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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:

The positive argument for realism is that it is the only philosophy that doesn't make the success of science a miracle.

Hilary Putnam

It is a truism that success in science comes to the individuals who ask the right questions.

John Polanyi

Here's the formula for Obama's success: "They work, and you eat."

Dinesh D'Souza America: Imagine a World without Her (2014)

Six Sigma is a comprehensive and flexible system for achieving, sustaining and maximizing business success.

Peter S. Pande

Our dreams will sometimes be shattered and our ethereal hopes blasted.

Martin Luther King Jr. Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967)

There are no absolute certainties in this universe. A man must try to whip order into a yelping pack of probabilities, and uniform success is impossible.

Jack Vance The Languages of Pao (1958)

A nickname may be the best record of a success. That's what I call putting the face of a joke upon the body of a truth.

Joseph Conrad Nostromo (1904)

To live for a time close to great minds is the best kind of education.

John Buchan Memory Hold-The-Door (1940)

Success soon palls. The joyous time is, when the breeze first strikes your sails, and the waters rustle under your bows.

Charles Buxton Notes of Thought (1883)

When success happens to an English writer, he acquires a new typewriter. When success happens to an American writer, he acquires a new life.

Martin Amis The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America (1986)

And now in my old age, she has again become the girl of my dreams.

Gordon B. Hinckley

Human reason is the only saviour we have... We need more education, not less; more science, not less; more hope for the future, and more confidence in it.

A. J. P. Taylor

Hamlet is every man's self-love with all its dreams realized. He wears all the crowns and carries every cross.

Hugh Kingsmill The Progress of a Biographer (1949)

Action alone is the tinder which ignites the map, the parchment, this scroll, my dreams, my plans, my goals, into a living force.

Og Mandino The Greatest Salesman in the World (1968)

I studied what interested me and so I had to become a writer because my education had left me unsuited for a decent well-paying job.

Elizabeth Hand

People who lack the clarity, courage, or determination to follow their own dreams will often find ways to discourage yours. Live your truth and don't EVER stop!

Steve Maraboli Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010)

In America, success has always been easy to measure. It is the distance between one's origins and one's final achievement that matters.

Michael Korda Success! (1977)

Success but sharpens his avidity, and facility but augments his impatience.

Alexander Bryan Johnson A Treatise on Language: Or, The Relation which Words Bear to Things, in Four Parts (1836)

Without dreams there is no art, no mathematics, no life.

Michael Atiyah

Mass education cannot work to produce a fair society because its daily practice is practice in rigged competition, suppression and intimidation.

John Taylor Gatto Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992)

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