Quotes & Sayings About Graduating

When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, my parents, like the rest of America, were terrified. The Soviets had nuclear weapons and now were ahead of us in space. So my parents marched me and Owen into our living room, sat us down, and said, " You boys are going to study math and Science so we can beat the Soviets!"
I thought that was a lot of pressure to put on a six-year old. But own and I were obedient sons, so we studied math and science. And we were good at it.. Owen was the first in our family to go to college. He went to MIT, graduating with a degree in physics, and then became a photographer.
I went to Harvard, and became a comedian. My poor parents.
But we still beat the Soviets. You're welcome. — Al Franken

Nora Ephron explained in a 1996 commencement address at her alma mater, Wellesley College, about her own graduating class of 1962: "We weren't meant to have futures, we were meant to marry them. We weren't meant to have politics, or careers that mattered, or opinions or lives; we were meant to marry them. If you wanted to be an architect, you married an architect." Both — Rebecca Traister

It's so important to understand your good attendance ups your chances of graduating. — Tyra Banks

Graduating from the School of Hard Knocks doesn't always get you to Fort Knox. — Edward Harris

"What is it with people these days?" he hisses ... "In my day, something just was. None of this analysis a hundred times over. None of these college courses with people graduating with degrees in Whys and Hows and Becauses. Sometimes, love, you just need to forget all of those words and enroll in a little lesson called 'Thank You.'" — Cecelia Ahern

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

Not graduating high school on time leads to fewer chances of attending college and obtaining good paying jobs, and creates instead higher chances of incarceration and unemployment. — Al Sharpton

Have I ever remarked on how completely ridiculous it is to ask high school students to decide what they want to do with the rest of their lives and give them nearly no support in doing so? Support like, say, spending a day apiece watching twenty different jobs and then another week at their top three choices, with salary charts and projections and probabilities of graduating that subject given their test scores? The more so considering this is a central allocation question for the entire economy? — Eliezer Yudkowsky

I feel like I was in the last graduating class of commercial actors. — Nate Torrence

More women are graduating from college now than men. — Mitch McConnell

College has been oversold. It has been oversold to students who end up dropping out or graduating with degrees that don't help them very much in the job market. It also has been oversold to the taxpayers, who foot the bill for subsidies that do nothing to encourage innovation and economic growth. — Alex Tabarrok

No," he said. "That would be imposing my beliefs on others, something I will never do. I really wish you would respect my career choice. I make enough money to have a comfortable lifestyle, and most importantly, I'm happy. Who cares about a flashy job and wads of cash if you hate life? I'm very proud of you for graduating Harvard with almost perfect honors, but does it really matter? In the end, you can't take that diploma with you. — E.L. Todd

Talent and worth are the only eternal grounds of distinction. To these the Almighty has affixed His everlasting patent of nobility. Knowledge and goodness,
these make degrees in heaven, and they must be the graduating scale of a true democracy. — Catharine Sedgwick

There's no graduating from this kind of education, couples just keep growing and changing until they either break up or die. — Brian K. Vaughan

After graduating from our school, they went into the Woods expecting epic battles with monsters and wizards, only to find their fairy tales unfold right in their own houses. They didn't realize that villains are the ones closest to us. They didn't realize that to find a happy ending, a hero must first look right under his nose. — Soman Chainani

The cost of college education today is so high that many young people are giving up their dream of going to college, while many others are graduating deeply in debt. — Bernie Sanders

On graduating from school, a studious young man who would withstand the tedium and monotony of his duties has no choice but to lose himself in some branch of science or literature completely irrelevant to his assignment. — Charles-Augustin De Coulomb

I believe in myself as I look forward to graduating from Hamilton Heights High School in 1991. — Ryan White

I grew up as a fifth-generation Jew in the American South, at the confluence of two great storytelling traditions. After graduating from Yale in the 1980s, I moved to Japan. For young adventure seekers like myself, the white-hot Japanese miracle held a similar appeal as Russia in 1920s or Paris in the 1950s. — Bruce Feiler

I love the music, I love the times, so to me that was exciting personally just to play something that starts in 1986 with graduating high school, we've got a great soundtrack in the pilot. — Will Estes

When I went to Paris after graduating high school, I saw a model who was 12 years old without any supervision. That wouldn't happen in the acting world. — Tyra Banks

In a now famous commencement speech at Stanford University, Steve Jobs urged the graduating class to "stay hungry. Stay foolish." Never let go of your appetite to go after new ideas, new experiences, and new adventures. Compete with yourself, not with others. Judge yourself on what is your personal best and you'll accomplish more than you could ever have imagined. Life stops for no one, so keep moving. Stay awake and stay alive. — Sophia Amoruso

