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Graduation Quotes

Two of the most popular graduation lines are flagged. “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself” is a paraphrase of John Dewey, not a quotation. The one about education being what remains after you have forgotten what you learned in school is credited to Einstein and flagged as misattributed.

The page is assembled from the pages on education, success, the future, dreams and learning. It has no graduation speeches in it, but it does have a lot of quotes that get used in them. If you are writing a speech, use the sourced entries; the label will tell you which is which.

Random quote on Graduation

Most quoted on graduation:

Well alright, anyone who has dreams of world empire, look what it did to Britain. There's a reason that whole country is one big Smith song.

Max Brooks Lecture of Opportunity : Max Brooks: World War Z (2009)

Civilization, it was once said, is a race between education and catastrophe — and we intend to win that race for education.

John F. Kennedy

I will be what I want. But I will have to want what I'll be. Success is in having success, not conditions for success.

Fernando Pessoa

You don't have to go to college to be a success … We need the people who run the offices, the people who do the hard physical work of our society.

George H. W. Bush

Man is born egotistical, a result of the conditioning of nature. Nature fills us with instincts; it is education that fills us with virtues.

Fidel Castro University of Havana address (2005)

When a person is humiliated, when his rights are being violated, and he does not have the proper education, naturally he gravitates toward terrorism.

Shirin Ebadi

Man is the supreme Talisman. Lack of a proper education hath, however, deprived him of that which he doth inherently possess.

Bahá'u'lláh

We often forget our dreams so speedily: if we cannot catch them as they are passing out at the door, we never set eyes on them again.

William Hazlitt The Plain Speaker (1826)

Soul-serving requires a heart that beats hard against the ribs. It requires a soul full of the milk of human kindness. This is the sine qua non of success.

Charles Spurgeon The Soul-Winner (1895)

It would be a contradiction in terms if the oppressors not only defended but actually implemented a liberating education.

Paulo Freire Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968)

When she was a girl nobody had money but people had dreams.

John Updike Rabbit at Rest (1990)

There are many situations in life that we suddenly feel we have seen in dreams.

Joseph Joubert The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert (1883)

I was taught to strive not because there were any guarantees of success but because the act of striving is in itself the only way to keep faith with life

Madeleine Albright

With ever greater frequency they annihilate themselves, for success breeds contempt for those very qualities that purchased it.

Steven Erikson House of Chains (2002)

A woman who is denied an education is denied equality.

Barack Obama A New Beginning (2009)

In ancient times and in our times, Muslim communities have been at the forefront of innovation and education.

Barack Obama A New Beginning (2009)

All of us must recognise that education and innovation will be the currency of the 21st Century.

Barack Obama A New Beginning (2009)

They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn't. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.

Frida Kahlo

I do not know whether I shall make progress; but I should prefer to lack success rather than to lack faith.

Seneca the Younger

And even the most pleasant of dreams could be painful under the light of the morning sun.

Christopher Golden

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