Inspirational Graduation Quotes & Sayings

I've learned that I can pretty much do anything I've wanted to as long as I was methodical and diligent about it. It may not sound very exciting really, but it works. — Jamie Hyneman

It is very common ... to tell graduates: dream and dream big. I say do more than that. When you dream you are in an unconscious state. It ends. You wake up. It's not real. — Roger Goodell

I'm only asking you to stop every so often and turn off your mobile device, put down the Angry Birds and the Words with Friends and take a moment. Stop to look up and look around. Pause and check in with yourself - and spend a moment there. — Maria Shriver

The message of the summoned life is that you don't need to panic if you don't yet know what you want to do with your life. But you probably want to throw yourselves into circumstances where the summons will come. — David Brooks

You can only see progress when you start doing something, so don't expect anything without your efforts. — Auliq Ice

You can't make a cloudy day a sunny day, but can embrace it and decide it's going to be a good day after all. — Jane Lynch

Your life will have chapters, complete with crazy characters, villains and a plot you can't even imagine as you sit here today. It's a lot like a Scooby Doo episode. — Sharyn Alfonsi

And God says to all of us, you are no chicken; you are an eagle. Fly, eagle, fly. And God wants us to shake ourselves, spread our pinions, and then lift off and soar and rise, and rise toward the confident and the good and the beautiful. Rise towards the compassionate and the gentle and the caring. Rise to become what God intends us to be-eagles, not chickens. — Desmond Tutu

Sometimes the difference between winning and losing is will. The will to make it happen. — Howard Schultz

Hopefully life is long. Do stuff you will enjoy thinking about and telling stories about for many years to come. Do stuff you will want to brag about. — Rachel Maddow

From my point of view, which is that of a storyteller, I see your life as something artful, waiting, just waiting and ready for you to make it art. — Toni Morrison

What lies ahead of you is challenging but beautiful. — Debasish Mridha

Develop your own compass, and trust it. Take risks, dare to fail, remember the first person through the wall always gets hurt. — Aaron Sorkin

Making it happen, It's just something you gotta do. — Auliq Ice

Each of us has a fire in our hearts for something. It's our goal in life to find it and keep it. — Mary Lou Retton

Lesson number one: opportunity can be manufactured. Yes, you can wait around for the right set of circumstances to fall into place and then leap into action but you can also create those set of circumstances on your own. In so doing, you manufacture your own opportunities. This has helped me immeasurably. — Biz Stone

My good friends, we are all waiting. We are waiting, if not for the Messiah, as such, we are waiting for the messianic moment. And the messianic moment is what each and every one of us tries to build, meaning a certain area of humanity that links us to all those who are human and, therefore, desperately trying to fight despair as humanly as possible and-I hope-with some measure of success. — Elie Wiesel

Take control of your future by taking a choice of starting it right now. — Auliq Ice

Stay fluid and roll with those changes. Life is just a big extended improvisation. — Jane Lynch

Choice of evils debates always produce extremism - people choose what they hope is the lesser evil, then call it good and demonize the other choice. It will be a challenge for your generation to synthesize - to move beyond Us versus Them, to We. — Margaret Atwood

How do you know what is the right path to choose to get the result that you desire? The honest answer is this: You won't. And accepting that greatly eases the anxiety of your life experience. — Jon Stewart

You may learn sooner than most generations the hard lesson that you must always make the path for yourself ... There is no secret society out there that will tap you on your shoulder one night and show you the way. — Stephen Colbert

Don't work for fools. It's not worth it. Getting paid less to work for people you like and believe in is much better for you (and your career) in the long run. — Adam Savage

And we didn't have cell phones. If you made plans to meet someone in a snow storm, and they didn't show up, you just had to assume they were devoured by wolves and go on with your life. — Stephen Colbert

Just because you don't know what you want yet, it doesn't mean that there's nothing to want. — Emily Henry

Education is the key to unlocking the world, a passport to freedom. — Oprah Winfrey

When you start off, you have to deal with the problems of failure. You need to be thick-skinned, to learn that not every project will survive. — Neil Gaiman

Sometimes the 'day' you're dreaming for never comes. Take control of your future and start now. — Auliq Ice

Success is the end product. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Those words are from Lynda Barry's novel 'Cruddy.' I've carried them with me for some time. There's a lot in my life I wasn't expecting. One is the realization that I stood at this pulpit and delivered a reading for my own graduation ... 15 years ago. Unexpectedly, I'm old. — Jack Dorsey

You cannot help but learn more as take the world into your hands. Take it up reverently, for it is and old piece of clay, with millions of thumbprints on it. — John Updike

The secret of unleashing your true power is setting goals that are exciting enough that they truly inspire your creativity and ignite yourpassion. — Tony Robbins

Develop and protect a moral sensibility and demonstrate the character to apply it. Dream big. Work hard. Think for yourself. Love everything you love, everyone you love, with all your might. And do so, please, with a sense of urgency, for every tick of the clock subtracts from fewer and fewer. — David McCullough Jr.

Don't be deceived by life's outcomes. Life's outcomes, while not entirely random, have a huge amount of luck baked into them. — Michael Lewis

My final coaching point of the day: It's my contention that in any given moment one lives one's life in one of two ways, either under a threat or for a challenge. In performing when it counts, it's one or the other, under a threat or for a challenge. If, as Einstein says, "Imagination will take you everywhere," then living your life under a threat will take you nowhere. — Jim Steen

You are your own stories and therefore free to imagine and experience what it means to be human ... And although you don't have complete control over the narrative (no author does, I can tell you), you could nevertheless create it. — Toni Morrison

Living well is the best revenge.If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door. — Max Eastman

We live by what we believe not but what we see. — Angela Ahrendts

Throughout your career people will try to distract you. Some will scream at you, others will say things behind your back, and a few feral animals will literally try to throw their stiletto heel in in your lane and trip you. Keep your eyes straight ahead and just run your race. — Sharyn Alfonsi

With success, if you don't plan and just take each day as it comes, there will come failure. — Auliq Ice

The ego doesn't know that the source of all energy is within you, so it seeks it outside. — Eckhart Tolle

It is important to have determination and optimism and patience. If you lack patience, even when you face some small obstacle, you lose courage. There is a Tibetan saying, "Even if you have failed at something nine times, you have still given it effort nine times." I think that's important. Use your brain to analyze the situation. Do not rush through it, but think. Once you decide what to do about that obstacle, then there's a possibility that you will achieve your goal. — Dalai Lama