I went to Hong Kong in '97 to witness the handover after graduating university, and then I was gonna backpack around Asia and then come back here and look for a job. — Daniel Wu

Immediately after graduating, with honors, from Emory University in the summer of 1990, McCandless dropped out of sight. He changed his name, gave the entire balance of a twenty-four-thousand-dollar savings account to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet. And then he invented a new life for himself, taking up residence at the ragged margin of our society, wandering across North America in search of raw, transcendent experience. — Jon Krakauer

You can't run away from your fears. Isn't that what you always tell your readers?"
I was an advice columnist for Vibe, a magazine about relationships and sex and urban culture. My column, called "Ask Miss Independent," had started at a student-run publication, and I had quickly developed a following. Upon graduating, I'd taken Miss Independent to Vibe, and they offered me a weekly feature. Most of my advice was posted publicly, but I also sent private paid-for replies to those who requested it. To supplement my income, I also did occasional freelancing for women's magazines.
"I'm not running away from my fears," I told Dane. "I'm running away from my relatives."
Ring.
"Just pick it up, Ella. You always tell people to face their problems."
"Yes, but I prefer to ignore mine and let them fester. — Lisa Kleypas

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

When my son David was a high school senior in 2003, his graduating class went on a camping trip in the desert. A creative writing educator visited the camp and led the group through an exercise designed to develop their sensitivity and imaginations. Each student was given a pen, a notebook, a candle, and matches. They were told to walk a short distance into the desert, sit down alone, and "discover themselves." The girls followed instructions. The boys, baffled by the assignment, gathered together, threw the notebooks into a pile, lit them with the matches, and made a little bonfire. — Christina Hoff Sommers

Excellent Sheep is likely to makea lasting mark for three reasons. One, Mr. Deresiewicz spent twenty-four years in the Ivy League, graduating from Columbia and teaching for a decade at Yale.He brings the gory details. Two, the author is a striker, to put it in soccer terms. He's a vivid writer, a literary critic whose headers tend to land in the back corner of the net. Three, his indictment arrives on wheels: He takes aim at just about the entirety of upper-middle-class life in America.Mr. Deresiewicz's book is packed full of what he wants more of in American life: passionate weirdness. — Dwight Garner

He did recall that the summer after graduating from college before he joined the state police he had read Shakespeare. It was the pure language that stupefied him. He would be in a diner reading A Midsummer Night's Dream and his acquaintances were confident he was studying for some test. The test turned out to be the nature of his mind. Shakespeare seemed even truer than history. Literature was against the abyss while history wallowed in it. — Jim Harrison

The families of graduating seniors emptied out of cars, sheepish in uncommon splendor, like milling clans at the origin of a parade. There is something spent about the families of teenagers; possibly it's the look of exhausted loyalties. Perhaps it's only right that we grow overbig in someone else's space. Perhaps we need to tire and differentiate, leave and adapt. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Griffin Hansbury, who was born female but underwent a sex change after graduating from college, has another well-informed view of the powers of testosterone. "The world just changes," he said. "The most overwhelming feeling was the incredible increase in libido and change in the way I perceived women." Before the hormone treatments, Hansbury said, an attractive woman in the street would provoke an internal narrative: "She's attractive. I'd like to meet her." But after the injections, no more narrative. Any attractive quality in a woman, "nice ankles or something," was enough to "flood my mind with aggressive pornographic images, just one after another ... Everything I looked at, everything I touched turned to sex." He concluded, "I felt like a monster a lot of the time. It made me understand men. It made me understand adolescent boys a lot. — Christopher Ryan

Between 50 and 75% of entering freshmen at large Catholic universities typically identify themselves as believing and practicing Catholics. Only 25-50% of graduating seniors do the same. — Peter Kreeft

I was twenty-one at the time, about to turn twenty-two. No prospect of graduating soon, and yet no reason to quit school. Caught in the most curiously depressing circumstances. For months I'd been stuck, unable to take one step in any new direction. The world kept moving on; I alone was at a standstill. In the autumn, everything took on a desolate cast, the colors swiftly fading before my eyes. The sunlight, the smell of the grass, the faintest patter of rain, everything got on my nerves. — Haruki Murakami

After graduating, I'd moved to the Washington D.C. area to see what I could do with the skills I'd picked up from a creative writing degree. The chief export of the nation's capital is, of course, paper work, so I reckoned I could land some kind of writing or editing position at one of the many nonprofits and associations in the area. — Jeff Deck

I don't think anybody in my graduating class would have figured that I would be doing full-on single-camera comedies or sitcoms, or anything like that, but it certainly has been a part of my career. — Brooke Nevin

