You Did It Graduation Quotes & Sayings

We are all in the process of becoming. — Audre Lorde

Graduation is a big deal-bigger than getting a hole-in-one while golfing. People might think you're lying about the hole-in-one, but when you graduate, you get a diploma. — Anderson Cooper

Be careful who you call crazy. Some of us think it's a compliment. — Marilynn Dawson

Most of us won't see one another after graduation, and even if we do it will be different. We'll be different. We'll be adults
cured, tagged and labeled and paired and identified and placed neatly on our life path, perfectly round marbles set to roll down even, well-defined slopes. — Lauren Oliver

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility, or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can't remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, the law, or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.
You see? If all you remember in years to come is the 'gay wizard' joke, I've come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step to self-improvement. — J.K. Rowling

I snicker, but the idea is momentarily appealing. Part of me is scared of leaving school. Part of me wants to go desperately. Tension of opposites. — Mitch Albom

Wow, Carter. You've got a HUGE wiener.
Suddenly, Gavin being in the bathroom with me didn't seem so bad. If only he could have been in the
bathroom with me in eighth grade and passed that little tidbit around for Penny Frankles to hear, I might
not have gone to the eight grade graduation dance solo.
I finished pissing, zipped up my pants and flushed the toilet, all while trying not to pat myself on the
back. Yeah, I had a huge wiener. You bet your sweet ass I did. I almost needed a wheelbarrow to carry it
around. And because a toddler said it, it must have been true.
We got back to the table and I couldn't keep the shit-eating grin off of my face. — Tara Sivec

The ethic of ecstasy is the opposite of the trial's ethic; under its protection everybody does whatever he wants: now anyone can suck his thumb as he likes, from infancy to graduation, and it is a freedom no one will be willing to give up; look around you on the Metro; seated or standing, every single person has a finger in some orifice of his face-in the ear, in the mouth, in the nose; no one feels he's being observed, and everyone dreams of writing a book to tell about his unique and inimitable self, which is picking its nose; no one listens to anyone else, everyone writes, and each of them writes the way rock is danced to: alone, for himself, focused on himself yet making the same motions as all the others. In this situation of uniform egocentricity, the sense of guilt does not play the role it once did; the tribunals still operate, but they are fascinated exclusively by the past; they see only the core of the century; they see only the generations that are old or dead. — Milan Kundera

There is a good reason they call these ceremonies 'commencement exercises'. Graduation is not the end; it's the beginning. — Orrin Hatch

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

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

Success is the end product. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The secretary of education recently unveiled an initiative for curriculums to place more emphasis on history and language. Within the decade, proficiency in at least three languages will be required of all American schoolchildren by graduation. And along with its other recommendations, the CDC has issued a promulgation that every U.S. citizen "unplug" for at least two hours each day.
location 6374 — Alena Graedon

So in my uncertainty, I went to graduate school and there it all happened. — Ted Nelson

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

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

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

Students and invited speakers do not shed their constitutional rights when they step up to the graduation podium. Expressing faith in God does not disqualify a student from delivering a graduation message. Being designated as valedictorian or salutatorian is an honor, and students chosen for that honor should be free to share their gratitude to God with their fellow students and family members. — Mathew Staver

Like many people, I consider myself an incurable romantic, and there is a part of me that will always believe in walking off into the sunset to live happily ever after. When I was younger, like many children, I assumed I would get married, live in a nice house, and have a couple of kids. I also assumed this very traditional achievement would bring me endless happiness and romance. So much so, that during my college years I considered girls engaged by graduation to be the epitome of success. Perhaps needless to say, I was not one of those girls. — Robi Ludwig

Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties; and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in various parts of the country, and among the different orders of the people, it shall be the duty of legislators and magistrates in all future periods of this commonwealth to cherish the interests of literature and the sciences ... — John Adams

It's harder to build than destroy. To build is to engage and change. In jazz, we call progressing harmonies changes. Changes are like obstacles on a speed course. They demand your attention and require you to be present. They are coming ... they are here ... and then they are gone. It's how life comes. Each moment is a procession from the future into the past and the sweet spot is always the present. Live in that sweet spot. Be present. — Wynton Marsalis

