Best 120+ Graduation Quotes and Sayings About Accomplishment
If your search for outstanding graduation quotes has brought you here, it’s because no one denies the gratitude one feels at a moment like that, and this is the most comprehensive compilation of words to say or share on such an important day.
Our huge list of graduation sayings, which consists of both original and famous quotes from renowned figures, will surely leave you spoilt for choice. Go ahead and peruse the collection below and take your pick.
Table of Contents
- High School Graduation Quotes
- College Graduation Quotes
- Short Graduation Quotes
- Inspirational Graduation Quotes
- Graduation Quotes about Life
- Graduation Quotes for a Daughter
- Graduation Quotes for a Son
- Funny Graduation Quotes
High School Graduation Quotes
Nothing feels as optimistic and promising as the high school graduation of the men and women of tomorrow. These famous high school graduation quotes will encourage them even more.
- There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind. C.S. Lewis
- Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. John Dewey
- The flower that blooms in adversity is the rarest and most beautiful of all. Mulan
- Graduation is not the end; it’s the beginning. Senator Orrin Hatch
- You can never be overdressed or overeducated. Oscar Wilde
- Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. Nelson Mandela
- It is absolutely still possible to make a difference. Michelle Obama
- Your education is a dress rehearsal for a life that is yours to lead. Nora Ephron
- The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you. B.B. King
College Graduation Quotes
The young graduate makes the transition from a meticulous student to an actual everyday fighter, so these famous college graduation quotes will inspire them and give them strength.
- Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
- Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
- Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
- The highest result of education is tolerance. Helen Keller
- You don’t go to university so you can punch a clock. You go to university so you can be in a position to make a difference. Janet Napolitano
- Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined. Henry David Thoreau
- Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.
- Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Steve Jobs
- Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education. Martin Luther King Jr.
Short Graduation Quotes
Graduation can mean long -and sometimes inexplicably tedious- talks. However, a single short phrase can also do the job.
- He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.
- Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.
- Whatever you are, be a good one.
- Respond to every call that excites your spirit. Rumi
- Be the change that you wish to see in the world.
- I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.
- The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.
- Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can. Arthur Ashe
- The best way to predict the future is to create it. Abraham Lincoln
- What we learn with pleasure we never forget. Alfred Mercier
- An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest. Benjamin Franklin
Inspirational Graduation Quotes
When a person graduates, he or she holds a passport for a better tomorrow. No wonder why graduation inspired these famous people to utter the following quotes.
- The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
- Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all. Aristotle
- The fireworks begin today. Each diploma is a lighted match. Each one of you is a fuse. Edward Koch
- It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are. E. E. Cummings
- Faith is taking the first step even when you can’t see the whole staircase.
- Instruction ends in the schoolroom, but education ends only with life. Frederick W. Robertson
- What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the human soul. Joseph Addison
- Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today. Malcolm X
- Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets. Leonardo da Vinci
- Knowledge is not power. The implementation of knowledge is power. Larry Winget
- Try to learn something about everything and everything about something. T. H. Huxley
- Graduation is only a concept. In real life every day you graduate. Graduation is a process that goes on until the last day of your life. If you can grasp that, you’ll make a difference. Arie Pencovici
- Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. Henry Ford
- Let us never be betrayed into saying we have finished our education; because that would mean we had stopped growing. Julia H. Gulliver
- Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive: easy to govern, but impossible to enslave. Henry Peter Brougham
- It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. Aristotle
- Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one. Malcolm S. Forbes
- There is only one success: to be able to spend your life in your own way. Christopher Morley
- The most rewarding things in life are often the ones that look like they cannot be done. Arnold Palmer
- Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. Steve Jobs
- Don’t ever confuse the two, your life and your work. The second is only part of the first. Anna Quindlen
- You are educated. Your certification is in your degree. You may think of it as the ticket to the good life. Let me ask you to think of an alternative. Think of it as your ticket to change the world. Tom Brokaw
- A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him. David Brinkley
- Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
- Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude. Thomas Jefferson
- There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
- I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.
Graduation Quotes about Life
One more step in education, one giant leap for someone who’s about to start an independent life soon. This is what these people had to say about it.
- We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.
- Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.
- May you live every day of your life.
- Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: It might have been.
- A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
- Live to the point of tears.
- Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.
- Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
- And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.
- Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
- Do not let making a living prevent you from making a life. John Wooden
Graduation Quotes for a Daughter
Show your daughter how much you care by sharing a graduation quote by women and men who had empowerment on their minds.
- Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible’!
