneth Galbraith
33.“Commencement Day has a sobering finality in that it’s the end of the prescribed path.” – Steve Blank
34.“I’ve done so many commencement speeches at colleges and law schools, and I tell young women that there are no glass ceilings, because those were broken by a lot of women who came before us. You can be anyone you want to be. You can do anything you want to do.” – Pam Bondi
35.“Commencement speeches were invented largely in the belief that outgoing college students should never be released into the world until they have been properly sedated.” – Garry Trudeau
36.“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
37.“The advantage of a classical education is that it enables you to despise the wealth that it prevents you from achieving.” – Russell Green
38.“Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught.” – Ambrose Bierce
Related: Montessori Quotes
39.“The trouble with learning from experience is that you never graduate.” – Doug Larson
40.“All that stands between the graduate and the top of the ladder is the ladder.” – Unknown
41.“Just about a month from now I’m set adrift, with a diploma for a sail and lots of nerve for oars.” – Richard Halliburton
42.“I was not someone who should have the life I have now, and yet I do. I was sitting in the chair you are literally sitting in right now and I just whispered, “Why not me?” And I kept whispering it for seventeen years; and here I am, someone that this school deemed worthy enough to speak to you at your commencement. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do something, but especially not yourself. Go conquer the world. Just remember this: Why not you? You made it this far.” – Mindy Kaling
43.“Most commencement speakers, they’ll get up here and talk in the future tense. ‘You will succeed. You will make us proud. And you will change the world. Most commencement speakers say, ‘You are the future.’ But I’m not gonna say that, because you’re not the future. You’re the present. You are succeeding. You are making us proud. You are changing the world, so keep changing the world and keep making us proud.” – Jimmy Fallon
44.“Ignore the silly 30-Under-30 list that the internet throws at you before you’ve even had your morning cup of coffee. Those will be the bane of your existence post-graduation, trust me. Trust me. Comparing yourself to other’s success only slows you down from finding your own.” – Octavia Spencer
45.“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.” – Michelle Obama
Conclusion:
The graduation quotes transforms us in many ways. A new journey in the life begins and you are out in the real world. Now you are on your own and you have to find ways to support yourself. Here no parent will come to stand by you if you made a mistake. Here no parent will come to support you if you couldn’t work with dedication. But it also opens new avenues in your life. If you are determined and hardworking, no one can now stop you to achieve your goals.
What are your favorite graduation quotes? Share them will all of our readers here at AnQuotes by writing in the comment space below. Maybe we’ll add them to our list!
I’m Alice Judy and AnQuotes is a fun hobby for me. We know that everyone loves a great quote and our mission here is simple – to be the best and most interesting quote site in the world! If you have quotes you would like us to cover, please contact us.
