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Our graduation quotes collection is a great resource for when you’re looking for that perfect quotation for a new graduate.
Incorporate a well-written quote into your congratulations card or message, and include it with a gift.
Best Graduation Quotes
1.) If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough.
Mario Andretti
2.) All you need is love.
The Beatles
3.) That’s how change happens. One gesture. One person. One moment at a time.
Libba Bray
4.) Do not dwell in the past, don’t dream of the future, and concentrate the mind on the present moment.
Buddha
5.) Life moves pretty fast if you don’t stop and look around once in a while you could miss it.
Ferris Bueller
6.) Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.
Confucius
7.) Dream as if you’ll live forever, live as if you’ll die today.
James Dean
8.) Do all the other things, the ambitious things—travel, get rich, get famous, innovate, lead, fall in love, make and lose fortunes—but as you do, to the extent that you can, err in the direction of kindness.
George Saunders
9.) Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.
Leonardo Da Vinci, The Notebooks
10.) The great end of education is to discipline rather than to furnish the mind; to train it to the use of its own powers, rather than fill it with the accumulations of others.
Tryon Edwards, A Dictionary of Thoughts
Awesome Quotes for the Grad
All of our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them.
Walt Disney
The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.
Benjamin Disraeli
May your hand always be busy, May your feet always be swift, May your heart always be sung and may you stay forever young.
Bob Dylan
We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.
Henry David Thoreau
Why wait any longer for the world to begin.
Bob Dylan
You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.
Henry Ford
You will find the key to success under the alarm clock.
Benjamin Franklin
Glass, china, and reputation are easily cracked, and never well mended.
Benjamin Franklin
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.
Henry David Thoreau
The most rewarding things in life are often the ones that look like they cannot be done.
Arnold Palmer
Good Graduation Quotes
The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.
Albert Einstein
Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted, counts.
Albert Einstein
Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you anywhere.
Albert Einstein
Hitch your wagon to a star.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
In a gentle way, you can shake the world.
Gandhi
For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone.
Audrey Hepburn
I hope your dreams take you to the corners of your smiles, to the highest of your hopes, to the windows of your opportunities, and to the most special places your heart has ever known.
Unknown
An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.
Unknown
An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.
Unknown
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
It takes most men five years to recover from a college education and to learn that poetry is as vital to thinking as knowledge.
Brooks Atkinson
Inspirational Graduation Quotes
Life is my college. May I graduate well, and earn some honors!
Louisa May Alcott
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
Don’t be afraid of fear. Because it sharpens you, it challenges you, it makes you stronger; and when you run away from fear, you also run away from the opportunity to be your best possible self.
Ed Helms
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
Mahatma Gandhi
Make the most of yourself, for that, is all there is of you.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Spread joy. Chase your wildest dreams.
Patch Adams
Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course, We would be ecstatic, delirious, and made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night, and we watch television.
Paul Hawken
Life is not about warming yourself by the fire, life is about building the fire. And generosity is the match – If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap, but if you want happiness for a lifetime, help somebody.
Larry Luchino
Graduation Quotations for Son
Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.
Napoleon Hill
As you walk down the fairway of life you must smell the roses, for you only get to play one round.
Ben Hogan
Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.
Bobby Kennedy
Do not pray for easier lives, pray to be stronger men.
John F. Kennedy
Whatever you are, be a good one.
Abraham Lincoln
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.
Abraham Lincoln
I’m an idealist: I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way.
Carl Sandburg
Everything has been figured out except how to live.
Sartre
Graduation Quotes 2022
Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.
“Closing Time” song by Semisonic
Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive that is you-er than you.
Dr. Seuss
t is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle
Your education is a dress rehearsal for a life that is yours to lead.
Nora Ephron
When you leave here, don’t forget why you came.
Adlai Stevenson
Don’t be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated; you can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.
David Lloyd George
It takes most men five years to recover from a college education and to learn that poetry is as vital to thinking as knowledge.
Brooks Atkinson
If at first, you don’t succeed, do it as your mother told you.