- She turned her can’ts into cans and her dreams into plans. Kobi Yamada
- She believed she could, so she did. R. S. Grey
- I can’t think of any better representation of beauty than someone who is unafraid to be herself. Emma Stone
- I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life’s a bitch. You’ve got to go out and kick ass. Μ
- There are no regrets in life. Just lessons. Jennifer Aniston
- The brave may not live forever, but the cautious do not live at all. Princess Diaries
- Follow your arrow, wherever it points. Kacey Musgraves
Graduation Quotes for a Son
On your son’s graduation day, these quotes may turn a simple “well done” into a compass pointing towards future success.
- If I have a monument in this world, it is my son. Maya Angelou
- I go to seek a Great Perhaps.
- Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.
- Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value. Albert Einstein
- It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.
- A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do. Bob Dylan
- Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
Funny Graduation Quotes
Sometimes, a joke can hit right in the heart with its sincerity. These funny graduation quotes will make them laugh and realize the truth behind life itself.
- People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading. Logan Pearsall Smith
- I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. Mark Twain
- Follow your passion, stay true to yourself, never follow someone else’s path unless you’re in the woods and you’re lost and you see a path then by all means you should follow that. Ellen DeGeneres
- Don’t ever rob a bank. Enjoy life. Have fun. Choose to be happy now; don’t wait until you’re ‘successful.’ Peter Farrelly
- The only thing that ever sat its way to success was a hen. Sarah Brown
- The best advice I can give anybody about going out into the world is this: Don’t do it. I have been out there. It is a mess. Russell Baker
- I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which was that you can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.
Jim Carrey - I didn’t go to college, but if I did, I would’ve taken all my tests at a restaurant, ’cause the customer is always right. Mitch Hedberg
Dr. Seuss Graduation Quotes
These quotes by the famous American children’s author, political cartoonist, illustrator, poet, animator, screenwriter, and filmmaker will inspire and encourage any graduate.
- Why fit in when you were born to stand out?
- Only you can control your future.
- Be awesome! Be a book nut!
- Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, Nothing is going to get better. It’s not. The Lorax
- You’re off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting,
So… get on your way!
Oh, The Places You’ll Go!
Original Graduation Quotes
- Let your dreams blossom. Let your wings spread and fly away. But, most importantly, let a life of infinite choices begin.
- Graduation makes your life shine. It gives you the power to move mountains. It gives you the wings to soar above the sky. May you never get tired of chasing after education and using it for the betterment of society.
- He who has education has one of the greatest assets in the world.
- Had it not been for the fact that at certain points in his life Barack Obama wore a mortarboard over his head, he wouldn’t have achieved the remarkable feat of becoming the first African American to rule as President of the United States. Such is the extraordinary power of this mortarboard you wear today!
- I might have graduated today, but that in no way means that my thirst for knowledge has been quenched.
- Seek thee the kingdom of knowledge and all other remarkable things in life shall be added onto you.
- The only asset that can never ever be taken away from you is the education you have acquired.
- Education is one of the very few things in life that can transform a pauper’s world and put him on a level where he not only dines with the rich but is also respected by them.
- Success often prefers the company of an educated mind to that of an uneducated one.
- Becoming successful in life is often a herculean task; however, graduation significantly increases one’s chances of surmounting it.
- Education is the key to a brighter future. May your appetite for knowledge forever remain insatiable.
- You have achieved one of the most remarkable accomplishments in life by becoming a graduate! No one can ever take that away from you.
- Opportunities tend to love knocking on the doors of the educated.
- One of the greatest feelings in the world is the feeling of finally becoming a graduate after so many sleepless nights of studying.
- The journey to success begins with education. Without education, most of the great leaders of the world would have lived all their lives in obscurity and died in abject poverty.
- One of the most worthwhile investments in life is an investment into your education. It never fails to yield great dividends.
- What a wonderful place this planet would have been if all of its inhabitants enjoyed at least one graduation day!
- From the beginning of time, an educated mind has always been an open mind. And things are no different today.
- I find knowledge to be a truly fascinating thing. The more you have of it, the more you shine.
- Never stop acquiring knowledge, for with the right amount of knowledge, you can walk on air.
- No matter which angle you look at it from, graduating is a remarkable achievement.
- I seek knowledge because I refuse to be narrow minded.
- Graduating isn’t the easiest thing in this world to do, and that is why the rewards that come with it tend to follow the graduate throughout their earthly journey.
- Congratulations on graduating! Endless opportunities now lie ahead of you. From now onwards, your life will become a series of unbelievably successful moments.
- It matters not whether you graduated with honors or not, celebrate and enjoy your graduation to the fullest!
- Never use your graduation as an excuse to stop learning. Keep on learning until the end of time.
- He who wears a mortarboard is handed the keys to unlock the golden gates of success.
- Celebrate your graduation with the knowledge that you have just taken a step from the darkness into the light.
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