An interesting thing happened in 1989, right as I was graduating: the stock market crashed and really changed the landscape of the art world in New York. It made the kind of work I was doing interesting to galleries that wouldn't have normally been interested in it. — Matthew Barney

It wasn't until I was 18, when I was graduating high school, that I went and bought a guitar on a whim. — Sam Hunt

They all agreed that things were better in the old days. Some of them were sad about it and some were bitter, but it was always, 'Nothing is as good as it used to be.' I swore I would never talk like that and you know what? Now that I'm an old lady myself, I think that most things are better than they used to be. Look at the computers. Look at your sister, the cardiologist, and you, graduating from Harvard. Don't talk to me about the good old days. What was so good? — Anita Diamant

I was made fun of in the Midwest - I was the only Asian in my graduating class of 200. Fortunately, I found my niche, and it was fine. But I wanted to be so white, you wouldn't believe it. I was like, 'I want to be white; I don't want to be this anymore.' But now I embrace it. — Reggie Lee

Whole class of filmmakers, they're all graduating to a new level of filmmaking, which I think is awesome. — Katie Aselton

Mitt Romney was attacking Obama about our failing education system. He has a point. We are graduating millions of people in this country who are so lacking in basic analytical skills, they are considering voting for Mitt Romney. — Bill Maher

In China, people are moving from bigger cars to small hatches, and interestingly, the Indian market is graduating to bigger cars and sedans. I will say that we will not put money only in just one segment. — Winfried Vahland

Since graduating from HMS my greatest satisfaction has unequivocally been my family. My main disappointment is that I have wasted too much time in personal pursuits and been less of an influence for good than I might have been. — Norris B. Finlayson

Girls from my graduating class come into the store brandishing solitaire diamonds like Legion of Honor medals, as if they've accomplished something significant - which I guess they think they have, though all I can see is a future of washing some man's clothes stretching ahead of them. — Christina Baker Kline

Ron Hubbard was trying to get people out of their body with his HCA courses, but frankly, he was failing badly. When I was a staff member, occasions came up that I was asked to help some member of the graduating class to get a reality on out-of-body experiences ... Hubbard would never acknowledge this ability of mine, and after leaving him I did a lot of experimenting. — Paul Twitchell

The impetus behind going to graduate school was a year after graduating from college spent in Dallas working at the dog food factory and Bank America and not having met success in my chosen field, which at that point was being an actress. — Beth Henley

If knowledge is power and power is knowledge, then how so many idiots be graduating from college? — Coolio

It's very important with these young people who are graduating and getting married to write thank-you notes. — Letitia Baldrige

Graduating high school was really emotional for me. I'd obviously made a huge thing out of what that experience was for me, and saying goodbye to it was very weird. So I had to be like, boom, onward and upward. — Tavi Gevinson

You resolve to reach the center of the galaxy, the center of everything, if you can, and that's where the game ends, now not a game at all but a campaign that's going to go on as long as your life does, no matter what you think of me now, because we are graduating from high school, from college, getting married, and now it's time for all cards to be turned over, all items identified, all secret areas revealed. And now at last maybe we can score this thing properly. — Austin Grossman

At a mixer at the Art and Architecture School, I met Ray Connors. He had small, worried eyes and fine, babyish hair, already receding. His back was hurting him; two years ago he had fallen down an elevator shaft. He was graduating from the Architecture School in January. He went off to get me a glass of wine; by the time he came back, I had practically forgotten his existence. — Tama Janowitz

I remember, after graduating high school, I got a part in a play with the Washington Shakespeare Festival - a little part. But I remember thinking this would be a great way of making a living ... to be an actor. I never really thought I'd make a lot of money at it. — Daniel Stern

When I left home after graduating high school, I left as a migrant agricultural worker with a Modern Library edition of Plato in my duffel bag. It sounds kind of crazy, but I loved it. I loved the stuff. Before I knew there was a subject called philosophy, I loved it. — Dallas Willard

Although some graduating classes will have a "handful of celebrities" who move on to the national stage, he pointed out that most would find themselves "building or strengthening your communities. Please love that destiny, if it turns out to be yours - for communities are all that's substantial about the world. — Kurt Vonnegut

After graduating in engineering I went to the University of Kansas to get an MA in economics as a vehicle for allowing me to decide if I wanted to continue in economics. — Vernon L. Smith

When I was a teenager, just about the only thing I could do right was play music. In my graduating class, I was certainly not voted 'Most Literary Boy.' I can assure you I was not voted 'Mostly Likely to Succeed.' I was voted 'Most Musical Boy.' And the music led to the poetry. — Robert Pinsky

