Graduation Day is a special event where a student finally graduates or receives an academic degree. In America, graduation is often described as a “rite of passage”. It can also be called as a Move-Up, Step-Up, Recognition, or Promotion Day. During this time, parents and students feel a certain sense of pride once they receive the public confirmation of their many years of hard work and commitment towards their studies.
For the students, it is an amazing feeling to survive all the sleepless nights, difficult exams and school activities after many years. For the parents, on the other hand, the paying of tuition fees, projects, and programs has finally come to an end and they can finally see their child create their own career and become an adult. It speaks a lot about achievement, hard work, and dedication.
As this memorable event unfolds, you start to think about your future and you plan on what your next steps should be. Some decide to get on a vacation to give themselves a chance to relax after their long years of stress in school. Others hunt jobs right away determined to earn their own salary and establish a career. No matter what your plans are after graduation, there is one thing that will not change; life goes on. You may no longer have to read books or listen to a professor inside a room full of other students anymore, but you will be facing real-world problems and learning new life lessons. You will be able to use what you learned in school, but you will find out that courage and perseverance are what you will mostly need to face all of life’s challenges.
We would like to congratulate you on your graduation by giving these motivational graduation quotes. We hope you do your best out there and we wish you luck on your next adventure!
Graduation Quotes
1. It always seems impossible until it’s done. – Nelson Mandela
2. And this is the part where you find out who you are.
3. What feels like the end is often the beginning.
4. Your time as a caterpillar has expired. Your wings are ready.
5. Take pride in how far you have come and have faith in how far you can go.
6. Be fearless in the pursuit of what sets your soul on fire.
7. I’m quite ready for another adventure.
8. Follow your passion. It will lead to your purpose.
9. Dreams don’t work unless you do.
10. The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you.
11. The difference between school and life? In school, you’re taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you’re given a test that teaches you a lesson.
12. The best is yet to come.
13. I want to thank Google, Wikipedia, and whoever invented copy and paste.
14. Wherever you go, go with all your heart. – Confucius
15. Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.
16. I thank you for your part in my journey.
17. My daughter, I wish you the strength to face challenges with confidence, along with the wisdom to choose your battles carefully. I wish you adventure on your journey and may you always stop to help someone along.
18. Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all. – Aristotle
19. You’ve got a new story to write. And it looks nothing like your past.
20. Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good.
21. The best view comes after the hardest climb.
22. Whatever you do, do it well.
23. You know the future is really happening when you start feeling scared.
24. What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals. – Henry David Thoreau
25. Don’t just fly. Soar.
26. Work for a cause, not for applause. Live life to express, not impress. Don’t strive to make your presence noticed, just make your absence felt.
27. Whenever you find yourself doubting how far you can go, just remember how far you have come. Remember everything you have faced, all the battles you have won, and all the fears you have overcome.
28. Avoiding failure is to avoid progress.
29. Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.
30. Kill them with success and bury them with a smile.
31. If you have the courage to begin, you have the courage to succeed.
32. Courage doesn’t mean you don’t get afraid. Courage means you don’t let fear stop you.
33. Stay humble, work hard, be kind.
34. Don’t stop until you’re proud.
35. I work so hard so I never have to be at the mercy of someone else’s choices, power trip, or kindness.
36. You’ve always had the power my dear, you just had to learn it for yourself. – Glinda
37. You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
38. God has planted greatness in you. Let today be the beginning of a great adventure as you step into the gifts he’s given you.
39. The aim of education is the knowledge, not of facts, but of values. – William S. Burroughs
40. We don’t stop going to school when we graduate. – Carol Burnett
41. The idea of winning a doctor’s degree gradually assumed the aspect of a great moral struggle, and the moral fight possessed intense attraction for me. – Elizabeth Blackwell
42. 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
43. Life is the most exciting opportunity we have. But we have one shot. You graduate from college once, and that’s it. You’re going out of that nest. And you have to find that courage that’s deep, deep, deep in there. Every step of the way. – Andrew Shue
44. All real education is the architecture of the soul. – William Bennett
45. God will not look you over for medals degrees or diplomas, but for scars. – Elbert Hubbard
46. You are educated. Your certification is in your degree. You may think of it as the ticket to the good life. Let me ask you to think of an alternative. Think of it as your ticket to change the world. – Tom Brokaw
47. 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
48. For good nurture and education implant good constitutions. – Plato
49. 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
50. 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
51. The doer alone learneth. – Friedrich Nietzsche
52. Some people drink from the fountain of knowledge, others just gargle. – Robert Anthony
53. It is virtually impossible to compete in today’s global economy without a college degree. – Bobby Scott
54. 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
55. I think about the milestones from my childhood and what it will be like to watch our kids go through them. Taking Riley to her first day of school was a whirlwind. I can’t imagine what middle school is going to be like, and high school, and graduation. – Stephen Curry
56. Mentors provide professional networks, outlets for frustration, college and career counseling, general life advice, and most importantly, an extra voice telling a student they are smart enough and capable enough to cross the stage at graduation and land their first paycheck from a career pathway job. – Gerald Chertavian
57. Never go to your high school reunion pregnant or they will think that is all you have done since you graduated. – Erma Bombeck
58. My mother was keen that I complete my graduation and never ever wanted me to be in the movies, as my father had made five films that lost money. One of the films he made was ‘Agneepath,’ which was hugely hyped but underwhelming at the box office, and I remember that my dad had to sell my grandmother’s flat to pay off the loan. – Karan Johar
59. I woke up on May 15, 1991, the day of my Barnard graduation, and I said to myself, ‘By the end of today you will decide what you want to do with the rest of your life.’ – Alexandra Guarnaschelli
60. I always wanted to have my own album released before I graduated from high school. – Christina Aguilera
61. Bullying is something every kid in public, parochial, or private school has witnessed by graduation. While unfortunate, it is part of growing up. – Pat Buchanan