Unknown
It is absolutely still possible to make a difference.
Michelle Obama
The horizon leans forward offering you space to place new steps of change.
Maya Angelou
Congratulations Graduation Messages
High School Graduation Quotes
In response to those who say to stop dreaming and face reality, I say keep dreaming and make reality.
Kristian Kan
The best helping hand that you will ever receive is the one at the end of your own arm.
Fred Dehner
The fireworks begin today. Each diploma is a lighted match. Each one of you is a fuse.
Edward Koch
Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions.
Albert Einstein
I can’t wait to hear your name horribly mispronounced at the graduation ceremony.
Andy Atticus
When we show up, act boldly, and practice the best ways to be wrong, we fail forward. No matter where we end up, we’ve grown from where we began.
Stacey Abrams
So long as your desire to explore is greater than your desire to not screw up, you’re on the right track.
Ed Helms
Wherever you go, go with all your heart.
Confucius
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do, so throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, dream, discover.
Mark Twain
College Graduation Quotes
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
Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.
Judy Garland
The unfortunate, yet truly exciting thing about your life, is that there is no core curriculum. The entire place is an elective.
Jon Stewart
My school was so tough the school newspaper had an obituary section.
Norm Crosby
You must continue to dream the wild dream that you dreamed when you were young.
Mike Tomlin
It is better to be a failure at something you love than to be a success at something you hate.
George Burns
At graduation, you get to wear a cap and gown, but it’s a good idea to also wear something underneath it.
Greg Tamblyn
Old rules will crumble, but no one can predict what the new rules are. Make your own rules instead.
Neil Gaiman
Living with integrity is the most important thing in life. Don’t waste time trying to be something you are not by giving in to peer pressure.
Ellen DeGeneres
Education is not to prepare for life; education is life.
John Dewey
For Daughter
The stars are beautiful because of a flower that cannot be seen.
The Little Prince
We all take different paths in life, but no matter where we go, we take a little of each other everywhere.
Tim McGraw
The brave may not live forever, but the cautious do not live at all.
Princess Diaries
Don’t let your dreams be dreams.
Unknown
The light that shines on you shows where you are, the light that shines in you shows where you will go.
Unknown
Live simply, love deeply.
Unknown
Always aim high, work hard, and care deeply about what you believe in.
Hillary Clinton
The key to happiness is having dreams; the key to success is making them come true.
Unknown
You may not always have a comfortable life and you will not always be able to solve all of the world’s problems at once, but don’t ever underestimate the importance you can have because history has shown us that courage can be contagious, and hope can take on a life of its own.
Michelle Obama
You’re general, but you’re also specific. A citizen and a person, and the person you are is like nobody else on the planet.
Toni Morrison
For Brother
Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
Winston Churchill
It is good to have a journey toward the end, but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
Ernest Hemingway
Education is the key to unlocking the world, a passport to freedom.
Oprah Winfrey
Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
Nelson Mandela
Follow your passion, stay true to yourself, and 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.
Ellen Degeneres
Graduation day is tough for adults. They go to the ceremony as parents. They come home as contemporaries. After twenty-two years of child-raising, they are unemployed.
Erma Bombeck
Things turn out best for the people who make the best out of the way things turn out.
John Wooden
My Kid
Best to take the moment present as a present at the moment.
Unknown
What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the human soul.
Joseph Addison
Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
We may live in an age of instant messaging, instant gratification, and Instagram, but there is no way to short circuit the path to success.
Tory Burch
We laughed until we had to cry, we loved right down to our last goodbye, but over the years we’ll smile and recall, for just one moment…we had it all!
Unknown
The bravest thing you can do is be yourself.
Unknown
There will come a time when you believe everything is finished…that will be the beginning.
Unknown
For Sister
Moving on is simple. It’s what we leave behind that’s hard.
Unknown
Long ago, in a time that has faded from memory, a mother’s tears forged the bridge that, ever after, connected the power of the living every changing world to the human heart.