There have been two periods in my lifetime when the excitement of government and of public issues drew to Washington many of the bright young people graduating from colleges and law schools. These were essentially the Roosevelt and the Kennedy years. — Katharine Graham

Community colleges need to be upgraded. We got to have training for real jobs. We've got a lot of jobs that are going unfilled because we don't have the technology in the heads of graduating college students to deal with them. — Emanuel Cleaver

My 94-year-old grandmother has always been so inspiring to me. She is kind, smart, brave, and independent. After graduating number one in her medical school class at a time when it was extremely rare for women to attend medical school, she worked with the World Health Organization in North Africa to eradicate tuberculosis. — Kelsey Chow

THERE ARE LOW points, and there are low points. This-rattling down an endless stretch of interstate in a Greyhound bus toward the middle of farm-country-nowhere a week after barely graduating high school-was my low point. — Nicole Williams

Maybe you're graduating from fireballs to lightning bolts," Adrian suggested. "I bet it'd be a lot like throwing ninja stars. Except, well, you could incinerate people. — Richelle Mead

Before the Internet came along, most people rarely wrote anything at all for pleasure or intellectual satisfaction after graduating from high school or college. — Clive Thompson

We are graduating members from the class of we made it, not the faded echoes of voices crying out names will never hurt me. Of course they did. But our lives will ever always continue to be a balancing act that has less to do with pain and more to do with beauty. — Shane Koyczan

Pretty was hardly the word. With her fierce curled lips, black eyes and clean angry bones she must have stood out in her graduating class like a chicken hawk in a flock of pullets. — Ross Macdonald

What is art but the life upon the larger scale, the higher. When, graduating up in a spiral line of still expanding and ascending gyres, it pushes toward the intense significance of all things, hungry for the infinite? — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

When I was contemplating medical school after graduating from Knox, several people suggested that nursing was a more suitable profession for women. My own mother discouraged me from becoming a doctor. But this is not why I became a nurse instead! — Mary Pope Osborne

I definitely think for up and coming filmmakers, people graduating from film school, people that want to do their own movies, horror movies are a great way to go. — Jonathan Levine

I made it to London aged six, an event I recorded in my diary with coloured markers to convey my sense of occasion. And in 1983, after graduating from college, I returned to spend two years at Cambridge University. — Jean Hanff Korelitz

There were only 75 people in my graduating class at the school I attended in Hannah, S.C. It was a small school and that translated into not a lot of opportunities when it came to music. We had academic and sports programs but we never had a consistent music program. We would have a band one year, and a chorus one year, but nothing ever lasted. — Josh Turner

Graduating at the age of 21 was a wonderful age to hopefully start a career. — Rose Leslie

Puberty for me was graduating from Thousand Island salad dressing to Caesar salads. It was like going from hot dogs and hamburgers to beef stroganoff, or from ice cream in a cone to creme brulee. — Richard Simmons

After graduating in the summer of 1980, I knew I wanted my life to count. — Donna Rice

If you're 29, there has been no global warming for your entire adult life. If you're graduating high school, there has been no global warming since you entered first grade. There has been no global warming this century. None — Mark Steyn

After graduating from college I worked at a variety of jobs, from banking to politics. I enjoyed whatever I was doing at the time but I didn't love my work. — Joe Flanigan

I believe everyone has spirit guides - but not everyone bothers to start a conversation with them. Spirit guides have lived as humans. They have a soul level that's very evolved and have learned a lot of life lessons. (That's the goal, you know - keep graduating to the next level, until you have a soul that is as pure as it can be.) — Jodi Picoult

An education system where student selection is based on credit capacity and not merit capacity and where graduating students are no longer indebted to the nation, but increasingly indebted to the Australian Taxation Office - that's no way to improve the quality of education. — Gough Whitlam

I was a tomboy growing up and then fell into the world of theatre and musical theatre. A girlfriend introduced me to yoga in college and I was hooked. I didn't really know anything about it except that it was the highlight of my week. I ended up graduating from the University of Virginia and moving to Los Angeles where I could continue acting and do a yoga teacher training. I went from practicing once or twice a week to several hours everyday. I loved it. — Kathryn Budig

In my fairy tale, another year and a half has passed. I'm graduating with my English degree. And I ask you to marry me. What would you say?"
"Would you get down on one knee?"
"Absolutely."
"I would say yes. Hell yes. — Kim Holden