62. 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
63. 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
64. For a man to attain to an eminent degree in learning costs him time, watching, hunger, nakedness, dizziness in the head, weakness in the stomach, and other inconveniences. – Miguel de Cervantes
65. 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
66. So in my uncertainty, I went to graduate school and there it all happened. – Ted Nelson
67. Graduation speeches force you to reflect. They are about consciousness. Nothing is better than consciousness. – Bruce Eric Kaplan
68. Being considerate of others will take your children further in life than any college degree. – Marian Wright Edelman
69. 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
70. I learned law so well, the day I graduated I sued the college, won the case, and got my tuition back. – Fred Allen
71. I don’t look to find an educated person in the ranks of university graduates, necessarily. Some of the most educated people I know have never been near a university. – John Keegan
72. To serve in the modern military – or to be the uncle, parent or sibling of one who does – is to treat the necessary service and sacrifice of war with a sacred honor. In my community, we pile into cars and drive hundreds of miles to watch our children’s graduation from basic training. – J. D. Vance
73. If you’re picking your best friend based on what kind of clothes she wears or how popular she is, chances are you aren’t going to stay in touch after graduation. – Renee Olstead
74. 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
75. 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
76. 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
77. 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
78. High levels of homeownership have been shown to foster greater involvement in school and civic organizations, higher graduation rates, and greater neighborhood stability. – Ben Bernanke
79. One of the first times I ever performed in front of a big group of people was at my kindergarten graduation. I did, like, a Michael Jackson impersonation as, like, a five year old. I had the suit and blazer, the glove and the fedora, and I just performed a whole Michael Jackson song. I’m sure it was ‘Smooth Criminal.’ – Chance The Rapper
80. Our promise to our children should be this: if you do well in school, we will pay for you to obtain a college degree. – Ruth Ann Minner
81. 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
82. 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
83. 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
84. Even though I disagree with many of the changes, when I see the privates graduate at the end of the day, when they walk off that drill field at the end of the ceremony, they are still fine privates; outstanding, well-motivated privates. – R. Lee Ermey
85. Everyone has a right to a university degree in America, even if it’s in Hamburger Technology. – Clive James
86. It might be said now that I have the best of both worlds. A Harvard education and a Yale degree. – John F. Kennedy
87. The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse. – James Madison
88. 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
89. Catholic school graduates exhibit a wide variety of qualities that will not only help them in their careers but also in their family and community lives. – Joe Baca
90. Yeah, I spent about 20 years in a dorm room. It took me a while to graduate. – Douglas Wilson
91. 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
92. 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
93. I think young writers should get other degrees first, social sciences, arts degrees or even business degrees. What I like about graduation speeches is that they’re an opportunity for someone to make sense of their lives and to impart that wisdom to someone else. It’s like a sanctioned self-help moment. – Bruce Eric Kaplan
94. Upon graduation, believe it or not, I had no job. I had no interviews. I had no prospects. I had no worries. What I did have, I had passion. I had enormous passion. I had a passion for financial markets. I had fallen in love with financial markets. – Gary Cohn
95. I took three years off. I differentiate 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
96. 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
97. You are graduating from college. That means that this is the first day of the last day of your life. No, that’s wrong. This is the last day of the first day of school. Nope, that’s worse. This is a day. – Andy Samberg
98. 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
99. When nearly a third of our high school students do not graduate on time with their peers, we have work to do. We must design our middle and high schools so that no student gets lost in the crowd and disconnected from his or her own potential. – Christine Gregoire
100. On this outward and physical ceremony, we attest once again to the inner and spiritual strength of our Nation. As my high school teacher, Miss Julia Coleman used to say: ‘We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles.’ – Jimmy Carter
101. It is soooooo necessary to get the basic skills, because by the time you graduate, undergraduate or graduate, that field would have totally changed from your first day of school. – Leigh Steinberg
102. College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life. – Paul Ryan
103. If someone comes to you with, ‘It’s my kid’s graduation,’ you don’t tell them, ‘Sorry, you can’t go to that.’ You just don’t do that. You figure out some other way. – Bob Iger
104. 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
105. I’m not impressed by someone’s degree… I’m impressed by them making movies. – Richard King
106. Adults tell students that it gets better, that the world changes after school, that being ‘different’ will pay off sometime after graduation. But no one explains to them why. – Alexandra Robbins
107. It doesn’t matter that your dream came true if you spent your whole life sleeping. – Jerry Zucker
108. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You can’t get there by bus, only by hard work and risk and by not quite knowing what you’re doing, but what you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover will be yourself. – Alan Alda
109. As you start your journey, the first thing you should do is throw away that store-bought map and begin to draw your own. – Michael Dell
110. It’s hard not to be afraid. Be less afraid. – Susan Suntag
111. You will never see a U-haul behind a hearse. You can’t take it with you. – Denzel Washington
112. 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
113. And now go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. -Neil Gaiman
114. When people tell you not to believe in your dreams, and they say “Why?”, say “Why not?” – Billie Jean King
115. That diploma you hold in your hands today is really just your learner’s permit for the rest of the drive through life. Remember, you don’t have to be smarter than the next person, all you have to do is be willing to work harder than the next person. – Jimmy Iovine
116. Pursue whatever it is that you want to do with your life. It is the only secret to happiness that I know except for maybe true love, that and maybe having the amazing health insurance plan that our congressmen have. – Lewis Black
117. You get to make your own luck. 80% of success in your career will come from just showing up. The world is run by those who show up…not those who wait to be asked. – Steve Blank
118. Your education is a dress rehearsal for a life that is yours to lead. – Nora Ephron
