Commencement Quotes

If you think that happiness means total peace, you will never be happy. Peace comes from the acceptance of the part of you that can never be at peace. It will always be in conflict. If you accept that, everything gets a lot better.

That dog is mine said those poor children; that place in the sun is mine; such is the beginning and type of usurpation throughout the earth. [Fr., Ce chien est a moi, disaient ces pauvres enfants; c'est la ma place au soleil. Voila le commencement et l'image de l'usurpation de toute la terre.]

Play is a sacred thing, a divine ordinance, for developing in the child a harmonious and healthy organism, and preparing that organism for the commencement of the work of life.

Commencement oratory must eschew anything that smacks of partisan politics, political preference, sex, religion or unduly firm opinion. Nonetheless, there must be a speech: Speeches in our culture are the vacuum that fills a vacuum.

The science of constructing a commonwealth or renovating it, or reforming it, is...not to be taught a priori...That which in the first instance is prejudicial may be excellent in its remoter operation, and its excellence may rise even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning. The reverse also happens; and very plausible schemes, with very pleasing commencements, have often shameful and lamentable conclusions.

There is a two-fold solemnity which belongs to the dying hour-it is the winding up of life, and it is the commencement of eternity.

The first time I spoke to a group this large was at my college commencement in 1969.

Death is not "an eternal sleep!" Citizens! efface from the tomb that motto, graven by sacrilegious hands, which spreads over all nature a funereal crape, takes from oppressed innocence its support, and affronts the beneficent dispensation of death! Inscribe rather thereon these words: "Death is the commencement of immortality!"

With whomsoever or wheresoever may rest the present causes of difficulty that apparently exist towards either the completion of the old engine, or the commencement of the new one, we trust they will not ultimately result in this generation's being acquainted with these inventions through the medium of pen, ink and paper merely; and still more do we hope, that for the honour of our country's reputation in the future pages of history, these causes will not lead to the completion of the undertaking by some other nation or government.

En Ma Fin Est Ma Commencement - In my end is my beginning.

I'm an artist. And I'm happy that I was there at the commencement of this music, this Jamaican music, to put my contribution and help to establish it.

It is always easy enough to take up arms, but very difficult to lay them down; the commencement and the termination of war are notnecessarily in the same hands; even a coward may begin, but the end comes only when the victors are willing.

I hope this will find you...enjoying the commencement of a new year with every prospect that can make it a happy one.

Now we allow that life begins with conception, because we contend that the soul also begins from conception; life taking its commencement at the same moment and place that the soul does.

It was a myth that's often perpetuated at commencement that holds that only hope and promise lie beyond the halls of academe. Don't worry, be happy. Everything is fine.

The whole of that part of Southern Africa which is controlled by racial minorities is experiencing either consistent and regular guerilla activity or is faced with advanced preparation for its commencement.

A commencement is a time of joy. It is also a time of melancholy. But then again, so is life.

To make a commencement requires a mental effort.

Every failed experiment is one step closer to success.

I’ve found that nothing in life is worthwhile unless you take risks.

Nothing in life is worthwhile unless you take risks. Fall forward. Every failed experiment is one step closer to success.

George W. Bush gave a commencement speech at Southern Methodist University this weekend. It was pretty inspirational. He said, 'As I like to tell the 'C' students, you too can be president.' Even George W. Bush has George W. Bush comedy material in his act.

One of the panelists on CNN, after the Hillary Clinton commencement speech, literally started crying, "I can't believe, I can't believe the election actually happened and she lost." I don't need to see that. I don't need to see a bunch of whimpering leftists who themselves are incapable of grounding themselves in reality, whining and moaning.

I did work well with Hillary Clinton when she was my colleague in the Senate, and I certainly don't bear her any ill will. But when I listened carefully to her commencement speech, what I heard was a laundry list of very expensive new programs that our country simply cannot afford, and that would add to our already overwhelming $17 trillion debt. I'm also disturbed by the mismatch in her answers to the questions about her e-mail server and what the FBI Director Comey says that the FBI's investigation found.

