Commencement Speech Quotes

President Obama and Mitt Romney both gave commencement speeches over the last few days. Obama was like, 'You can be whatever you want to be,' while Romney was like, 'I can be whatever you want me to be.'

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.

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

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.

You will never see a U-Haul behind a hearse.

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

The definition of success changes. Success is to live your life with integrity and not give in to peer pressure to be something you're not. 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.

There is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.

Sometimes you find out what you are supposed to be doing by doing the things you are not supposed to do.

There are few things more liberating in this life than having your worst fear realized.

The commencement speech is not, I think, a wholly satisfactory manifestation of our culture.

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

Life is an improvisation. You have no idea what's going to happen next and you are mostly just making things up as you go along.

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.

Just remember, you can't climb the ladder of success with your hands in your pockets.

It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might has well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.

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?

Continue to share your heart with people even if it's been broken.

Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here.

Make glorious and fantastic mistakes.

Go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here.

Don't be afraid of fear. Because it sharpens you, it challenges you, it makes you stronger; and when you run away from fear, you also run away from the opportunity to be your best possible self.

It's just like when Trump made his speech, his commencement speech at Liberty University, I saw something that I've never seen. ABC News was there, and they're running around asking the parents of students at Liberty University what about Donald Trump they don't like. Are you upset that Trump is here? Do you ever remember any such reporting at an Barack Obama or Michelle Obama commencement? Of course not. And Trump was loved and adored at this thing, and he had some great things to say.

You cannot climb the ladder of success dressed in the costume of failure.

We are, all of us, exploring a world none of us understands...searching for a more immediate, ecstatic, and penetrating mode of living...for the integrity, the courage to be whole, living in relation to one another in the full poetry of existence. The struggle for an integrated life existing in an atmosphere of communal trust and respect is one with desperately important political and social consequences...Fear is always with us, but we just don't have time for it.

President Bush delivered a commencement speech at a university in Wisconsin. A very inspirational speech. Apparently Bush told the students, 'You can do anything in life if your parents work hard enough.'

My favorite animal is the turtle. The reason is that in order for the turtle to move, it has to stick its neck out.

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters. I wish you all very good lives.

If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.

Don't be afraid to fail big, to dream big.

Do not follow where the path may lead.

There happen to be whole large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration.

And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

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.

There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.

Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.

Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking.

Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. 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.

My daughter went to the school, and it's a very, very progressive and liberal school, and my commencement speech was telling the kids just to always be willing to quit, and that they need to quit a lot in their lives, and keep on quitting, because all the happiness I've ever got was when I turned my back on things that everybody else thought would make you happy. I can smell parents' stomach acid right now, but they know that whole "You gotta get a job and you gotta settle for what people perceive as success" thing is really absurd.

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.

Those who matter don't mind, and those who mind don't matter.

Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.

Always be a first-rate version of yourself.