Unknown
The choices you don’t make are as important as the ones we do make.
Unknown
Use what talents you possess: the wood would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.
Henry Van Dyke
It’s just life so keep dancing through.
Wicked
Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose.
The Wonder Years
Yearbook Graduation Quotes Ideas
All our dreams can come true…if we have the courage to pursue them.
Walt Disney
Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
B.F. Skinner
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance!
Andy McIntyre
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
Eleanor Roosevelt
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
Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do.
Ella Fitzgerald
A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.
Theodore Roosevelt
NOTE: Sometimes, the best graduation quotes are short and to the point. Other graduation quotes take some time to get there, but the wait is worthwhile. Try incorporating some graduation quotes into your message to your favorite graduate. Find the right quote, and add the right message, and your congratulations greeting will stand out.
Graduation Sayings for Invitations
Hitch your wagon to a star.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.
Gabrielle Coco Chanel
If your uniform isn’t dirty, you haven’t been in the game.
Ben Bernanke
If you aren’t fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.
Vince Lombardi – for more inspirational Vince Lombardi quotes
It is clear the future holds great opportunities. It also holds pitfalls. The trick will be to avoid the pitfalls, seize the opportunities, and get back home by six o’clock.
Woody Allen
It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.
e.e. cummings
Be strong enough to stand alone, smart enough to know when you need help, and brave enough to ask for it.
Mark Amend
Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.
Maya Angelou
I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which was that you can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.
Jim Carrey
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.
Steve Jobs
Motivational Graduation Quotes
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
Eleanor Roosevelt
I mean we all fly. Once you leave the ground, you fly. Some people fly longer than others.
Michael Jordan
The only thing that ever sat its way to success was a hen.
Sarah Brown
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
Being attentive to the needs of others might not be the point of life, but it is the work of life.
Jonathan Saran Foer
The important thing is not to stop questioning.
Albert Einstein
The most rewarding things in life are often the ones that look like they cannot be done.
Arnold Palmer
Your life journey is about learning to become more of who you are and fulfilling the highest, truest expression of yourself as a human being.
Oprah Winfrey
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
Aristotle
Now the first suggestion is to aim high, but be aware that even before you have reached your ultimate professional destination, if you always strive for excellence, you can and should have a substantial impact on the world in which you live.
Sandra Day O’Connor
Notable Graduation Quotes
The best advice I can give anybody about going out into the world is this: Don’t do it. I have been out there. It is a mess.
Russell Baker
Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions.
Albert Einstein
The only thing that ever sat its way to success was a hen.
Sarah Brown
Every person you meet knows something you don’t; learn from them.
H. Jackson Brown Jr.
You’re defined by what you define failure as. It’s not a thing if it leads you to your success. It’s all part of the journey.
Justin Timberlake
There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.
C.S. Lewis
My dear terrified graduates, you are about to enter the most uncertain and thrilling period of your lives. The stories you are about to live are the ones you will be telling your children, grandchildren, and therapists.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
Even if you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there.
Will Rogers
The man who graduates today and stops learning tomorrow is uneducated the day after.
Newton D. Baker
Life is an improvisation. You have no idea what’s going to happen next and you are mostly just making things up as you go along.
Stephen Colbert
Important Things In Live Quotations
Very little is needed to make a happy life.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon, John Ploughman’s Talk
There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.
George Sand, Letter to Lina Calamatta (1862)
The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.
George Washington Burnap, The Sphere and Duties of Woman
Short Graduation Quotes
Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for you being here. Make good art.
Neil Gaiman
The tassel’s worth the hassle!
Unknown
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
Mark Twain
You can’t climb the ladder of success with your hands in your pockets.
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Find it, insist on it, dig into it, go after it.
Jennifer Garner
It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.
Babe Ruth
There are no regrets in life — just lessons.
Jennifer Aniston
There’s something so special about a woman who dominates in a man’s world. It takes a certain grace, strength, intelligence, fearlessness, and the nerve to never take no for an answer.