You may have heard that America doesn't have enough scientists and is in danger of "falling behind" (whatever that means) because of it. Tell this to an academic scientist and watch her laugh. For the last thirty years, the amount of the U.S. annual budget that goes to non-defense related research has been frozen. From a purely budgetary perspective, we don't have too few scientists, we've got far too many, and we keep graduating more each year. America may say that it values science, but it sure as hell doesn't want to pay for it. Within environmental science in particular, we see the crippling effects that come from having been resource-hobbled for decades: degrading farmland, species extinction, progressive deforestation... The list goes on and on. — Hope Jahren

Harder than training for the Olympics, harder than graduating from college, has been to stay a virgin before marriage. — Lolo Jones

After graduating in 1973 I went into the programming field. — W. Richard Stevens

My grammar school graduating class in 1941 had a little party for 13 or 14 year-old kids. [Trumpeter] King Kolax's band played for the party and Gene Ammons was playing tenor saxophone with the band. And that's when I said, "That's it!" Just like that, tunnelvision ever since. — Johnny Griffin

I had a fun high school experience. We had a big old prom, we had 400 kids in the graduating class and everything. It was a fun night. I enjoyed the limo ride there the most. Me and a couple friends riding with their dates, everyone was all dressed up, and I was into it, the energy and the anticipation of that entire experience. — Jonathan Keltz

I'm graduating and she corrected my vocabulary the other day. I said I felt nauseous, and she said the word I wanted was nauseated. Fucked me up, bro. Didn't know there was a difference. — J.M. Darhower

It's funny that when people reach a certain age, such as after graduating college, they assume it's time to go out and get a job. But like many things the masses do, just because everyone does it doesn't mean it's a good idea. — Steve Pavlina

After graduating, the jobs that I got were TV, so you sort of move to where the jobs are. But I would absolutely go back to theater if the role was right. — Brett Dalton

The sensation that had plagued me after graduating, of being on the outside of some mystery, peeking in, returned. — Olivia Sudjic

After graduating from flares and platforms in the early 1970s, I started drama school wearing a pair of khaki dungarees with one of my Dad's Army shirts, accessorised by a cat's basket doubling as a handbag. Very Lady Gaga. — Jenny Eclair

I've met graduating college kids facing loan payments and a bad economy, and they are worried that they won't be able to get a job. This is not the way America needs to be. — Mitt Romney

I was sitting with the rest of my college graduating class listening to the commencement speaker prepare us for life after graduation, and he had a lot of ground to cover because my liberal arts education had skirted the issue for 4 years. I was just waiting for them to call my name so I could go up, collect my diploma, fold it into a paper hat, and start flipping burgers at McDonalds. — Doug Lansky

The Chinese are clearly inculcating the idea that science is exciting and important, and that's why they, as a whole-they're graduating four times as many engineers as we are, and that's just happened over the last 20 years. — Bill Gates

I grew up in Michigan, in a very small town, Centreville. In my graduating class, I had like 92 people. — Verne Troyer

Being raised as an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, The Mormons, I became an Eagle scout, and after graduating high school, I went on a full-time church mission to the West Indies for 2 years. — Shay Carl

The best thing about graduating from the university was that I finally had time to sit on a log and read a good book. — Edward Abbey

Not once after graduating from Bryan was I asked to make a case for the scientific feasibility of miracles, but often I was asked why Christians aren't more like Jesus. I may have met one or two people who rejected Christianity because they had difficulties with the deity of Christ, but most rejected Christianity because they thought it means becoming judgmental, narrow-minded, intolerant, and unkind. People didn't argue with me about the problem of evil; they argued about why Christians aren't doing more to alleviate human suffering, support the poor, and oppose violence and war. Most weren't looking for a faith that provided all the answers; they were looking for one in which they were free to ask questions. — Rachel Held Evans

Promised little waves and nice breezes, and she could practice her Spanish, which she had done well in during high school. Everyone - literally everyone - from her graduating class was — Emma Straub

Until you've faced a crowd of graduating seniors, you have not experienced apathy ... — Gillian Roberts

At times God's best pupils experience the most rigorous and continuous courses. Eventually those who prove to be men of Christ will thereby become distinguished alumni of life's school of affliction, graduating with honors. — Neal A. Maxwell

Paranoid schizophrenia in the forties, there was only a few of us because they just invented those tags from some college somewhere and we were just a small group of people. But now there are many paranoid schizophrenias because all these these guys that are graduating from college that are readin' all these books, anything they can't understand is a paranoid schizophrenia. — Charles Manson

I was really lucky. I had a really great opportunity. I went to an all girls, very small private school from seventh grade all the way to graduating. It was so wonderful because the focus was school at school ... and during the week I could be that nerdy bookworm of a girl, and do six hours of homework at night. — Sophia Bush