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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:

A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring;
Their shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.

Alexander Pope An Essay on Criticism (1711)

The Lord of Learning who upraised mankind
From being silent brutes to singing men.

Charles Godfrey Leland

He [Steele] was a rake among scholars, and a scholar among rakes.

Thomas Babington Macaulay

O this learning, what a thing it is!

William Shakespeare

Two gates the silent house of Sleep adorn:
Of polished ivory this, that of transparent horn:
True visions through transparent horn arise;
Through polished ivory pass deluding lies.

John Dryden

While the bee with honied thigh,
That at her flowery work doth sing,
And the waters murmuring
With such a consort as they keep,
Entice the dewy-feather'd sleep.

John Milton Il Penseroso (1631)

The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up...His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way.

Nikola Tesla

Whereas Freud was for the most part concerned with the morbid effects of unconscious repression, Jung was more interested in the manifestations of unconscious expression, first in the dream and eventually in all the more orderly products of religion and art and morals.

Lewis Mumford Interpretations and Forecasts 1922-1972 (1973)

Even though there are physical differences between men and women in their appearance – one is taller and has a deeper voice – they both possess infinite potential in terms of their intellectual and spiritual capabilities and aren’t different from each other in this.

Ali Khamenei

I remind young people everywhere I go, one of the worst things the older generation did was to tell them for twenty-five years "Be successful, be successful, be successful" as opposed to "Be great, be great, be great". There's a qualitative difference.

Cornel West

The object of education is not merely to enable our children to gain their daily bread and to acquire pleasant means of recreation, but that they should know God and serve Him with earnestness and devotion.

Hermann Adler

All we can do is dream, or die,/dream that we do not die/and, at times, for a moment, wake.

Rosario Castellanos

Is this is a dream? O, if it be a dream,
Let me sleep on, and do not wake me yet!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Spanish Student (1843)

Dreams, which, beneath the hov'ring shades of night,
Sport with the ever-restless minds of men,
Descend not from the gods. Each busy brain
Creates its own.

Thomas Love Peacock

I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was.

William Shakespeare

Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast.

William Shakespeare Macbeth (1605)

Thy eyes' windows fall,
Like death, when he shuts up the day of life;
Each part, depriv'd of supple government,
Shall, stiff and stark and cold, appear like death.

William Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet (1597)

Time, motion and wine cause sleep.

Ovid

Come, gentle sleep! attend thy votary's prayer,
And, though death's image, to my couch repair;
How sweet, though lifeless, yet with life to lie,
And, without dying, O how sweet to die!

John Wolcot

Success can make you go one of two ways. It can make you a prima donna, or it can smooth the edges, take away the insecurities, let the nice things come out.

Barbara Walters

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