Never follow anyone else's path, unless you're in the woods and you're lost.

You might as well take a chance on doing what you love.

So many of us choose our path out of fear disguised as practicality.

Nothing is as important as passion. No matter what you want to do with your life, be passionate.

Life has a very simple plot: first you're here and then you're not.

Graduation is not the end; it's the beginning.

Harry taught me that death isn't the end, it's the beginning.

Openness isn't the end. It's the beginning.

The fireworks begin today. Each diploma is a lighted match. Each one of you is a fuse.

People will frighten you about a graduation....They use words you don't hear often.

People will frighten you about a graduation.... They use words you don't hear often: And we wish you Godspeed." It is a warning, Godspeed. It means you are no longer welcome here at these prices."

Commencement speeches were invented largely in the belief that outgoing college students should never be released into the world until they have been properly sedated.

It is a warning, Godspeed. It means you are no longer welcome here at these prices.

Nothing worth knowing can be taught.

There is an essential difference between the decease of the godly and the death of the ungodly. Death comes to the ungodly man as a penal infliction, but to the righteous as a summons to his Father's palace. To the sinner it is an execution, to the saint an undressing from his sins and infirmities. Death to the wicked is the King of terrors. Death to the saint is the end of terrors, the commencement of glory.

Zealous in the commencement, careless in the end.

The question I have is out of all these commencement speeches that are happening, what`s the really worthwhile advice that a 21, 22 year old person will walk away from the speech and say, I can apply this maybe five years, 10 years later. How many speeches actually push the button like that, other than yours?

The closing period of the fifteenth century witnessed the slow but sure increase of the churches of the Brethren. Although far from being unmolested, they yet enjoyed comparative rest. At the commencement of the sixteenth century their churches numbered two hundred in Bohemia and Moravia.

In 1986, our commencement speaker was George Schultz, secretary of state, fourth in line to the president. You get me-basic cable's second most popular fake newsman. At this rate, the class of 2021 will be addressed by a zoo parrot in a mortar-board that has been trained to say "congratulations.

[A]s a commencement the Lord appeared unto Joseph Smith, both the Father and the Son, the Father pointing to the Son said, "this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased, hear ye him" Here then, was a communication from the heavens made known unto man on the earth, and he at that time came into possession of a fact that no man knew in the world but he, and that is that God lived, for he had seen him, and that his Son Jesus Christ lived, for he also had seen him.

Changing the world doesn't happen all at once. It isn't a big bang. It's an evolution, the sum of a billion tiny sparks. And some of those sparks will have to come from you.

Chemistry, unlike other sciences, sprang originally from delusions and superstitions, and was at its commencement exactly on a par with magic and astrology.

The profession of a prostitute is the only career in which the maximum income is paid to the newest apprentice. It is the one calling in which at the beginning the only exertion is that of self-indulgence; all the prizes are at the commencement. It is the ever-new embodiment of the old fable of the sale of the soul to the Devil. The tempter offers wealth, comfort, excitement, but in return the victim must sell her soul, nor does the other party forget to exact his due to the uttermost farthing.

One must search diligently to find laudatory comments on education (other than those pious platitudes which are fodder for commencement speeches). It appears that most persons who have achieved fame and success in the world of ideas are cynical about formal education. These people are a select few, who often achieved success in spite of their education, or even without it. As has been said, the clever largely educate themselves, those less able aren't sufficiently clever or imaginative to benefit much from education.

If God created the universe, there was a time when he commenced to create. Back of that commencement there must have been an eternity. In that eternity what was this God doing? He certainly did not think. There was nothing to think about. He did not remember. Nothing had ever happened. What did he do? Can you imagine anything more absurd than an infinite intelligence in infinite nothing wasting an eternity?

It is to have a compulsive, repetitive, and nostalgic desire for the archive, an irrepressible desire to return to the origin, a homesickness, a nostalgia for the return to the most archaic place of absolute commencement