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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 good number of works owe their success to the mediocrity of their authors' ideas, which match the mediocrity of those of the general public.

Nicolas Chamfort

God wills, man dreams, the work is born.

Fernando Pessoa

Dreams of doing good
For good-for-nothing people.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning Aurora Leigh (1857)

Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wonder-tales and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incident.

L. Frank Baum The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)

The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.

William James The Principles of Psychology (1890)

People are not saints just because they haven't got much money or education.

Robertson Davies Conversations with Robertson Davies (1989)

Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.

Alexander Graham Bell Sophia's Fire (2005)

The music I desire must be supple enough to adapt itself to the lyrical effusions of the soul and the fantasy of dreams.

Claude Debussy An Encyclopedia of Quotations About Music (1981)

Q: Does commercial success matter to you?

Thom Yorke

Consciousness, the great poem of matter, seems so unlikely, so impossible, and yet here we are with our loneliness and our giant dreams.

Diane Ackerman A Natural History of the Senses (1990)

Success is like reaching an important birthday and finding you're exactly the same.

Audrey Hepburn Audrey Hepburn : A Life in Pictures (2007)

With the neutron bomb, which destroys life but not property, capitalism has found the weapon of its dreams.

Edward Abbey A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990)

An education is meaningless unless it equips students to have a better life.

Clarence Thomas My Grandfather's Son (2008)

Instructors must always be positive. Even if someone fails at something, you must have the energy to help them turn it into success.

Koichi Tohei Ki Sayings (2003)

"Dream tonight of peacock tails,
Diamond fields and spouter whales.
Ills are many, blessings few,
But dreams tonight will shelter you."

Thomas Pynchon

Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know.

William Saroyan My Heart's in the Highlands (1939)

The length of your education is less important than its breadth, and the length of your life is less important than its depth.

Marilyn vos Savant The Reader's Digest (1992)

A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.

John Barrymore

Where hopes are unrealistic, fears often become exaggerated; where dreams alone are blueprints, nightmares result.

Anthony Daniels City Journal (1998)

The point, as Marx saw it, is that dreams never come true.

Hannah Arendt Crises of the Republic (1969)

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