Was it the act of giving birth that made you a mother? Did you lose that label when you relinquished your child? If people were measured by their deeds, on the one hand, I had a woman who had chosen to give me up; on the other, I had a woman who'd sat up with me at night when I was sick as a child, who'd cried with me over boyfriends, who'd clapped fiercely at my law school graduation. Which acts made you more of a mother?
Both, I realized. Being a parent wasn't just about bearing a child. It was about bearing witness to its life. — Jodi Picoult

In this time of recession, it is the time for invention. Did you know both the telephone and the automobile were invented during recessions? So was 'talking dirty.' — Eugene Mirman

A month before graduation I got an off-Broadway job. Then I did some commercials, including one for MCI. You can only see half of me, but it paid well. Thank God for commercials. — Lee Pace

I was raped, too
sexually assaulted in seventh grade,
tenth grade. the summer after graduation,
at a party
i was 16
i was 14
i was 5 and he did it for three years
i loved him
i didn't even know him
he was my best friend's brother,
my grandfather, father, mommy's boyfriend, my date, my cousin, my coach
i met him for the first time that night and-
4 guys took turns, and-
i'm a boy and this happened to me, and-
... i got pregnant i gave up my daughter for adoption ... did it happen to you, too? — Laurie Halse Anderson

Americans in particular are myopic. They're not traveling as much. When you were a college student, the next thing you would do on graduation was to take a year off and travel. That's what I did. I went to Indonesia. — Julie Taymor

You're not going to get very far in life based on what you already know. You're going to advance in life by what you're going to learn after you leave here. — Charlie Munger

Every in group distinguishes itself from the outgroup by some process of "going through the mill" or enduring sufferings which are subsequently worn as the proud badge of graduation — Alan W. Watts

Death is a graduation. When we're taught all the things we came to teach, learned all the things we came to learn, then we're allowed to graduate. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Whenever humans come together for any reason, music is there: weddings, funerals, graduation from college, men marching off to war, stadium sporting events, a night on the town, prayer, a romantic dinner, mothers rocking their infants to sleep ... music is a part of the fabric of everyday life. — Daniel Levitin

I had never really given any thought to working for the CIA, but graduation was upon me; I was getting married just a week or two after graduation; I had no job, no prospects for a job. And so I said sure, I'd be interested in working for the CIA. — John Kiriakou

Yale places great stress on undergraduate and graduate teaching. I like teaching, and I do a lot of it. — James Tobin

I fell in love with theater there, and after graduation I moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting. — Olivia Wilde

You're never too old or too busy to continue your educatioan! — Eva Longoria

The great thing about taking big chances when you're younger is you have less to lose, and you don't know as much. So you take big swings. — Amy Poehler

After graduation, due to special circumstances and perhaps also to my character, I began to travel throughout America, and I became acquainted with all of it. Except for Haiti and Santo Domingo, I have visited, to some extent, all the other Latin American countries. Because of the circumstances in which I traveled, first as a student and later as a doctor, I came into close contact with poverty, hunger and disease; with the inability to treat a child because of lack of money; with the stupefaction provoked by the continual hunger and punishment, to the point that a father can accept the loss of a son as an unimportant accident, as occurs often in the downtrodden classes of our American homeland. And I began to realize at that time that there were things that were almost as important to me as becoming famous for making a significant contribution to medical science: I wanted to help those people. — Ernesto Che Guevara

Following graduation from Amherst, a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship enabled me to test the depth of my interest in literary scholarship by beginning graduate studies at Harvard University. — Harold E. Varmus

College atheletes used to get a degree in bringing your pencil. — Ruby Wax

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

I was actually pretty miserable in high school. I couldn't wait for it to be over. And when it finally was, I remember sitting at graduation with all these classmates getting nostalgic and emotional already and all I could think was, "Get me out of here. I never want to see you people again." So it's ironic that I spend half my day putting myself back there by choice [while writing]. — Sarah Dessen

After graduation in June of 1984, I moved to Manhattan. My first stop was a psychiatrist, who in less than our first fifty-minute session again diagnosed me with depression. — Andy Behrman

CALUMNUS, n. A graduate of the School for Scandal. — Ambrose Bierce