Rihanna
The things taught in schools and colleges are not an education, but the means of education.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Things turn out best for the people who make the best out of the way things turn out.
Art Linkletter
Classic Graduation Quotes
The things taught in colleges and schools are not an education, but the means of an education.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals
Seek information from the experienced.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
As land is improved by sowing it with various seeds, so is the mind by exercising it with different studies.
Pliny the Elder, “Letter to Tuscus”
Every now and then a man’s mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years’ mere study of books.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hyperion
An education which does not cultivate the will is an education that depraves the mind.
Anatole France, The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard
Every man who rises above the common level has received two educations: the first from his teachers; the second, more personal and important, from himself.
Edward Gibbon
There is precious instruction to be got by finding that we were wrong.
Thomas Carlyle, in a letter to a young man (1843)
Wear your learning like your watch, in a private pocket; and do not pull it out, and strike it, merely to show that you have one.
Lord Chesterfield, Letter to His Son (1748)
Meaningful Quotes for a Graduate
To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
e.e. cummings
Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.
Albert Einstein
We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
JK Rowling – See more insights from J.K. Rowling.
Think big thoughts but relish small pleasures.
H. Jackson Brown Jr.
An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.
Benjamin Franklin
Your education is a dress rehearsal for a life that is yours to lead.
Nora Ephron
You don’t go to university so you can punch a clock. You go to university so you can be in a position to make a difference.
Janet Napolitano
What lies behind us, and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Best Graduation Words of Wisdom
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.
Dr. Seuss
Do not follow where the path may lead. Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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
You may not always have a comfortable life, and you will not always be able to solve all of the world’s problems at once, but don’t ever underestimate the importance you can have because history has shown us that courage can be contagious, and hope can take on a life of its own.
Michelle Obama
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.
Steve Jobs
Inspire a Graduate
To accomplish great things, we must not only act but also dream, not only plan but also believe.
Anatole France
Your life is your story, and the adventure ahead of you is the journey to fulfill your own purpose and potential.
Kerry Washington
Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
Nelson Mandela
Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.
Malcolm X
What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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 Withford
In life, you make the small decisions with your head and the big decisions with your heart.
Omid Kordestani
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
Fight for your seat at the table. Better yet, fight for a seat at the head of the table.
Barack Obama
Deep Graduation Insights
Knowledge is not power. The implementation of knowledge is power.
Larry Winget
Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets.
Leonardo da Vinci
Let us never be betrayed into saying we have finished our education; because that would mean we had stopped growing.
Julia H. Gulliver
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
You can never plan the future by the past.
Edmund Burke
Wouldn’t you know that your path was there all along, waiting for you to knock, waiting for you to become. This path does not belong to your parents, your teachers, your leaders, or your lovers. Your path is your character defining itself more and more every day like a photograph coming into focus.
Jodie Foster
No job or task is too small or beneath you. If you want to get ahead, volunteer to do the things no one else wants to do and do it better.
Bobbi Brown
It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all—in which case, you fail by default.
J.K. Rowling
Don’t be afraid of fear. Because it sharpens you, it challenges you, it makes you stronger; and when you run away from fear, you also run away from the opportunity to be your best possible self.
Ed Helms
Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for you being here. Make good art.
Neil Gaiman
Graduation Quotes FAQs
Here are some frequently asked questions about graduation quotes.
See George Saunders’ quote, “Do all the other things, the ambitious things—travel, get rich, get famous, innovate, lead, fall in love, make and lose fortunes—but as you do, to the extent that you can, err in the direction of kindness.”
“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”
— Steve Jobs
Your Help with Graduation Quotes
We’re always on the lookout for some great graduation quotes.
If you have graduation quotes for your son, daughter, sister, or brother that you think we’ve missed, please let us know. Thanks.
These fun graduation quotes accompany graduation gifts in a pleasing fashion. Include them on a gift card, note, or even when posting on social media.
By Trevor Martin
Trevor is a writer based in St. Paul, Minnesota.
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